Christmas

Lexie woke us up at 7 am on Christmas morning as per usual and we gathered for breakfast.

Once we'd finished we started with the cooking, first thing the Turkey had to go into the oven, unfortunatley we'd forgotten that the Pavalova was still in there from last night so it got a bit over done - but not so badly that we couldn't eat it of course.

After Breakfast Mum, Alice and Janice attempted to go to church again, this time the palce was all closed up, Hmmm attempt No. 2 failed... Attepmt #3 on the church front was finally successful, man I never realised it was that hard to go to church! Meanwhile I stayed home and set the table

and cooked the veges so that by the time they got home everything was just about ready for Lunch, but not quite yet. First we had to open some presents, it was close to midday and we hadn't opened any presents yet. So we did round one (for some reason Lexie seemed to get three presents to everyone elses 1? hmmm I wonder why that could be. She had a ball. By the third present she'd figured out that there was good stuff inside these things and how to rip off the paper and was hainvg so much fun. We had to have a break midway and have lunch. It tured out beautifully and once again we all ate way too much. Lunch was followed by another present opening session where we all got spoilt. Christmas night we decided we needed to have a real fire and all trooped downstairs to sit around the fire drinking eggnog and Baileys. Lexie was really good at not going near the fire. All in all a great day. Lexie had sooo much fun! and so did the rest of us.

Christmas Eve

Alice and Janice arrived on the 23rd. They'd planned to come into Boston Airport at the same time, but as we were driving to the airport to pick them up we got a phone call from Alice saying she'd missed the flight from Minnesota and wouldn't be arriving till 4 pm. Bugger, We picked up Jan without any problems then decided to head home instead of waiting around the airport. We got lost coming out of the airport again but got to see Boston covered in snow.

At about 4pm we headed back into the airport to pick up Alice, problem was that now it was heading into peak hour and the traffic was terrible, it took us 2 hours just to reach the airport, going about 20 miles and hour the whole way, thankfully Alice was still waiting for her bags she'd had a horrorific time trying to get here and now their bags were stuck. They finally got the baggage out and we headed home. another fun drive, we tried using the High Occupancy Vehicle Lane but I'm not sure how much it helped us. All in all a four hour trip to the airport.

Christmas Eve. Today was spent baking and generally catching up. Lexie kept everyone entertained - doesn't she always. We went outside and tried to make a snowman. The snow was a bit harder today but still not conducive to making snowmen so it was a pretty pore attempt.

Once again Lexie decided to perform for her visitors and she really got the walking down pat. She was having a ball walking with everyone (Alices finger was the best for holding onto) and even got adventerous enough to verture out without a finger on occasion, by the end of the day she had it- 30 steps at one stage!

In the evening we tried to go to church. Alice had called to find out what time mass was on and we were told 5pm, so at about 4:40 we headed down to the church only to find that, as the church was full at 4 pm they had started the mass then - what sort of wierd system is that so home we went - we'll try again tomorow.

Let it snow let is snow let it snow

Tuesday 16th - Today we decided that we had to get our Christmas tree. My first real Christmas tree. It ended up only just fitting in the house, but thats OK, it looked good!

I was worried that Lexie would try and dismantle it as fast as we put it up but she was a really good girl and was just content with watching it most of the time with just a few exploratory expeditions.

Wednesday 17th - Well..snow was in the forecast....but..... nope not yet!

Thursday 18th - Sightseeing again today. We headed down the 495 towards Cape Cod. The first little town that we came to after the Cpae Cod Canal was fantastic. It was a little place called Sandwich, a cute little village with a Grist Mill. Would have loved to stop and look around but once again Lexie was asleep. We continued along the 6a, it was supposed to be the scenic route along Cape Cod, but we never really got any views of the water, it was just town adjoining town. They were quite cute some of these places, Barstable, Dennis. We jumped off the main road to try and see the ocean, or rather Cape Cod Bay. Once again the place was nice in the Middle of winter but I would hate to be there in summer with the rest of the crowds.

We stopped at Dennis to have morning tea and a rest stop. After driving around for a while we finally stopped a couple of pedestrians and asked for a cafe, good thing we did or we would never have found the place since it was down in the basement. Good pastries and tings but no toilets. Not toilets in the town anywhere. Such a pain.

We headed across to the other side of the island and up that coast for a ways to Orleans. We tried another detour to see the Atlantic ocean but this time we ended up at a 2 car parking lot with no beach in sight....the signs said beach but we couldn't see one!

We stopped in Orleans for Lunch, then did a bit of Shoe shopping (there are an inordinate number of shoe warehouses in Cape Cod)

before heading back down the Cape towards Hyannis. We were trying to find some big Cape Cod houses, and almost managed but it certainly was differnt to what I expected!

