Olympic Tower

 

Every time we are here, we totally enjoy going to the top of this tower. Today was a very clear day so we could see the whole of Montreal.

 

It is the highest leaning tower in the world. Much higher and cooler than the boring one in Pisa :D

 

We could see the botanical gardens. Makes me long for summer when we can go visit them again.

 

Great view over the harbor.

 

 

 

 

Going on a Trip

 

I never liked black friday shopping, so instead we went on a trip!

 

Guess where we are going?

 

Thanks to Qate falling asleep instead of packing last night... we left a bit later than planned, but realized that the late start got us to see an amazing formation of snow geese! Wow!  

 

 

 

Civil War in Vermont!

Yet another historic location our geocaching led us.

 

I had NO idea the civil war made it up this far North! And to be attacked out of Canada is just plain weird (conveniently ignoring the American Canadian war)

 

And no, we didn't find the cache, but that's besides the point :p

 

Photo Catchup: Pumpkin Carving

Yeah, I know I haven't really been active on here, so I figured it was time to post some more. Life is very good, just busy as usual.

 

These are pictures of Halloween when Sylvia and Erik decided that no Halloween could be complete without mutilating some pumpkins. A good time was had by all, well, not by the pumpkins, but by everyone else.

 

Did I mention we are having ice and snow today? I am soooooooo not amused!

 

Is it spring yet?

Granite Quarry

 

We went to the granite quarries in Barre. Did you know that the 2009 Star Trek movies has some of those quarries in it?

 

This is Herculus, an old steam locomotive who now is retired and lives close to the old granite quarry.

 

And here are a bunch of pictures of this old quarry. I love the color of the water.

 

 

Much history can be found around town and it got even better when we visited the historic museum. Who would have thought there were so many Italians and Irish men working in the quarries.

 

Or that the Italians would bring wild anarchistic ideas to the quiet Vermont.

 

We had a wonderful day!

After the Quarries we visited Barre, a quaint little town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cleaned Out My Purse

Figured it would be amusing to list how much useless stuff there was in there

• 20 or so pens
  
• 5 AA batteries
  
• 176 important papers (or at least they seemed important when I put them in)
  
• a bunch of napkins
  
• a kids winter hat
  
• four Zyrtec tablets
  
• 20 lbs of assorted coins
  
• a cute, tiny acorn (WHY???!)
  
• an election sticker from over a year ago
  
• a comb
  
• a 'USDA Organic' tattoo (??!)
  
• programs of the last few yeas of theater performances in which my kids were involved
  
• ticket stubs from these same performances
  
• granola bar from who knows when which I broke up and fed to the chickens who were delighted with their treat
  
• a plentitude of other assorted items including two plastic gadget like things that I have NO idea about so will be thrown out and THEN I will find out why I saved them.
  

 

Yeah, I think it was time to clean out that purse ^^

How the Heck Can he Be Twenty Two Already?!

Cees turned 22 years old!

 

He had been taking some college classes, but hadn't found his groove yet. But now he made the huge decision to join the army! So proud of him! And at the same time I have many mixed emotions about all the things that can go wrong, but I guess that is natural as an army mom.

 

He is shipping out to basic training on Monday. He will go to Oklahoma for 12 weeks, but gets two weeks off for Christmas, so it will be nice to see him then and hear all his stories.

 

After he passes Basic Training, he will be in Texas, where he will be trained to become a medic.

 

Do you know that he actually had to gain like 17 pounds before he even was eligible to join the army? He worked on that for a number of months before he barely made the minimum weight.

Please send good vibes to him in his new adventures!

Caching in the Dark

Today was a beautiful, even if somewhat cold day. I had to do a lot of driving in circles but decided that I should fit in some cache maintenance too. The only problem is that I hadn't seen this cache for years, so I wasn't sure where it was but as y'all know I am always confident I can just find the cache, no problem at all.

We arrived at parking lot, and the sun looked low. But how long could it take to hike to the cache? Nah, should be fine. Did I mention I am an eternal optimist?

We had a good time hiking even if our GPS reader (hi Sylvia!) might not have been paying enough attention to it so we added some detours to our quest.

 

I had forgotten how uphill this hike was. Both ways even! The good news was that we reached a cool overlook I vaguely remembered, but not what it actually did overlook. Today I found out it overlooked the river in such a way that we could see exactly where we were standing a few weeks ago, but now we saw it from the air.

Admiring the view and other shiny things did delay us though but we were so close to the cache, we would still go find it.

This is when I started remembering how fast it gets dark in the woods. And that I hadn't gotten into the habit yet of carrying flashlight at all times.

No, we didn't find the cache...

Not for lack of trying, but lack of day light might have had something to do with it. Now we'll have to go back another day!

Once we got out of the woods, the hike back was easy and I have to admit it kind of felt like old times to be caught in the dark at yet another geocache. Although usually it wouldn't be my own cache. And usually we would actually have found it!