Summer Adventures, Part Two

In July, we took the girls to their first concert. We were keeping an eye out for a low-key, outdoor show with a band they liked, and when I saw this Hurray for the Riff Raff/Old Crow Medicine Show concert pop up, I knew it would be a good one. It was at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, near Burlington on the banks of Lake Champlain. We made plans to drive up early in the day, see the museum, go to the show, and then spend the night in Burlington before heading home at our leisure the next day.

Listen to great music while watching the sun set over the Adirondacks? Yes, please!

The Shelburne Museum is an unconventional place. It's an art museum, but it looks like an old New England village, and the collections include both high art and folk art -- Impressionist paintings hung alongside handmade quilts. Electra Havemeyer Webb, from the art-collecting Havemeyer family, founded the museum in the late '40s on her husband's Webb family estate (the rest of which is now Shelburne Farms). She collected historic buildings and moved them to the property to house her art and crafts collections. Now, in addition to seeing the paintings and dolls and firearms and glassware and furniture and farm implements, you can also tour historic barns, a covered bridge, the Colchester Reef Lighthouse, a railroad station and train, replica shops and work buildings like a blacksmith shop, and the steamboat Ticonderoga, which is a National Historic Landmark.

The Ticonderoga was built in Shelburne in 1906 to carry passengers around Lake Champlain.

The relocation of the ship and it's dry docking at the museum was an engineering and preservation marvel in the 1950s.

Big chair (It's art.)

Relaxin' in front of the Colchester Reef Light

A rainbow of glassware

One of 225 carriages and sleighs and stagecoaches displayed in several antique barns. I also really liked the horse-drawn snowplow and the child-sized sleighs pulled by ponies!

The museum's famous Round Barn. This photo shows the entrances to all three floors of the barn. How else do you get animals and wagons up to the top floor and down to the basement?!

Kissy-faces (More art.)

Goofing around in the Jail.

The gardens were amazing, too.

Wishing Well

Maggie wanted to climb every single apple tree on the property and Kate really wanted to take that kissy lips bench home with us.

There is something there for absolutely everyone to enjoy.

And then we got to see a concert!

Hurray for the Riff Raff


Old Crow Medicine Show

I've never eaten so many snacks or stood in line for the portapotties so many times at a concert. The girls had such a good time, though, that it was worth it. Excellent first show!

Our tickets were actually good for two days, so we decided to go back the next morning because there was still so much to see. This was a tough call because it meant we didn't spend the morning hanging out in Burlington, which is one of my favorite little cities, but the girls were having so much fun - at a MUSEUM - so there ya go.

Ballet Dancer by Maggie (and Degas)

There's also an antique carousel. I'm just now realizing that we rode a LOT of carousels this summer.

Behind Maggie is a huge horseshoe-shaped building wrapped around the carousel which houses a 500 foot long, hand-carved wooden model of a circus parade. It took 30 years to complete the 4,000 pieces of the model.

The path through the woods to the train station and train cars.

The weather was totally gorgeous. Perfect summer day in the mountains.

On the way home, we took the scenic Route 125, aka the Middlebury Gap Road, through the Green Mountain National Forest to get back to the interstate. It was beautiful and cool and green, and even a city girl like me would love to spend some more time in the little village of Ripton. Next summer!

We even found the perfect farmhouse in a valley for my parents - it had this barn out back with a yard full of old antique trucks! Vermont is calling you...

Summer Adventures, Part One

As I said in my last post, now that the girls are off to school and things are quieter around the house during the day, I have a chance to go back through our photos and think about all the fun things we did over the summer. We had an exceptionally good time and I know the girls made a lot of great memories.

Besides our trip to Indianapolis and Niagara Falls, which I've already written about here, we went to York's Wild Kingdom, saw all the cousins, drove up to Vermont to see the girls' first real concert at the Shelburne Museum, did our annual daytrip to Star Island, checked out the brand new LEGOLAND, rode up Cannon Mountain in a cable car, visited the Squam Lake Science Center, took the ferry out to the Boston Harbor Islands, and did a Duck Tour! [Deep breaths]

It will be rather appropriate for me to jump now from our summer-ending trip to ride roller coasters in New Hampshire to our summer-beginning trip to ride roller coasters in Maine.