Friday 19th - Snow and lots of it. Hi Gang, it's Andy (Bill) here. Jen has just ducked away and with this chance I thought I would add something to the Blog. Well actually, she's in the kitchen preparing dinner so I'm taking advantage of it. Work today was a complete waste of time. I was pushing papers around. There was no-one in the office due to the impending "Apocalypse" - sorry, snow storm, that was about to hit. The forecast was that the snow would start to fall at around 1pm and people were warned to stay off the roads. We also bought some firewood from a local supplier. We got a "1/4 cord" as it is called. The delivery driver arrived at around 11am- to beat the storm he said. Now all we have to do is work out when to have the fire. Needless to say, we weren't disappointed. The white stuff began to fall just after 1pm and continued on all arvo. We waited until it was a few inches deep then went outside to muck around in it. We made "snow angels" (even Lexie, although I had to move her hands and feet around to get the angel-shape). The snow itself was really light and fluffy. Fantastic if you were planning on going skiing - ideal powder conditions. But for making snowmen and snowballs it was a dud. We did try though and made a few small ones. During that time we got Skyped by Aunty Mel, Nick and Ernie, so I had to throw a few snowballs at the window - Grandpa had set the web cam up, so what we were doing outside was visible on Skype. After about half an hour, we headed inside. And from then on we monitored the snow fall keeping track (thanks to a tape measure) of how much snow had fallen. It got to a foot before we went to bed. Awesome!!!! The BBQ on the balcony is almost buried in it and the back yard looks amazing. We also had a really nice icicle starting on the eaves near the front door so will have to watch this to see how it grows. So far we have had just over 1 foot ( = 12 inches or 30cm for those of you who are metrically inclined.) Snow is expected to continue all through Friday night, most of Saturday and then taper off on Sunday. When the Weather Bureau is forecasting another storm to follow almost immediately on the heels of this one - the second storm is expected to arrive on Sunday morning and give us another 3-6 inches of snow. (I won't do the conversion here - I think you can get it yourselves). So we'll wait to dig the cars out, although I did do the front path twice today.

Saturday 20th - Woke up this morning to a "Winter Wonderland". The snow during the night had continued to accumulate. The railing on the deck and the deck stairs looked so cool. Luckily I had moved the car to the top of the driveway before the snow hit, so there won't be much to shovel out when we get started.

Mum and I spent most of the day baking christmas goodie. Mmmm it beginiing to look a lot like Christmas!

Sunday 21st - More snow - and the shovelling begins...... we spent the morning attempting to shovel out the cars. It wasn't too hard, the worst bit was trying to get the snow off the shovel..

We spent some more time playing around, the snow is soooo deep you sink up to you knees or above with each step - well us small people do!

Monday 22nd. We had a vague plan that we were going to head to Newport today to do some more sightseeing since it was fine again, but after spending an hour or so trying to get the cars out and a trip around the block we decided that that wasn't going to be much fun and decided on another day at home. The shovelling this morning was much harder, the snow we were shovelling was more icy and much heavier. We also had to put the garbage out this morning which was not easy - trying to get the garbage bin out to the front yard through the drifts of snow. We also found abit of a problem with the house in the little sun room out the back, all the snow is leaking in. We didn't have a problem with the rain, but where the snow builds up around the room then melts, it leaks in buggery!

A couple of outings

OK continuing on my rundown of the last couple of weeks:

Saturday 13th - We actually go out and did some signtseeing. We decided since it was a nice clear day that we'd head west and check out the blackstone River Valley. We headed out past Milford and Hopedale and managed to find the visitors center, which int urn was open. Quite amazing! unfortunately Lexie had decided that she was sleepy finally so we didn't get to get out and walk along the river side trail whcih was a shame cause after all the rain we'd just had everything was in flood and what is normal paddocks is now more river. We tried driving around for a little while, up the to dam and the lookout waiting for Lexie to wake up, but of course we didn't so we just decided to head down the valley to MIllville to shee the locks there, of course Lexie woke up just after we left the area. Grrr you have bad timing girl.

We got down to Millville and after a bit of a detour found the path to the lock, unfortunately it too was under water, and since it was freezing - and I do mean freezing. we had couldn't make it too the Lock. Not having much luck so far. So we pushed on into Blackstone itself where there is meant to be a gorge, and found a little cafe to have lunch in. The waitress int his place was an absolute floozy, after forgetting that she had customers (and yes she even admitted it) we tried to ask her how to get to the gorge. Her response..... Whats a gorge? we tried to explain it to her but finally she had to call one of the other waitress' over to give us directions hmmmm maybe not the brightest spark.

But we did manage to find the gorge after all, not that I would call it a gorge, just a waterfal really.

And unfortunately Lexie decided that she really didn't like the cold or something and absolutely screamed whilst we were out of the car, so we jumped back in and headed home via Bellingham.

Sunday 14th - Shopping again....

