Fresh Air Visit- Part 2 New Hampshire

Because of Gabe's schedule, we had to take our annual trip trip to New Hampshire a week later this year, but this also meant that Sha was able to join us!  Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday we spent at Santa's Village.  The kids all had a great time on all of the rides, feeding the reindeer, making cookies and enjoying the waterslides.  We didn't get to see Santa at his house because the lines were so long this year.  Instead, we got to see Santa just out and about in the park.  Not only that, but the kids got to ride right next to him on the Chimney Drop!  They all thought it was so cool:)

We parted ways with my mom and sister's family on Monday and took our time exploring around Crawford Notch and North Conway. Our first stop was Bretton Woods where we took a chairlift ride to the top of the mountain.  Sha handled his first chair lift experience well.  Ben, on the other hand, had a complete breakdown at the top and refused to get into the chairlift for the way down.  He kept insisting that we just walk down.  I get it, it is disturbing to ride down in a chairlift, it seems a bit unnatural.  Eventually he was fine after I picked him up and put him on the chair.  Luckily the attendant was patient and (true or not) told me that lots of people are terrified to ride down.

After Attitash we had a picnic lunch at a trout pond near Crawford Notch. There were some beautiful views in the Notch and we discovered a mountain and some cliffs we had never been to before, closer to North Conway.  This was actually an accident, since we wanted to do a bit of hiking into Dianna's Baths since Gabe has never been there, but it was way too full and there was no place to park, so we continued on down the road and found this gem. We stopped for an ice-cream on the way home after making sure everyone was thoroughly exhausted on the way back.  All in all it was another fun adventure to New Hampshire. 

Fresh Air Visit 2017- Part 1

Shakeinne came back to visit this summer and this year he got to stay for 2 weeks. This is our 3rd summer with Sha (pronounced "Shy") and the kids couldn't have been more excited to see him!  We cut a bit off his bus trip this year and were able to pick him up in Auburn.  Which also afforded us the ability to go to a trampoline park and out to dinner at Gritty's the day we picked him up.

We spent Wednesday hanging out at home, swimming, tending the bees and relaxing.  Thursday we spent the morning on the boat tubing on Wilson Lake.  In the afternoon we took a last minute trip to Skowhegan since the weather wasn't great for boating.  The New Balance store was having it's tent sale AND it was $1 entrance fee at the Skowhegan Fair, so we did both.  We watched a few 4H shows, got dinner and Audrey won a new bike in the bike raffle.  She was beyond excited for her own new bike!  After the fair we stopped at Giffords for ice cream dessert and a round of mini golf.  On Friday we stayed close to home again and got to squeeze in some fishing time.

Blueberry Festival 2017

This year's Blueberry Festival was eventful to say the least!  Nannie and Harold came on Friday to do the downtown events while Gabe did some more work on the shed.  The kids loved the wagon ride and especially the firetruck ride around town.  That night we all participated in the road race.  Nannie ran in the Fun Run with Ben and Audrey and they all did so well!  James and Gabe ran in the 5K and James ran his fastest time yet despite the difficult course.  Noah set the goal last year to run a 10K when he was 10, so that's what we did.  The race course was hilly and much more challenging than either of us realized, but we still reached our goal to finish under a hour (barely, but we did it!).

There is no photographic evidence of us running the 5 or 10K though because while Gabe, James, Noah and I were running, little did we know what was happening back at the school.  Ben and Audrey were playing with some friends and happened into a ground wasp nest.  One girl got stung 14 or 15 times, Audrey got stung 4 or 5 times and Ben got stung just once.  Everyone, but Ben turned out to be fine, but Ben had an allergic reaction... and bad one. Thankfully someone picked him up and ran him over to the ambulance (which was certainly there for the race participants, but we were glad they were so close by!).  The paramedics were wonderful in evaluating him, giving him epinephrine and whisking him off the the emergency room which is where Gabe and I met him.  I should have known something was up when Gabe rode past Noah and I in his car while we were finishing the race.  All in all we spent a few hours in the ED, Ben was a trooper getting an IV for steroids, Benadryl and fluids (This he calls the blue shot, it was his least favorite).  After all was said and done Ben was so proud of himself (and we were too!) for riding in an ambulance all by himself and getting a shot by himself in the ambulance.

The next day was Nannie's birthday and we were crunched for time, so we had breakfast cake.  Ben was a bit tired, but seemed to be doing fine given his escapades the night before.  We all traveled down to the parade. When it started Ben started having a secondary reaction where his body was covered in head to toe hives that were unbearably itchy.  He tried hard to stick it out and not miss the festivities, but he was pretty miserable.  I grabbed some bags of frozen peas from the local grocery store which helped a little.  Eventually things calmed, but not until we had given him more than an adult dose of Benadryl and several other histamine blockers.  We spent the rest of the day watching the fireman's muster, visiting with friends and enjoying the beautiful day.  This will be a Blueberry Festival to remember for sure!

New Jersey Visitors!

Our friends Gerry and Emily, from our New Hampshire days, their son Matt and dog Vax came to Maine for a few weeks this summer. Their arrival overlapped with our stay at the Clubhouse so we got to spend our first day on the boat and tubing, hiking Mount Philip and more boating. 

After returning to our house and back to the reality of not living on a lake in Maine in summer, we enjoyed the pool, campfires and more hiking.  Gabe had to work and Noah is at robotics camp this week, but the rest of us took Gerry, Emily, Matt and Vax to the peak of Bald Mountain in Weld.  It was a perfect day and the view was fantastic.  The kids did so well again, in fact, Ben cried when I had to break it to him that we couldn't continue on and hike the new trail that would have taken us to another peak and added 3 miles to the trip... legitimately cried... we will have to do this hike again later in the summer and add the second part on to it.  

On Wednesday night after Gabe finished work, we got our awesome babysitter to come and watch all of the kids and the adults went out for dinner at the Kawahnee Inn.  It was a pretty spectacular evening that summed up why we don't travel far out of Maine in the summer:)  

Thursday, we said a temporary goodbye to the Carroll Family who were venturing to Rangeley for a few days.  We really wished we could have joined them, but it wasn't meant to be.  Instead, the kids and I got to visit Noah at robotics camp and see what he had been doing all week.  They students were thrilled to show not only the robots they made, but also their programming skills to bring the robots to life.