Campfires

The fires rarely went out. Morning until night...the fire was blazing.

Gage made what we call "smokers" - you put the tip of a stick into the fire, stub it out, and let it smolder. You also remind them constantly not to point it near anyone ;-)

They love watching the smoke curl around.

This is G, S, and Jack (5) - who gage loves to play with.

They stayed up LATE for the fire but crashes when they hit the pillow :-)

Settling into nh

This is how we got settled into NH. We checked the yard for blueberries, raspberries, and black raspberries - which the yard was full of last year. Yes, yes, and yes. It was so nice to wander around the yard and nibble (constantly) for the whole week. It was not so nice to constantly eat the "roasted blueberries" gage kept making for me. He thought they would taste like blueberry pie but they tasted like hot smokey blueberries. Yuck.

They also tickled the ivories - a lot.

We ate. Are some more. And followed that up with eating again. Okay...beer and wine may have been involved between eating ;-)

A great start to our week!

Sugar run

Ahhh...New Hampshire. Adam flew up and we escaped to Sugar Run for a week. It felt like we were going to an old familiar house as we pulled in :-)

Back of the house 

The beautiful view from the porch...

Cousins & cows

When we first got here, the baby cows were skittish about taking food from your hand. But...the kids have changed all that. Now the calves come running to the kids and eat from their hands every day.

And cousin Elizabeth is finally starting to be brave enough to feed them by hand too!

Crazy cousins :-)

Fishing

We tried fishing in Grammys pond one afternoon - no luck. But...we dug some more worms and tried again after dinner.

She was casting like a champ!!

After dinner:..success! First a sunny.

Then a bass

Then more sunnies

And more!

By the time we ran out of worms...they had caught 11 fish!! Savannah was casting, hooking, and reeling in fish by herself. All I did was bait the hook and take the fish off the hook. Gage did the same for his last fish - cast, hook, and reel. They did so great!!! We need to do this more often..I loooooove fishing :-)

4 wheeling

Jimmies

After the zoo, we headed to the shore for lunch. Savannah tasted fried clams recently and was a big fan - so she got a big platter for herself!!  Gage discovered that he likes Italian salad dressing! The only minor glitch is that he doesn't like salad. But, he does like dipping croutons and bread in dressing ;-)

We always save all the extra fries, bread, etc. to throw to the sea gulls after lunch. 

Last trip, gage was terrified if the gulls..not this time!! He spent  lots of time running around trying to catch one!

The jetty is now a magnet for these two. Ever since we went to te beach and walked out...they race to them now!

We wrapped up the day by finding tons of sea glass. I love finding it, but it always makes me sad to think about how dirty the Long Island sound must be!

Zoo

We snuck I'm a trip to the zoo with Grammy and great gram Rooney. 

The last time we were here gage was about 9 months old!! He's grown quite a bit!

So has this tall girl!

We also rode a camel. His name was Toby, he was 12 years old, a mischievous teenager, and he liked to eat pizza, fries chicken, hot dogs, and popcorn for snacks!! How crazy is that?!? Those pictures are locked up in Grammys camera because she has no idea how to get the pictures into her computer. I guess she needs a lesson ;-)

Spaghetti cake

Our cousins invited us to watch a kids bank that was playing at a park tonight. 

We almost didn't go because I thought the kids wouId be tired after the beach today...and we had a thunderstorm barreling toward us. I'm glad we did - they had fun!

Beach

We decided today should be a beach day. After all, we need to take advantage of the beach being an hour away instead of 5! So, it was off to Hammonasset we went!  Since we were there by 9:30...we had the beach almost to ourselves for a while.

We dug a hole, made a few sandcastles, found sea glass and shells, ate our lunches at 10:30...and then...the fun began. We walked out to the jetty, and then went to explore the tide pools at the point.

It is such a different coastline than the gulf coast in AL. I forget how rocky the coast is here. 

The best part was finding hundreds of moon snails stuck to the rocks. And...we tried to sit still and look closely at the little tide pools to see if we could find any critters. We found tiny crabs and snails. They loved pulling the snails off the rocks :-)

Savannah also liked prying mussels off the rocks. I should have put them in the cooler and cooked them up tonight!

Gage loved climbing on the rocks. 

And the driftwood.

And I love these marshes...we saw so many white egrets, ternes, and herons walking around as we wound down to Meig's Point.