I climbed Mount Washington

On the final day of our vacation, we drove up Mount Washington. It was an "iffy" day down in the valley, but when we reached the peak, it was clear and we could see all around us. It was not sunny, but the clouds were high above us. We arrived just as the cog railway arrived, and Graham was fascinated with the steam. I think it may have helped him understand Thomas the Tank Engine a little bit more. We went into the observatory, checked out the Tip Top House, climbed to the actual summit, and watched the train. The way down was interesting in that the brakes were smoking -- the van doesn't have that low a gear to hold it back so we had to stop many times to cool off the brakes.

Here's Graham and Papa at the summit. No, Graham is not wearing orange diapers. He is potty-trained! We left Gramma and Papa's camper in Conway, and unloaded stuff from our van into theirs, and unfortunately, the long pants we'd set out for Graham got transferred. He's wearing one of Chuck's fleeces upside-down on his legs.

The next day, Graham was at the playground telling everyone that he climbed Mount Washington. He got some pretty strange looks from the adults, until he finally admitted that he went in the car!

What was that noise?

Graham's daycare closes for a week at the end of summer, so I decided it was a perfect time to take some time off myself and do a few fun things. We took all the kids to a place called Charmingfare Farm in Candia, New Hampshire. It's somewhat like the Friendly Farm (for you NH people), but it has more exotic native (and not so native) animals. There were the usual farm animals, raccoons, porcupines, bears, mountain lions, reindeer, camels, lynx, wolverines, and a few other animals I can't remember. When we were visiting with the goats, they got a little wild and ripped the feed bag out of my pocket and ate our map, so I don't have a reference anymore. As we were leaving, we were saying good-bye to the llamas and one made a very strange noise, which Graham continues to imitate and say "but the llama did it!"

Vacation!

We took our first family vacation in a while when Graham's school was closed. Garrett even came with us! We wanted to try camping with Graham, but were a little nervous about how it would go. We shouldn't have worried. He loved it! He enjoyed going in and out of the tent, the campfire and following Papa around. As Chuck has good days and bad, I asked my Mom and Dad if they could come in the event I couldn't manage the tent and stuff like that by myself. We went to Ossipee and stayed in a big campground with a lake and pools, so Graham got to try out his swimming. And, of course, he had to go in the pool even though it was barely 70 degrees out! We rented kayaks and went for a "paddle" on the lake -- I just stuck Graham in front of me and it worked quite well. We ate s'mores each night, and it was overall pretty successful.

Here are the boys in the tent.