Summer 2012

We spent a few days at the Orvis's camp on Big Moose Lake, and found that one of Ingrid's new classmates lives just 2 miles from there. She came up and spent a whole day with us, and then her younger sister and father came over for dinner that night.

We dropped off both of the girls for a week at Skye Farm. Ingrid is pretty excited in this picture, she was about to go 'off site' for a 4 day long canoe camping trip. Grace is not so excited.

Another picture of Ingrid being very excited.

In August Gretchen went back to work full time, for the first time since before Ingrid was born. Here she about to leave on her first day.

While Gretchen was working, I took both of the girls and a friend each camping for 4 days. We went to Rollin's Pond. Despite the huge number of sites, Rollin's Pond never disappoints. Here is our site right on the water, just before we set up the gear.

One of the days we were there we canoed the Rollins Loop. David was in the canoe with the two younger girls, while the two older girls were in the other canoe on their own. Here we are approaching the passage between Rollin's Pond and Floodwood Pond.

Ingrid and her friend seemed to spend a lot of the trip trying to keep up.

On the way home we stopped at the access road to the Adirondack Lodge so the girls could see the mountains, and so that we could take a picture with the high peaks in the background.

Here is Ingrid on the first day of high school. What a beautiful campus.

Meanwhile, this has become Grace's favorite place, the Hirsch Observatory on the RPI campus. She and David go every Saturday night to help out with public observing and they have both joined the Rensselaer Astrophysical Society.

Grace observing the stars through a 6" reflector telescope.

She also made this interesting collage using her iPod. Pretty neat.

Late Spring and Early Summer 2012

 We built some flower boxes this year that are a lot nicer than the ones we bought a few years back, and significantly cheaper. Grace is helping put in the pansies.

 The 4H group also went for a tour of the USS Slater down in Albany. Grace and her friend don't look all that enthusiastic in this picture.

Here is the group touring around on the ship. This was very interesting, I'd recommend it if you haven't been already.

Sometimes the girls need help sorting out their iTunes libraries, and it becomes a whole family affair.

Here is Ingrid at her 8th grade graduation. I think she is happy to be done with middle school.

She won an award for French, but we aren't sure exactly what it represents, and that isn't just because the certificate is in French.

At the end of the 8th grade year is the big dinner dance on one of the Hudson River Cruise type ships. Ingrid decided this was the look she wanted, complete with the combat boots, and she and Gretchen made the dress.

Here she is with a good friend just about to get on the ship.

The official picture taking before she and a group of friends gets on board.

Spring 2012

David took a day off on a beautiful day in the middle of March to go hiking in the high peaks. After getting turned back from his original destination due to high water, he climbed Cascade mountain instead. It was 75F on top of the mountain, and I didn't see another person on the hike until I started back down.

Sometime it seems like overkill to be prepared - it was in the 70's in the parking lot, but he brought the snowshoes, the poles and the spikes along just in case. The snowshoes never came off the pack, but the poles and the spikes were a huge help.

Spring is also time for 4H demonstrations. Here Grace is doing her demonstration on the game of Chess, along with the magnetic chessboard she made for the demonstration.

Ingrid did her demonstration on the history of the flute, complete with iPod selections to demonstrate some of the different types of flute music.

Grace also worked on a 10 page research paper for the EcoEd program at RPI. Her subject was the concerns around the use of palm oil. She refuses to eat anything containing palm oil, and you might be surprised how hard it can be to find foods that don't contain it.

Ingrid's making a dress to wear to a formal at a 4H function. She did a fantastic job on it.

Here is the finished product. A bit short for Dad's taste, but still a nice job.

And we're still working on getting rid of the pile of timber left over from clearing the septic system when we built the house. You can see a small fire down at the corner of the yard. I'm not sure the chickens are all that happy about it.

March 2012 - Happy St. Pat's and other big news

Grandma and Grandpa were coming over for dinner, and Grace got to choose and make dessert. She chose to make Celebration pie, and it came out just like the picture on the cover of the recipe book. It tasted as good as it looked.

Here is Ingrid enjoying a piece - even several weeks later she still says it was delicious.

During March this year there was about two weeks of June-like weather. One of the first of the really nice days, the girls went outside to do their homework. Grace chose to climb up in a tree to do hers.

Ingrid just threw a blanket in the middle of the front yard to do hers. The more important thing to get out of this picture is that she is writing with a pencil she has that says 'Emma Willard', the bag she used to carry her books out there says the same, as do the side of the sunglasses she's wearing. Not only did she get in, but she got a huge scholarship. We're thrilled, and she is very excited about it.

Then it was St. Patrick's day. Another fantastic day. We parked way over on the west side of the park and walked to the parade, then afterwards we went over to the El Loco for a drink and snack. Gretchen is hoisting a toast to St. Patrick, and the girls are enjoying a snack.

