Afternoon at the Park

In the afternoon this ended up to be one of those beautiful fall days.

 

So the kids convinced me to go to the park.

 

Not that I needed much convincing.

 

Now it's raining tons again, so happy that we got to be outside for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And yes, Kate is learning to learn a unicycle.

 

 

 

The Day After

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of Sandy. The pictures show so much destruction and devastation.

 

We didn't get much beyond rain, wind, and power outages here in New Hampshire and at our house we escaped all the power outages. Today we alternated rain and rain bows, which was quite amazing.

 

Everyone who is still in Sandy's winter storm path, stay safe and warm!

The Quiet Before the Storm

Even although we are not in the direct path of Hurrican Sandy, we still are supposed to see a lot of wind and rain action here. And of course we are right next door to Vermont, where there is a lot of anxiety about this hurricane, especially since they are still slowly recovering from Irene 14 months ago.

This morning was't too bad yet, but the kids got out out of school early, and all after school activities were canceled. Yay for not driving in circles!

 

This morning when I took the dog out, I heard this sound like water rippling over the rocks. When I got close to the road it actually turned out to be the leaves being blown over each other, tumbling and tumbling and making watery sounds as they went. Many leaves were being blown down from the trees, but we haven't seen any significan rain yet.

Last night we were driving on the highway and the black clouds half hiding the full moon were amazing. It was like the moon being at the bottom of a pond, gentle waves above it. The moon alternated between its pond view and a more hidden position, but the light effects were stunning either way.

Everyone stay safe during this hurricane! I hope the impact will be a lot less than they are predicting, this is one case where I would love the weather forecast to be wrong.

The Joys of Living in a Swing State

 

The election is very close in our state, so the candidates like to visit us.

 

This rally was like 15 minutes away from my home, so it was an easy choice to go again.

 

I took Kate and one of her friends, taking them out of school with reason 'Meeting VP'.

 

So we saw Joe Biden, his wife Dr Jill Biden and the wife of the current governor.

 

I didn't really know Jill Biden very well, so it was nice to see and hear her, and hear her talk about 'seeing Joe up close'... This had the expected reaction on a college campus setting.

 

The weather was perfect and the rally was much smaller than the Obama rally, so it was easier to be relatively close to the stage.

 

We enjoyed seeing Joe Biden again and had a wonderful day.

 

He had a lot of good things to say about the importance of education. I couldn't agree more.

 

We have been canvassing a few weekends and will help at the local Obama office again tomorrow. It is very interesting to see the process so up close. This whole political system here is very different from the Dutch one, where we have a multi party system.

 

 

 

 

 

Kate dressed herself with care to fit in with the crowd.

 

We celebrated our day by eating delicious gelato!

 

Guess Who is a Cheerleader?

A new stage in our life: we now have a cheerleader!

 

Sylvia cheers for our local junior high school football team, although sometimes they even get to do the half time routine for the high school team.

 

Our junior high team doesn't have the best season ever, so she regularly comes home complaining that they only got to do defense cheer this time :p

 

And she now is starting to like football!

 

Too bad the season is over after next weekend...

 

Quechee Gorge

Quechee Gorge is Vermont's version of the Grand Canyon, on a somewhat smaller scale.

 

We took my mom to visit it, since it is such a cool geological feature.

 

The kids are learning how to pan for gold, although for some reason they didn't find any.

 

But the real attraction always is to hike down and have fun on the rocks at the bottom. Rocks and water, how much more can a child want?

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone have an idea what kind of flowers these are?

 

 

 

Oma and Sylvia.