Monday 15th - We got a beautiful day today clear and 15degC so we decided that we would head into Boston and check out the city. We decided that we would drive into Mattapan, the end of the subway line and catch the train in from there. Unfortunatley the drive into Mattapan was long and slow and we got here right at the end of peak hour, but we made it and got a big surprise. The train doesn't go all the way to Mattapan, it stops at Ashmont and theres a little trolley type thing that runs from there.

Very cute. Next problem was trying to buy tickets. They had nothing explaining the system, no one on duty to ask and we got no help from the other passengers, but we finally ended up with a ticket each, we wern't sure if it was the right ticket, but it was a ticket.

We hopped on the tram (is it just me, or were we the only white people on this tram, seems we've found the black area of Boston out here at Mattapan) and rode into Boston. We were going to go onto Park street station, but at the stop before Downtown Crossing they made an announcement saying something about a broken signal so we decided we'de just get off there and walk. Thankfully there was an info booth just as we got out of the station so we were able to pick up a map, after a quick stop in Macy's to use the bathrooms we jumped on the Freedon trail. First stop Boston Common and the State building.

We then followed the freedom trail through downtown,

past the old city hall,

and up to Fanueil Hall.

We stopped and had lunch at Quincy markets

then decided to forgo he rest of the freedon trail and headed up to Beacon Hill instead. Very impressive, I like this region.

We wandered around the backstreets of Beacon Hill and ended up back at Boston Common.

A bit of a detour through the Theatre district and Chinatown took us back to Downtown crossing and the train home.

Grandma and Grandpa Arrive

Well Grandma and Grandpa arrived very late Thursday night (well I suppose it was technically Friday morning. They were due in at 10 pm but just as I was about to leave to go pick them up at the airport I found out that there was a medical emergency on their flight from San Fransisco to Boston and they had been diverted to Chicago. By the time they unloaded the sick guy, and de-iced the plane then got a spot out of Chicago they didn't arrive in Boston till after 12 am, then just to add to their fun journey they closed the roads from the airport for maintenance and we got detoured around the streets of Boston for half and hour before finally getting on the right road home. Finally arriving at home at around 1:30 am. Went straight to bed.

Next morning they got to meet Lexie again. She wasn't too sure about Grandpa, but took an instant shine to Grandma. Grandpa is tolerated, but Grandma's the favourite.

Just a quick note: if you see an entry in italics Andy (Bill) wrote it.

Lexie decided that she wanted to show off for Grandma and Grandpa so took her first steps the day they arrived., she was doing fantastically, but has refused to do it since.

A brief rundown of our time so far: Saturday 6th - I wanted to look at a car in Pawtucket so we took a drive down into Rhode Island. I took Mum and Dad down through the back roads so they could check out all the good architecture. After a quick stop in the back streets of Pawtucket to look at the car we headed into Providence to do a bit of sightseeing. Parking was a bit of a pain and we ended up driving around town a couple of times before we found somewhere, and that was metered parking, so we paid our money and headed out along the canal to waterplace park where we had lunch. Unfortunately our money ran out halfway through our lunch (can you say sloooooww service) so as soon as I had finished I bolted back to the car which Grandma and Grandpa got Lexie all rugged up again.

After lunch we wandered up washington street and ended with a drive around the East side of Providence and Brown University. All in all a good day. Sunday 7th - Snow! Just an inch or so but It really does make everything look magical. We went up to Framingham to do some Christmas shopping in the snow - it actually made the song "Let it snow" which was playing in the stores make sense....

Monday 8th - Day at home - took a walk up the shops in the cold.

Had Pancakes for breakfast and Lexie got to lick her first beater.

Tuesday 9th - Grandpa went to play trains with another model railroader whilst Grandma and I caught up on Christmas shopping.

Wednesday 10th - put up Christmas lights

Thursday 11th, Friday 12th - rain

Will continue in the next blog.

New Hampshire is closed for Thanksgiving

Hi again y'all.....Andy (Bill) here. I thought I'd get on and write something about our last few weeks. Jen will probably add some photos to this entry at a later date, as I don't have access to them where I currently am.

Thanksgiving... otherwise known as Turkey Day! Gobble Gobble!

This was our first one in the USA. Due to the fact that Greg and Pauline are coming to see us next week, and we'd probably celebrate then, we decided to burn up some vacation time, and head up north.

The itinerary was Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. No real plan, just drive, visit some places, check out the scenery and then stay the night. Then repeat.

Monday

We decided not to leave over the weekend before Thanksgiving, as the weather was terrible, so we headed off just after peak hour on the Monday morning. Most of the driving was on the interstate, as there wasn't really much we wanted to see until we crossed the border into Vermont.

