New England Adventures part 1

Good Morning!

It is about 9am in Massachusettes. It's rainy and foggy, but still about 45 degrees.
I've been getting up at 7am or earlier every morning since I've been out here.

On Saturday, Cat and I got up at 6am. We stayed at the Harring's house in New Hampshire so that we could get up early and climb Mt. Washington up to Tuckerman's Ravine. The New Hampshire house is high up in the mountains, so we got to throw wide the curtains on the wall to wall windows and watch the sunrise over the mountains. Gorgeous.

We made it to Pinkham's Notch, the entrance to the Tuckerman Trail, at about 7:30am. The weather was absolutely perfect. Sunny, clear skies and about 45 degrees the whole day. The hike was difficult since it was entirely uphill, but we managed to make it the nearly 4 miles in only about 2 hours. The hike down only took us about an hour. It was absolutely amazing though. I've never been in mountains like that before and it was breathtaking. You could just see mountains all around for miles and miles and miles. Amazing.

We made it back to the car and were on the road back to MA by about 11:30. We were pretty pleased with ourselves. And I wasn't even sore the next day! High fives!

That night we just tried to relax. We drove into Concord for dinner and just came back to the house, had a beer and went to bed.

Sunday we got up early with the girls and had a big breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon with the whole family. It was rainy and yucky yesterday, so we took the T into Boston and went to the Harlem Globetrotters game. It was everything I thought it would be. Kitschy, hillariously stupid and pretty sweet all at the same time. We only stayed until half time because Cat wasn't feeling well, but that's really all the Globetrotters you need.

When we got back, the girls decided that it was time to make cupcakes. Reiley and Alden picked out a recipe for Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting. They did a really good job following the recipe and working together. I was really impressed. I decided to add some lime zest to the frosting to kick it up a bit and the results were, of course, delicious.

Heidi and Vaughn made steak, roasted potatoes and steamed broccoli for dinner and it was phenomonal. We all sat around and had a few glasses of wine, then Cat and I played a card game called Garbage for a few hours and we hit the hay.

Now I'm just sitting in the play room. The girls are all at school. Cat is showering. We decided today since it is still rainy that we're going to go to the Concord Museum and the Orchard House, which is where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Exciting! Hopefully we'll be hot tubbing sometime this afternoon as well.

I'm having such a lovely time. It's been relaxing and fun. Heidi and Vaughn keep telling me what a good sport I am for hanging around with the girls, but really I'm having a wonderful time with them. Cat has one of the best jobs ever.

Now it's my turn to shower. I'll have pictures soon I hope.