New Hampshire Foliage

My family has lost interest in hiking, but I've really missed it so I decided to start going on my own. Today was the first time. It is near peak foliage color in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the weather forecast turned decent at the last minute. I hiked the 4.5 mile Welch and Dickey Loop trail.

Much of the hike itself is in evergreen forest. But about 3/4 of the way around the loop, when one gets a view of the cirque formed by Mounts Welch and Dickey, there is an absolutely spectacular deciduous forest. I sat and admired it for a long time.

Rhodie wasn't so interested in the view, but she loved the exercise.

More to come, including probably some winter hiking.

Crane Beach with Mia

Crane Beach is not only awesome in the summer - from October through March it's open to dogs so we also love to go there in the off season. On October 11 it was quite warm and we decided to go. We brought Audrey's best friend Mia with us.

I thought it would be nice for Audrey and Mia to have some good photos of them together, so I focused on capturing them. I managed to get a few candid ones.

Summer Snaps

Here are some photos from the latter half of the summer.

We had a visit from my Seattle friend Brady, planned around attending a Red Sox - Mariners game at Fenway Park. The game was a farce - the Mariners were down 19-2 at one point and lost 22-10 - but it is always fun to hang out with Brady and we got to enjoy Fenway. We also got to witness the M's using their backup catcher as a pitcher.

We had several great beach days this summer. One visit we went in the afternoon and stayed until sunset.

We went apple picking at the very beginning of the season. It was a bumper crop this year. Carol made pie.

We have a regular habit now of taking Rhodie for long walks in local woods. We feel very fortunate to have such beautiful, large wooded areas so nearby. If we want to go a longer walk we can make it to a reservoir where Rhodie can swim. She loves water.

Audrey started middle school in September. She entered with a splash of color in her hair. She's been through a few colors now. At the moment it's a subtle red/magenta over her natural color.

Labor Day Weekend 2015

We almost never travel on three-day weekends. We'd rather not deal with the traffic on both ends of the weekend, and we can usually find plenty of fun stuff to do near home. We just had a great Labor Day staycation.

Friday night we watched an episode of the great public TV series "Mysteries of Matter". The whole time it was showing Audrey was playing with makeup and coming up with some weird looks. At one point she gave herself a black eye that was pretty convincing.

On Saturday we ran some errands (Carol and I both ordered new glasses - very exciting!). Then I did some yard work that I'm very proud of (mostly because it had gotten so wild that it looks fantastic by comparison after cleaning it up!). We ended the day with an impromptu dinner with our dear friends and next door neighbors, the Burtnetts. It's always lovely to spend time with them. I could do it every weekend.

On Sunday morning Carol and I took Rhodie for a long walk in the woods. Carol had never been to the nearby reservoir so I took her there. Rhodie has never really gotten the hang of fetching, but at the reservoir I started slowly throwing a stick very close to her in the water and she would retrieve it. Soon enough I was throwing the stick 25 feet out in the water and Rhodie was hooked. I think she fetched the stick 30 times. Rhodie has webbed feet and is a great swimmer.

I shot a little video and sent it to Audrey who was at home after having declined to go walking with us. She thought fetch with Rhodie looked fun and asked, "Can I come next time?" Of course! Please!

On the way home from the reservoir we walked past a bush that had some huge seed pods. We didn't notice them until after we had passed and noticed that I was covered with them - as was Rhodie.

In the afternoon we drove up to Russell Orchards in Ipswich to pick apples. It's a bumper crop this year. I knew we were a little earlier than usual, but it turns out they just opened for picking this weekend. It certainly is a bumper crop - the trees are heavily laden. We picked Macouns and Honeycrisps for pies and Galas to eat. We also bought a bag of cider donuts, which are the real reason to go apple picking.

On the way home we stopped at a newly renovated playground the girls had noticed. Very fun.

Monday I dragged Audrey out of the house to accompany Rhodie and me on another walk to the reservoir. Audrey thought ahead and wore clothes that could get wet. We had a great time playing fetch again, and Audrey enjoyed sitting in the water.

On Sunday we decided that the forecast for Monday looked like great beach weather. We didn't feel like getting up early to go. Carol suggested we go in the afternoon. Parking fills by 10am, but usually opens up around 1pm. We left home at 2:30 and arrived at Crane Beach at 3:15.

It was absolutely lovely. It was still crowded when we arrived but people were steadily leaving. The water was delightful at 72 degrees (it was over 90 outside). We swam a lot. Then the girls and I went for a long walk up the beach and Carol took a little nap.

Where we come from in Washington there is no such thing as swimming in the ocean - too cold. We still find it a real treat to be able to stay in the ocean for prolonged periods without getting hypothermia.

The tide was coming in. We saw it break through the sand bar in a few places and make new little pools that grew quickly. As the water flooded a new area we could see bubbles from clams. The girls made many attempts to catch one. No luck.

Then, when we were almost back to Carol we came across a large pool made by the incoming tide that had been heated by the hot sand it had flooded. The water was very warm. Tons of kids were having a blast in it. The girls played in it for at least half an hour. Then the sun set and it was time to go home.

We picked up a bucket of fried chicken on the way home and, eating it at the kitchen table, it seemed like the most delicious dinner ever.

Days, and weekends, like this leave me on a Dad high. I'm always trying to give my kids great memories and today was one of them.

May-July 2015 Miscellaneous

Once again I've gotten way behind in posting family photos. Well, now I've got a bunch in the queue and will get them to you forthwith!

I'm going to start protecting the photo albums with a password to prevent search engines from crawling them. I don't want people to be able to google the girls' adolescences in the future. I'll use the same password for all albums going forward, and it's easy to remember - my last name, all lowercase. If you forget, there is a way to get a hint on the screen that asks for the password. Let me know if you have problems; if there a lot of problems I'll reconsider.