We stopped fro luch at a place called Brattleboro, a nice little town, the the brewery that we wanted to stop and have lunch at was closed until 5pm. From here we headed up through the centre of Vermont. We stopped for afternoon tea at the Long Trail brewery (OK is there a pattern starting here), where Lexie head-butted me in the nose. OUCH! It was 4pm and dark by the time we left there so we decided to head straigh for the next attraction Queechee Gorge so we could do that first thing tomorrow morning. On our way through to Queechee we went through the most gorgous town called woodstock -no not that one- it was all lit up for Christmas too and looked great, definitily have to see that one in the daylight. We booked into our hotel and jumped straight in the pool. Lexie was in heaven, after a day of being cooped up in the car she now had a whole room to explore and a pool to splas around in. Heaven for a one year old. But really she was a great Kid all day, but we decide not to push our luck and just ordered a pizza for dinner and took it back to our room.

OK Jen here again, I'll continue the story since this is as far as Bill got.

Tuesday: Tuesday morning we headed just down the road to Queechee Gorge. Of course the visitors center and everything wasn't open, but we did find the path to the gorge so we followed that. I was a bit dissapointed in that you never did get a good view of the gorge, maybe if we had walked down to the bottom it would have been better, but in all the snow (yes we woke up to a good inch of snow on the ground this morning) we decided it wasn't worth it so we just walked up to the dam instead. Lexie wasn't overly impressed with walking in the snow but once she got up on daddy's shoulders she was fine!

We headed out of town and onto route 100 which we were going to follow all the way up, but since it kept snowing on us intermittently we decided to just stick with the route 12 as that gave us the option of jumping onto the main road in it got too bad. It didn't though, was just a fantastic drive through cute little towns all covered in snow. Loved it. We did however see our first snow related accident, some idiot took a corner too fast and rolled his ute. I think he was a bit embarressed as he was a bit surly when we asked if he needed a hand.

In the afternoon we headed towards Stow stopping in at a winery, a Cider Mill and an ice cream factory (Ben and Jerry's) of course taste testing at all places, before heading into Burlington for the night. Since we had a late lunch in Stow (Lexie really needs to learn to keep her pants on in the bar, but thats another story) we decided on the Skinny Pancake for dinner, a little Newtowny type place where lexie had great fun throwing rocks on the patrons sitting below us. naughty girl!

Wednesday: we headed from Vermont into New Hampshire with a quick stop in Montplier (Vermont's capitol) for a look at the state house.

This is where we encountered problems. It seems that New Hampshire closes down in October. And I mean everything, all the signs are taken down at the tourist attractions, the board walks were taken up at the gorges etc, all the rest stop were barricaded...obviously they don't want visitors in winter. So we obliged and headed straigh across the White mountains to spend the night in Conway.

Thursday - Thanksgiving.

We decided we had to get out of New Hampshire and headed straight for Maine. First stop Portland. This turned out to be a great town with a realy cute old port area. Of course evrything was closed for Thanksgiving but we expected that today. We headed up the coast looking for a place for lunch.....hmmmmm....not much luck. we found a couple of places where they were offering a full Turkey dinner but didn't quite feel like it at lunch so ended up witha hotdog and a sub at the service station. What more could you want. Heading back up the coast we saw tonnes of gorgous little towns, with all the Christmas decorations up they look really nice. but we decided to press on to Bar Harbour so we could do Arcadia national park tomorrow. Only one place in town open for dinner so went there and had a good lobster dinner. Yummm, not sure the couple at the table next to us were too thrilled to have Lexie intruding on their romatic dinner though. Oh well too bad.

Friday : We headed into Arcadia. Unfortunately as there was bad weather forcast for the afternoon they had closed all the roads in the park. So instead we just followed the main round around the island ending up back at Bar Harbour for lunch at the Subway. The island was quite pretty but not quite as rugged as I had expected.

We then got back on the main freeway and headed back towards Massachusetts, stopping back in at Portland for the night.

Saturday we headed home via Manchester and Nashua. Had a fantastic Hungarian Goulash at a little Hungarian Pastry shop in Manchester. Well worth the stop.

Sunday Monday Tuesday and Wednesday were spent relaxing and readying the house for the arrival of Grandma and Grandpa.

A year Ago Today!

Wow I can't believe a whole year has gone by already. Certaily doesn't feel like that long ago that I was waiting impatiently for my little girl to introduce herself to us. But its been a great year and we had a great day celebrating. And now for some piccies. The birthday girl opening her first present. And more presents Mmmm waffles for breakfast! The birthday girl all frocked up in the same dress that I wore for my first birthday party! Now what shall I have for dinner. I think I'll have that please Mummy! Hmmm I wonder what's in here? Now its my turn to take some pictures. Can I have that camera please! But really at the end of the day, isn't the wrapping always more fun! I did make a cake for the birthday girl, But then we forgot to eat it so we're going to did into it at Lunch today and I'll post piccies later.