Can you spot Maggie? Do you think she's having fun?

The school year here lasts until the very end of June, which normally isn't a big deal because it's still Spring weather then, and I actually prefer for them not to have too long of a stretch without school -- eight weeks is plenty, really! By the end of last May, though, I was just dying to get out and run around New England with the girls to see some sights. Mike's mom is a teacher [for those (maybe one) of you who might be reading and don't know me aren't my cousin], and she's usually out for the summer the week before us, so we kicked off the break ASAP on an adventure with Gram.

York's Wild Kingdom is in York, ME, just over the border from New Hampshire and a day trip for us. It's a pretty amazing place: a nice little zoo and amusement park that exits right out into town just a few blocks from a gorgeous beach. We did animals in the morning, roller coasters in the afternoon, and made it to the far side of the park just in time to get coffee and saltwater taffy in town and run on the beach for a bit. It's a superb day trip for kids. I can't recommend it enough.

One of the coolest things about the zoo was the enclosure where you could feed white-tailed deer who just wandered around freely and fearlessly. They have a good mix of exotic and domestic animals.

Hey, buddy.

Tiger Lilies (and some orange flowers)



This ride, somewhat strangely, was their favorite of all. It's a caterpillar. I'm gonna guess it was built in the '60s and is covered in tetanus.

York Beach

Gram and Maggie are expert treasure hunters.

After this daytrip, we were gone for a week on our half-way-across-country road trip to visit my family in Indiana. As soon as we got home, we quickly did our laundry and trekked back up to Gram and Grandpa's house where the girls' cousins were all together for a long weekend. There was so much chaos with five girls (plus the neighbors' bunch of kids) that I really didn't get very many pictures at all, but here are a few:

Minecraft-apalooza!

Just to prove that it wasn't all staring at screens... Kate did a puppet show for Caroline...

...and Maggie and Ana were bonkers for the neighbor's horses.

...there was also some kickball, bikes and scooters, crafts, costumes, and s'mores. Good times.

Stay tuned for my next installment, in which Maggie and Kate go to their very first real concert in the Green Mountains of Vermont overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. Don't tell me these kids don't lead a charmed life!

Northern Exposure

As a final hurrah and so-long-it's-been-good-to-know-ya for the summer, we spent this past weekend in northern New Hampshire at Story Land. We've been meaning to take the girls up there for years, but just never got around to it. It's about a four hour drive from our house, so it requires a bit of planning and an overnight stay, but the park is geared towards smaller kids, so we needed to get on the ball before Maggie begins to age out of it.

There are lots of family resorts and hotels in North Conway that cater to skiers or people who are taking their kids to Story Land or Santa's Village. I combed through so many travel websites looking for just the right thing because we were only planning a very quick, one-night stay after driving up Friday night after school and before hitting the park early Saturday morning. We didn't need a on-site water park or a huge playground and pool, just a comfy place to sleep. It came down to a brand new chain hotel in North Conway or the Eagle Mountain House historic hotel in Jackson, NH, up in the woods a few miles north of the park. We went for the historic hotel, and it was perfect. Even the girls loved it and were excited to stay in such a special place.

photo from Wikipedia

Check out the two-story porch!

The White Mountains

We had a small sitting room with a fold-out couch.

Oh how I wish we'd had time (and warmer weather) to sit and drink our coffee on the porch!

Instead, Mags got a pumpkin muffin and hot apple cider at Dunkies. She loves the cooler weather and wanted to stay in the mountains forever!

After our quick stop for breakfast, we stood in the long line of people waiting to get into Story Land -- keep in mind that this was 9:30 in the morning on a September Saturday after the start of the school year AND we were expecting a rainy, overcast day with a high of 60F. I can't imagine what the place is like in the middle of August!