We've had a pretty busy late spring and early summer!

The girls finished up the school year with the school play: Cinderella. Charlotte was a mouse in the chorus and Audrey was a stage hand. They both did very well. The school plays are put on by a mom from the school and are surprisingly good!

Since Audrey was in her second year of taking flute, she was eligible to participate in the Melrose Youth Band. She practiced a lot. The first band concert was June 2 in the middle school auditorium with a large crowd. It was Audrey's first time on stage in front of an audience and she was nervous. She said later she felt like she might faint. But we couldn't tell from the seats - she did great. Here is some video of the concert.

The free state pool is just a few blocks from home and it opens mid-June. The girls have already visited many times. Sometimes I join them after riding my bike home from work. It's a great way to cool down.

Continuing in the musical theme, we've been to a couple of concerts as a family.

The Rockport Music Society received a large donation just before we moved to Boston, and they used it to build themselves a fantastic, state-of-the-art performance theater that seats about 400 people. It was designed with exceptional acoustics. But the highlight of the space is the 30' tall wall of glass that forms the back of the stage and looks out over Rockport Harbor. I read about it when it opened but hadn't yet found a concert to see there.

We went to see Pokey LaFarge, who's 7-piece band of wonderfully talented musicians play old-timey, folky, bluesy music. The girls thought it was fantastic. I loved showing them quality live music.

Later the same week we drove to Portsmouth, NH to see one of my favorite bands play on an outdoor stage in a park: Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. There's a common thread through my favorite musical acts through time: interesting instrument combinations and creative arrangements. Thao has them both.

The evening was absolutely perfect and the setting was gorgeous. We all enjoyed the concert very much and ended it by all dancing together to the last few songs, right in front of the stage. The girls learned how to clap and yell until the band comes back for an encore.

The girls have also been off at a plethora of camps this summer, and we've had a couple of camping trips. Those will be the subject of more posts in the near future.

Winter Photos

Winter 2015

Now that winter has finally broken, it's time to go back and see what it looked like.

Here are 86 photos for your enjoyment.

May Photos

May Photos

Here's an album of pretty random photos from May.

Rhodie was still a cute small puppy (she was born New Year's Day so she was four months old in May). Now she's a teenager and is probably approaching her adult size.

That's about all to say about this batch. See the captions for more.

Enjoy!

New Puppy

New Puppy

When I was about nine years old my family got a puppy, but we had no idea how to train it or handle it and she became a little wild. My parents found a new home for her on a farm with hippies. We had her for maybe a couple of months. That was the extent of my dog ownership.

Until now.

The girls have been chipping away at Carol and me for years. Every couple of months we would hear the plea, "Can we get a puppy?"

I started out being adamantly against it. Having never had a dog, it felt like a huge responsibility to me (it is!). We take two longish trips a year to the west coast and we like to go camping on weekends, etc. I couldn't see how that would all work. But I started to weaken just a little.

Our next door neighbor had an older dog when they moved in shortly after us. That dog passed away last year. They have three little boys and the husband doesn't want to add a new dog to the chaos, but Sue misses having a dog around. She told Carol that whenever we were out of town she would be happy to have our dog at her house. That was the key.

That was about a year ago, and we started to lay plans to get a dog after school started when Carol would have lots of time to devote to training. But cancer interrupted that plan.

Now that I'm recovering we started thinking about it seriously again.

We gave a lot of thought to breeds. Golden and Labrador retrievers are obvious choices for a family with young kids. Carol determined that English Labs are even better - an even better temperament than the more common Field Labs. But we had a little concern about size since we drive a Prius with a moderate amount of room in the back.

We went to visit an English Lab breeder. It's possible that he breeds for size (large), but we came away feeling like an English Lab was a little too much dog for us. The puppies sure were cute, though.

The next breed we identified was English Springer Spaniels. We went to a local dog show and met a woman who was showing both English Springers and Cocker Spaniels. We got a good idea of size. The English Springer is also supposed to have a great temperament for families.

We had a lot of discussion about whether to get a shelter dog or a purebred from a breeder. Carol really wants to maximize the chance of success so she wanted a pure breed that is likely to have the average temperament for the breed. Also, one of the points of getting a dog is for the girls to have the full puppy experience. Our local shelter doesn't get young puppies. You can get them from websites like Puppy Finder but for some reason almost all of those dogs are shipped up here from the south. That makes us think they are puppy mills. In the end, we decided to buy a purebred dog.

Carol found and talked to several area English Springer breeders. Just for kicks you should check out one breeder in Connecticut - be sure to scroll down to the photos of the kennels. Nicer than most people's kitchens!

We were also trying to get the timing just right. We take our winter trip to the west coast in the latter part of February and ideal timing would be to find a puppy that would be eight weeks old when we return. That would maximize the puppy experience and also give us maximum time with the dog before we go on vacation in July.

We found such a breeder in Wakefield, Rhode Island. We went down to see the puppies weekend before last and we ended up putting a deposit on the female runt of the litter. The breeder's family has named her Rhodie after the mascot of the University of Rhode Island. We like the name and are likely to keep it. It will always remind us where she came from.

The photo above is roughly what she'll look like as a adult.

Carol is determined to have a well-trained, well-tempered dog. That's part of what convinced me to do it - Carol is all in with the idea of her being the principal trainer and she takes the responsibility very seriously. She has been poring through puppy training books and watching hours of Dog Whisperer (which she's watched for years).

We bring Rhodie home on February 26. The girls are counting the days.