January 2012 - After 14 years

Taking the plunge

After driving the old Subaru Outback since mid-1998, it was finally failing in a big way. Although I probably could have fixed it, Gretchen was convinced she'd never trust the car again, and since it's the car we use for camping trips and pulling the canoe trailer, this was a bit of a problem. After saying for 14 years that the only car I'd replace it with was another one just like it, that's exactly what we did. Heres some camparison shots, the 1998 and the 2012.



As you can see, the new one appears to be a bit bigger than the old one. The outside is, but most of that extra room was dedicated to the passenger compartment, meaning the that the cargo space is actually a touch smaller.

One interesting thing about this - in cleaning out the file on the old car, we found the old window sticker for it from when we purchased it. We compared it to the new sticker, and found that the price has only gone up $1000 in 14 years. Either we paid way too much back then, or the current price is pretty good.

It's a nice car, and it is much nicer on the road, but there are still some features that I prefer in the old one, such as the manual parking break, the larger cargo compartment, and the ROOF RACKS. The new roof racks stink, and they look bad too. It was still the right car for our family. We still need to put a trailer hitch on it for the canoe trailer. David will be picking one out and ordering it shortly, and then mounting it under the car before canoe season.

Here's the old one, cleaned up and ready to sell. We did much better selling it privately than trading it in.

December 2011

Gretchen's Bad Day

So while David was in beautiful sunny Columbus OH for a week, we had the only snowstorm of note all year (in early December of all times. About 8" of heavy wet snow fell overnight and into the morning. On getting up, the first thing she found was this:



The heavy snow had built up on the netting that keeps the hawks out of the chicken yard, bringing a lot of it down, and tearing what was still up. Not the worst thing that could happen, but no fun either.

Then, later that same day, while downtown. She got a flat tire on the Subaru. It turns out this screw was embedded in the tire, but for a variety of reasons it resulted in completely replacing the tire.

Then, on getting home, she found that the weight of the snow had brought this tree down across the driveway. This picture was taken after she had done some surgery just to be able to get her car out of the driveway. All in all not a very good day

On the brighter side, later that month the girls played Christmas music at a local bookstore after school one day. Here is Grace playing 'Angels We Have Heard on High' on her saxophone. She also played some songs on the piano.

Ingrid also played, both the piano and the flute. Here she is on the piano.

And here with her friend Abbey performing a flute duet.

Lastly this month, Christmas Tree hunting - which Grace had to pay for because the rest of us forgot to bring enough cash to buy a tree. Thanks Grace. Lots of great trees at this farm - we'll be going back there every year for sure.

And the finished product, decorated and ready for St. Nick to come.

FINALLY - Bathroom Tile

There was a wee little accident a few weeks ago. (NOT WEE, something much more horrid!) And - the bathroom carpet was rolled up on the spot and taken outside IMMEDIATELY. No further elaboration needed, other than this happened, of course, while David was out of town. The carpet was actually a remnant we put down in 2005 - hoping to get a couple years out of it. Basically - we were tired of making decisions, out of moolah to invest in the house, and TIRED of house construction. So - we lucked out - the carpet lasted six years! Here are David & Ingrid hammering down the durock - the base for new TILE! yea! Today David got started mixing mortor. ONLY an engineer would use a scale and a measuring cup for this task. I have it recorded digitally now! OK - I'm a geek too. And here we go. After much debate - we finally came up with a scheme for the listello that wasn't going to make the tile job IMPOSSIBLE with tons of cuts, and looks nice with the fixtures and layout of the room. This is travertene tile we got for $4/square foot (cheap) and the listello was full price, but we only needed six square feet of it - so the job was very reasonable... Unfortunately as most jobs go - out come MORE AND MORE tools. This job is no different. David thought the molding was high enough for tiles go to under - but NOT QUITE. SO - out came the trim saw, and a piece of boxboard to approximate the mortar depth. AND - Gretchen got to work down on the floor to so David could keep laying tile. Then I cleaned the mortar out of my nice shoes and put on old sneakers. OK - we're rock and rolling now! And - here is the finished look, no grout yet. David leaves for Ohio tomorrow (not returning until late Saturday - natch) - so the girls and I'll have to live with this for a week. He isn't doing under the fixtures, nor in the closet today. It'll be a two short half day jobs to finish when he gets back. In the meantime, I'll seal the set tile so that the grout doesn't stick to it as bad - and the cleanup easier... Then - MERRY CHRISTMAS to us - the bathroom will have tile! Whoo-Hoo..... Doesn't Gretchen look totally cool with ear protection on? Here is a cut listello.... While David tries to work fast and stay put - Gretchen runs the wet saw on the porch. It's loud and leaks a tad - so it's a mess. This is not somethign to do inside THANKS SCOTT - it's working GREAT!