Nor'easter

Well, a Nor'easter blew through our neck of the woods today - leaving, according to one local news station, 18.5 inches in my town. Paul took these pictures while he was out shoveling. His work got cancelled today. Mine, of course (I work in a hospital) did not.

These two pictures are in my back yard.





This is my neighbor across the street, Good Carl (I call him Good Carl because his house and yard is always perfect. His lawn is always mowed perfectly and his snow is always shoveled perfectly. Paul says I call him Good Carl as opposed to Bad Paul).



With this snow, winter will be here for a good long time!

Sock Afghan

Yesterday Kris brought over her sock afghan that she is working on. All of the squares are made from yarn of socks that either she or someone else have made. I tried to pick out the squares of socks that she has made me (and Paul; he has two pairs), and then I put our socks on the afghan. While I was wondering if I was getting them in the right squares, she pulled out a paper with a print out of the afghan. Each square had the person she had made that sock for, or the person who had given her the yarn. Yikes. I think everyone in my family has a little bit of OCD. The only problem is each person has a different OCD and we are not always tolerant of each other's particular OCD - LOL!

This is the afghan without the socks -

American Girl look alikes

Marley got a matching American Girl outfit for her and her American Girl doll for Christmas. She wore it to church today (her doll wore hers and came to church too). I think they are just so cute!



P.S. This American Girl doll is Mia, the American Girl Doll of the year 2008 (or Helen as Marley re-named her) given to her by Grandma Barb Christmas 2008.

Quincy Christmas

Tonight Big Baba brought over Christmas gifts for Marley and Mason from Quincy. His two sisters, Nancy and Eleanor live there. Mason wasn't here tonight but I had Marley pose for a picture with her presents so we can send it with a thank-you note. Thanks Aunt Nancy and Aunt Eleanor!

What's up with this hair?

I think Mason's hat did this to him. He looks like a wild man!


Friday night and Marley made a tent in Paul's old new chair.

Back to Reality

After being away for five days it was back to reality tonight! We are starting our cooking badge and tonight we "frosted" cookies. The girls were totally sugared out!

The Trip Home

This is our car packed for the trip home today. Paul always says he is a good packer. He sure had a test today with the chair and ottoman in there. He was able to get everything in!







We took a ride to York Beach on the way home. Nubble Light was beautiful. I have loved it ever since we spent our honeymoon in York (40 years ago, can you believe it?).






How's this for a seaside Christmas tree?



York Beach, Long Sands, had seaweed strewn all over the parking lot. There must have been quite a storm here.






Poor seagull; he looks cold.




From York Beach we drove down to Kittery and Bob’s Clam Shack. They have the best scallops anywhere, by far.






After that it was onto the highway. Garmin says we should be home by 5:02. Mark is coming over tonight to help Paul get the chair out of the car and into the family room. We also have to rearrange some chairs. I think it is going to be a late night - goodbye vacation getaway!

Hanging out at LL Bean

I like to take a picture of us in front of the current catalog cover that they have hanging in L.L. Bean (Paul humors me).

This picture was taken back in January 2007. Some things don't change much!




We started out today by taking a ride to Portland. Last night I read a book about Maine fairy houses and it mentioned that in Portland at Mackworth Island, people have made fairy houses. I wanted to see if I could see them. It didn't work out too well. Paul had bought new boots last night and his feet were killing him (good thing Bean has a good return policy) so we didn't get too far on the trail. Also, it was freezing out. We'll try again next trip. It really was beautiful here.



Today was very relaxing compared to yesterday (buying the chair) which was nice for our last night here.

Paul's new chair (again)

Well, the exciting news of today is that Paul bought a new chair, again. If you remember, last May we bought a leather chair and couch for the family room.

To backtrack, Paul has always loved the leather chair that they used to have at L.L. Bean. Every time we went there, he would always sit (and sleep) in that chair while I shopped. This picture was taken back in 2003.



He used to say that maybe some day he would buy that chair. A few years ago L. L. Bean stopped selling that leather furniture. They came out with a new Ultralite series, but Paul really didn't think it was comfortable. When we decided to buy a new chair last year, he called the manufacturer of the L.L. Bean chair to see if he could buy it anywhere. They said it was a style that they specifically made for L.L. Bean. So, we ended up buying a leather couch and chair from Bob's. I love the couch, but Paul has never been really happy with the chair. He says it's great to sit in but not to fall asleep in,LOL. He wakes up stiff and sore.

To our surprise, when we walked into the Home Store at L.L. Bean, there was the same leather chair. After much back and forth, we finally bought the chair and ottoman and it is in our car. We are going to use the other chair in our family room and put one of the Morris chairs in the living room.

Who knew that this day would turn out like this. I'm really happy he finally has this chair.

In other news, we have been having a very relaxing vacation, riding around our old haunts, shopping, eating and just enjoying our little getaway.

Happy New Year! (from Maine)

Today was an absolutely beautiful day, sunny and 47 degrees. We took a coastal ride to Orr's Island, Bailey's Island, and Harpswell Neck, including Lookout Point where we had kayaked. It was so nice that we were able to have the windows open at times. This is where these pictures of the little doors were taken.


Little doors














Back in Freeport, we had dinner at a new place called Bucks's Naked Barbecue (the reason they call it naked barbecue is that the meat is served without BBQ sauce and you have your choice of four homemade sauces on the side). Paul considers himself somewhat of an expert on BBQ and he thought it was really good. It's funny, the building that the restaurant is in used to be a shoe outlet and at one time it was the LL Bean outlet store.





We (I) spent the evening shopping at LL Bean.