San Francisco 2016- Part 1

On Wednesday we left Wilton and headed for Boston. After a short night of sleep we hopped on an airplane and flew across the country to San Francisco.  Everyone did so well on the flights with only a few moments of high anxiety when Audrey started to breakdown at the end. It felt like it took forever from the time we got off the plane to when we were driving away in our rental car.  All of our bags except one made it.  Unfortunately, the one bag contained most of our overnight things, but we made do.  We were extremely exhausted by the time night rolled around and were happy to be in our home for the next two weeks.

Friday morning we woke up feeling much better and had finished grocery shopping by 7:30am thanks to the time difference.  The fog rolled in that morning, so our first trip across the golden gate bridge was unexciting to say the least, it was completely engulfed in the fog.  The view from the scenic overlook was really quite impressive to see the fog in motion.  

Our next stop was Muir Woods. Noah got to use his 4th grade pass for the second time and all of the kids were excited to participate in another junior ranger program.  We learned SO much about costal redwoods! They are the tallest trees in the world, they can grow either from a single seed the size of a tomato seed OR from burls off the tree or root.  As a result they grow in "family circles" where you can identify the original "parent" tree. They are also one of the few trees that can continue to grow even after being burned in a forest fire.

We drove to the top of Mount Tamalpais for an expectedly gorgeous view of the bay below.  We had a picnic lunch and got sunburns in the 72 degree bright sun.  The fog had not yet "burned off" over the ocean or the Golden Gate Bridge, so it looked just like a blanket of snow covering the entire ocean.  We drove along the coast hoping to stop at a beach or two, but the fog was in full effect and we were able to see nothing. 

We got home in enough time to hop on the Muni (subway) to the conference center.  We registered and made it to Kids Camp.  There were so many things for the kids to do there.  We met the illustrator of the Ivy and Bean books, danced, competed in air guitar contests, made lego robots and got a caricature of all the kids.  Everyone was beyond exhausted by the time we finally made it home.  We are most excited that the public transportation is right by our house and so easy to take!

Bar Harbor 2016

Just in case we didn't have enough going on this month, this weekend we headed to Bar Harbor.  Gabe had a conference there, the hotel rooms were super pricey, we had to return the camper to Jon, so we camped for one more weekend.  It was chilly, but with a working furnace in the camper it was quite nice.  We didn't see much of Gabe since the kids and I went the afternoon before to get the camper set up in daylight and he was at the conference for most of the daylight hours on Saturday.

Saturday morning we got up and headed for the Acadia National Park visitor center.  Every fourth grader in the US gets a free national park pass and there are a few locations you can turn in your paper copy for a plastic, more durable one. Obviously, this was our first stop.  The coolest part was that the rangers all spoke directly to Noah about what the pass means and his responsibility in having it. Adults almost never directly speak to kids which drives me crazy. After getting the pass we watched a video and headed out to complete our Junior Ranger workbooks.

Our first stop was to hike up Beech Mountain and climb the fire tower to meet the Park Ranger.  The kids, true to form, had lots of questions that were mostly appropriate.  It was an amazing view and everyone did a great job hiking.  Nannie and her friend Trese joined us on this adventure which was a big help.  After that hike we were considering another short hike.  Since we had Noah's park pass that gets the whole car into the park for free we headed for the loop road.

I thought we might be able to explore Sand Beach, but it was just as busy as I remember it in the summer, so we kept driving.  My mom really wanted to hike Gorham Mountain which she remembered to be a good hike.  It was an awesome hike, but I think she realized halfway up that how we remember hikes from 20 years ago is not always accurate to how they actually were... I've made that mistake many times;) The kids loved climbing in around the rock formations, it was great exercise and there was another amazing view of another side of the island from the top.  The kids did so well for what turned out to be almost 5 miles of hiking! They also earned their Junior Ranger badges, so we had to get back to the visitor center for their oath.

We went back to Bar Harbor to meet Gabe and Grammy for what we thought would be dinner watching the sunset on Cadillac.  As it turned out, since it was a beautiful day and the MDI marathon was the next day, everyone else had the same idea.  Instead, we drove up Cadillac and right back down watching the sun the whole way.  Then, we ate our pizza back at the camper.  It could have been worse:)

In between all of these adventures, the kids have been enjoying soccer this fall.  Ben finished his soccer a few weeks ago and is now onto basketball. James finished soccer this week and Noah's team will still be playing when we leave for California!

Mt. Battie, Golf and Pigs

We had been home for a whole day when we decided it was way too nice out to stay put.  Shannon and I took the kids to Camden to check out Mt. Battie.  Our original plan was to have the kids do a bit of hiking to reach the top.  Neither of us had been there before and before we knew it, we had arrived at the top in the car.  So, we enjoyed the incredible view and had a picnic instead.  The pictures don't even come close to doing it justice.  We climbed to the top of the turret and made some fairy houses in the woods.  It felt more like a summer day than a fall day.  

Columbus Day weekend was peak foliage time and Gabe spent two days golfing.  One of the days was at Sunday River.  He came home with so many pictures, I had to be selective not to overwhelm the page with foliage pictures.  

This week we have spent some time getting Dottie settled.  She spent the first week in the cage we keep the baby chicks in.  We realized some where along the way that we should have another pig to help get Dottie through the winter, so meet Oreo... Gabe is still on board I swear!  We are super fortunate to live in such a great community.  I was picking up some hay for the chickens this winter and telling the farmer about the pigs and he offered to sell us his pig house for almost nothing.  We said yes, but realized we had no way to get it up the road to our house.  So, we called our neighbors who gladly (they appeared glad anyway) came with their trailer and helped us get it settled.  He then also let us borrow and set up his electric fence to keep everyone contained.  

There was definitely some fighting between the pigs at first and one impressive escape attempt, but we seem to be making progress in learning on the fly how to raise these pigs:)  

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