However, despite the crowds and the clouds and the drizzle, the girls had a fabulous time. Maggie is completely fearless and will ride anything with her hands in the air. And Kate could barely stand to walk normally -- she skipped and galloped all over the park.

Yes, this ride was flying wooden shoes.

This was a big room with a second-floor catwalk where you could shoot foam balls out of pneumatic guns and cannons. It was wild!

Face paint! Pink and purple cat faces, of course. Mike said it was like spending the day with KISS.

Pretending to fall off the wall (or maybe push Humpty Dumpty off?)

This was the coolest carousel ever! It's an antique from Germany, and the horses are on rockers instead of poles. It's the weirdest feeling - when you rock back, it feels like the carousel is slowing down, and then it's seems to shoot forward when you rock back up. Mike was making fun of me, but I'm glad I went on it!

After the rain started coming down around 4:30, we finally had to run back to the car and leave, but we squeezed in a full (chilly) day. We stopped at Mike's parents' on the way home to spend the night and see the cousins, which wrapped up the weekend perfectly.

Cozy Cousins

I have a ton of photos of all the adventures we went on this summer which I never got around to writing about here -- because I was on adventures! I'm putting together a series of posts about all the things we've been up to, so stay tuned for more photos of my kids in strange places around New England.

(Don't roll your eyes. You know you're excited!)

The First Day of a New Age

Today was Kate's first day of Kindergarten.

Kate's First Day

Maggie's first day was actually last Wednesday, and let me tell you, it's been a rough week in between - and not because Maggie hasn't loved second grade, because she has. It's been rough because Kate has been a total grouch about not getting to start school, too. She was absolutely chomping at the bit!

Maggie's First Day

Maggie was also extremely excited for school to start again. (Yes, we are successfully raising a couple of nerds over here. We're very proud!) She has one of the best teachers in the school and there are a few good friends in her class, so I think she's going to have a fantastic year. And even though they had homework on the very first day of school, she seems to be loving everything so far.

Pink and purple animal print backpack! Kate's is rainbow animal print. They're a couple of Wild Things.

In addition to Maggie's first day, last week also included a student orientation for Kate, a separate Kindergarten orientation (which involved spending just an hour in her classroom getting to know everyone), and an assessment "test" with her teacher. So honestly, it wasn't just a wasted week of sitting around pining for cafeteria lunch. Plus, she's already just about the Queen of the Campus because she's spent the last two years hanging around dropping off/picking up Maggie and playing after school on the playground. She knows half the kids, where the bathrooms are, how to get to the gym, she has Maggie's Kindergarten teacher so she's comfortable with that classroom already, and she's buddies with the principal. She's Kate! Everyone already loves her. She was ready - why were we all holding her back?!

Let's Go Already!

This is what they always look like in the car on the way to school - Minecraft crazy!

When I went to pick her up this afternoon, she was super jazzed. Everything was mega fun! She saw Maggie once in the hall and on the playground! She ate two lunches! (She had a lunch box, out of which she ate her cookies and some crackers before noticing that the cafeteria was serving pizza, so she got in line and got a hot lunch and a chocolate milk!! Maggie thought this was HILARIOUS.) They played a game with a "talking drum" in music class! They played a clapping game with all the kids' names in her regular class! Over dinner, she told Mike, "It was WONDERFUL!"

Kindergarten Queen

I also am feeling pretty good. I haven't shed any tears or moped around today. I generally feel thrilled to see the girls grow and progress and become new versions of themselves rather than feel mournful at the loss of their baby-selves. However, I have had a few moments of panic over the last few weeks about how an era of our lives is truly at an end. I've been a mother, professionally, for the last 7 1/2 years, and as of today, I'm not really that anymore. I have no babies, no toddlers, no teeny-tinies. Just two giant school girls over here... and their mom, who is a... housewife? Uh, hmm. I have much to do in the next year and I'm excited to see where life will take me, but it's always a little nerve wracking not to have a clear idea of where I'm headed. Exciting. Terrifying. Thrilling. Anxious. Hopeful. Even though our paths are diverging, my girls and I are still headed off on some big adventures. Wish us luck!