more pics because now I can!

Nora cut lots of cheese for everyone, lots and lots and lots...we don't have any cheese left.

Avery in her Christmas dress! (her choice, no dress-forcing in this house!)

GB seems to like the race cars Santa brought!

Naptime on the living room floor in new sleeping bags!

  

new camera! woohoo!

Avery LOVES the snow this year!

Nora still hates the snow and the cold!

My girls, sharing...I have proof!

Merry Christmas!

So, last year, my Avery, who was 2, asked if Santa was real.  This year, I think she just played along for our sakes!  She was totally skeptical but her eye twinkled when the cookies and carrots were gone!  Nora, on the other hand, woke right up and remembered it was Christmas and came downstairs looking for Santa.  She was displeased when we said he couldn't stay and had lots of kids to bring presents to.  

Nora didn't want to open presents until there were only a few left, mostly to other family members.  Then she dove right in, there may be some re-wraps!  Avery picked out a baby doll for her sister.  I probably should have been more worried when she told me about it and said "Nora will share her with me" because they spent most of the day fighting over that one doll.  You would have thought that was the only gift for both of them!  

Marc got me a new camera!  Digital!  If I can make it work I'll put some new pictures up.  

it's a Charlie Brown Christmas here

So, because this is more than likely our last Christmas in this house, we got a little sentimental (or crazy, maybe!) and decided to cut down our Christmas tree from our own property! Here is the result!

It was definitely a better idea than reality! We dressed the girls up and trekked out into the woods. Of course, it was after the ice storm, so every tree was covered by about 1/4 inch of ice. Nora finds the woods too difficult to walk in and demands to be carried. Oh, and did you know how not like Christmas trees real trees are? We have a LOT of trees back there and this was the best we could do. Somewhere along the way, Addie disappeared. Once we had the tree cut down, we had to get it back to the house, which was just silly. Nora still didn't want to walk and she's getting a bit large and heavy, and add a snowsuit to that and she's not easy to carry. So, Marc carried Nora AND the tree back to the house!

When we got the tree in, Avery had a blast decorating and Nora didn't seem to notice that there even was a tree in the house! Different in every way! It's going to be a Merry Christmas!

house hunting and stuff

So, we suddenly decided that we can get more house for our money now than if we wait until we can get what we owe on ours. We just made our third trip of a full day. We got up a little early this time because of the lovely ice storm. The alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. Thankfully, my lovely sister took the girls for a day of fun. We drove all over NH, almost getting stuck on the ice and hit by trees and dodging power lines. That really makes for an interesting, adventuresome day! And on top of it all, most of NH didn't have power and it was COLD, therefore all the houses were also COLD and dark! Overall, there were actually 4 that we like enough to contemplate, 2 that we couldn't get to because of closed roads, one broken lock, and zero cups of coffee (poor Marc!).

So, it was a CRAZY day. But what made up for any moments of suckiness was how incredibly beautiful the storm left everything. We saw the ice glistening in the moonlight as we left our house. We saw the sun rise above the frozen trees. All day we saw the sun sparkling through. Ah, what a day!

couple good sites

http://www.wecansolveit.org
another green site

http://www.novica.com/
really cool shopping site associated with national geographic. they bring together 'crafters' from all over the world. i just bought 2 cool...different rings. the prices were great. the shipping was a little slow on one but i also got a hand-written note from one of the makers. pretty cool!

http://www.arborday.org/
I joined for $15 and am getting 10 trees for free...they're only going to be 6-12" tall, but still neat! ANd you can have them sent to your school or church if you want. And they send me more info and more "free gift if you pledge___". The 'gifts' are nice if you like plants and who doesn't like trees?

www.aveda.com
High quality natural (or mostly natural) products. They work great and they seem to actually be trying to save the environment too. They're a little expensive compared to drugstore but work better, so...

aaahhhhhhh Acadia

I just love it there. We just went up last week. The weather wasn't great but certainly could have been worse. We stayed in a beautiful hotel right on the water. I think we did most of those things we hadn't gotten to in our other trips. We even brought our bikes and found a nice trail (a little too much hill for these thighs, but beautiful).

My parents came too. They've been talking about Acadia since we moved to Maine! I think they liked it, even though they were constantly hearing "Up please". They got a better workout than us I think! And it was SO nice to have a distraction for the girls from how tired they were. What a week!

Here are some pics. There are a lot, sorry, I had 5 rolls so, really, I've spared you!

All of us

Marc & Avery checking out Cadillac Mt

Memere Pepere & Nora on top of Cadillac Mt

holy windy!

Just pretty!

Sand Beach, pretty

Marc & Avery exploring

Bike ride around Eagle Lake

Aren't they cute?!

Jordan Pond trail