A Merry Christmas and a Marry Me!!

First I will include a few pictures of Christmas in Dixmont. On Christmas Eve we went to the Dubois for an incredible dinner prepared by Addy and then it was time for the annual yankee swap.



Dad received the first 2 gifts of the yankee swap (we got a little confused with the rules and he ended up opening the first 2 gifts) the funny part was they were both i pod speakers.
I think that everyone ended up with a gift that they wanted. Check out the sweet hat that Ben went home with.
Seafood pasta was the 2nd course. Every part of the dinner was excellent.
Christmas morning. . . . many surprises! Kadin was surprised with a new bed and a bag.
Dad was surprised to find snow on the ground when he took the lawn mower out for a spin.
And I was very surprised when Ben got down on one knee and popped the big question!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. . .

Happy Thanksgiving

Back in Dixmont for the holidays! Well I made quite a mess on Thursday morning, but my pies came came out beautifully.


The hunters were out so we put on the orange and tromped through the woods behind the house. Ben gave Olivia a hand with her style while dad outfitted Stormy.
The Thanksgiving dinner table. Artichokes, mom calls them the vegetarians' turkey.
And i'll leave you with a shot of the house I will always call home. It was great to be back.
We spent the end of the weekend hanging out with some friends and celebrating Shane's birthday. It was a great Thanksgiving break, now I am ready for Christmas.

We completed our first 4,ooo footer as a family. It has been a great fall hiking season. No bugs, great weather and a tired puppy at the end of the day. No we didn't add another dog to our lives, that is Skylar (Doug's dog who wanted to be in the picture).


Back to the car we go.

Searching for sunshine

It was a cloudy day so we hiked above the clouds and basked in the November sunshine. Winter is off to a slow start here in NH, but today we had to work hard to find the sunshine. We went for a great hike and as we climbed higher the temperature rose. Once we got above the clouds, it was a beautiful sunshiny day. Then we returned to the car and it was as dark and cloudy as when we started the hike.

Pumpkins, Hunting, Ticks, and more

First the hunting . . . Jared got a woodcock and a mallard.



Then the ticks. . . The ticks are out and we pulled over 20 ticks off the dogs and a few off each other.
Then the pumpkins. . . Jared was definitely the winner this year. His artistic talent far surpassed the rest of us. Watch out Martha Stewart.

Jared's pumpkin
Crystal's pumpkin
Rachael's PumpkinBenjamin's pumpkin




The pictures that don't fit in to the above categories