It is April 9th, and although it doesn't look like it in Greenwood, Spring is here.
Closing day yesterday at Mt Abram:
Levi and Arlo started to enjoy skiing a few weeks before the last day.
We spent a nice day skiing with Sam!
After helping ski patrol open the trails all season, Silas and his buddies were invited to the Ski Patrol end of season party, where the new "Junior Ski Patrol" were thanked and presented with hats and certificates:
Mark continued his relentless search for gold and found this in Toronto:
Silas and Levi volunteered at the Dunham Farm's Maine Maple Saturday. Arlo came for the pancakes.
We had a fun visit with Suz.
It was a pretty great winter! We are looking forward to Spring, though and seeing more of Silas.
Our little Nugget is 6 years old! For his birthday, he received a few gold nuggets from his Dad.
Arlo had his sugar-filled birthday celebration planned out months ahead of time. The minute he woke up, he had an Easter egg hunt, inside and outdoors (his brothers got up early to hide the eggs, which his Aunt Karen had sent a birthday gift). He selected spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and requested a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, with multiple fruit toppings, and two different types of ice cream. Arlo did the decorating himself:
Lastly, he made a beehive pinata, complete with bees:
And it was filled with a three foot long, three pound gummy worm! It may have been Arlo's best day ever.
A few days before his big day, Levi and I went on a "privacy vacation" (named after Arlo's habit of privacy play - claiming any room he is playing in to himself for said play) to Salem, Massachusetts. We stayed downtown in an AirBnB and spent a couple days exploring the town.
Levi especially loved that there was no snow, there were even some dandelions blooming, he did parkour as we walked everywhere.
Salem is famous for the witch trials of the past, and visiting the witch trial museum was interesting, but they really go overboard with the stores, every block has a shop selling crystals or magic wands. Levi really got a kick out of the "real witchcraft" for sale.
Our favorite spot was the Peabody Essex Museum, which had a 200-year-old Chinese house as one of their exhibits.
It was so fun and quiet to travel with just the two of us! We made it home to enjoy cake and presents with the whole family.
We had so much snow this winter. During one week, we received 57 inches of snow. The snowbanks were so high, the sheep were able to walk right out of their 48 inch high fencing. Luckily, we all really like snow.
Every time the snow falls off the roof, we have to dig ourselves out of the house.
It is April 9th today, and we still have a couple feet of snow covering the ground.
Mt Abram opened on December 10th, Silas and Caleb were in line at 8:00am and rode the first chair at 9.
They have their own private sledding hill when the mountain is closed.
Bun Bun has turned out to be a great pet, except for his bad habit of chewing power cords. One night he went on a rampage and chewed through every single power cord in the living room (lamps, stereo, roku, speaker wires).
Mark went on a Christmas cookie baking spree, using his Mom's cookbook.
Arlo really enjoyed Christmas this year. He purchased a lot of bows and wrapping paper and spent a considerable amount of time wrapping household items, old toys, fruit, and even notes to give as gifts.
The boys picked out a special gift for Mark, and even made the box:
We are so much warmer this winter with our old wood stove hooked up.
We had such an easy Christmas tree hunt this year, found this little beauty in the woods right behind our house.
Mark discovered maple syrup pie while in the Yukon, it has since become our new favorite holiday dessert.
This time of year, it is mostly skiing, but every now and then we venture out and do other things, like head to Portland eat at J's.
New Year's Eve:
Silas arrives at the lifts an hour before they open. He usually gets to ride up early while doing trail checks for the ski patrol. You can see him here with Caleb and two ski patrollers, checking out the new, closed trail Wassamatta U:
I have gotten far behind on the blog once again, but will attempt to recap the past 5 months. Levi and Arlo playing on Duane's Retreat:
During a hike to a pegmatite mine on Noyes Mountain:
Silas having his chickens tested for NPIP:
Sunflowers were harvested and saved for a special winter chicken treat.
In the late fall, we had a chicken situation. We had 40 meat birds to process and our brand new chicken plucker didn't work. I just wasn't up for hand plucking that many birds, so Silas and I squeezed 45 chickens into the van and drove them 1.5 hours away to a processor. In just under an hour, all the birds (including 6 annoying roosters - including Earl Gray Cuteness Chicken) were bagged, placed in coolers, and we were on the way home.
Arlo spent some time as a secret agent.
Levi made some awesome paper crafts.
The boys did a workshop at Circus Maine after seeing Pedal Punk.
Silas became a teenager! We spent his birthday visiting the Titanic Exhibit at Portland Science Center, then returned home for dinner, cake, legos, and a chicken movie.
You might notice a number of pumpkins and squash in the photos, we had a bumper crop - over 150 curcubits all over the house!
I wish I could remember what happened to his cake.
Halloween costumes were kind of creepy.
Thanksgiving was a few days late, as we had to wait for Mark to return home from the Yukon.
Right after Thanksgiving, we made a spontaneous trip to Ikea in Montreal and bought a new kitchen, now we have a dishwasher!
Up until Thanksgiving, Mark spent most of the fall here:
For the first time ever, we spent three solid days at the Common Ground Fair. We loaded the van with our camping gear, stroller, 4 chickens and two turkey poults and headed to the Fair Thursday night. On the way, a car crashed into us in Winthrop.
We camped at Friends Camp and spent the first night in a cabin, which the boys were very excited about.
Silas entered some chickens, Dwight & Daisy, Patridge Cochin Rooster & Hen and Parsley & Marigold, the Buff-Laced Wyandotte and Brown Cochin Hens and the two turkey poults they hatched.
He won four ribbons!
His co-parenting hens & poults were a big hit.
We spent a lot of time in the poultry barn exhibit (Silas had to say good morning & good night to his birds everyday), but did get to see almost everything else.
Levi came home with a new bunny - a French Angora rabbit, yet to be named.
We have missed a bit of blogging, here is a brief overview of the last nine months:
Piggy Wonky and LaFawnduh lived a good life, rototilled a new garden bed for us,
then went into the freezer:
We had a winter with very little snow.
The boys started cooking dinner occasionally.
Levi turned 10!
Arlo decorated his cake:
Arlo turned 5 and celebrated with an Easter egg hunt.
Some hard times hit, Mark and I both lost our cell phones and a lot of pictures. But we have a few random shots of the past year. Arlo started building with legos:
The boys helped film at television commercial.
We put in two new garden beds (the big one was tilled by the pigs):
Costumes are still a big part of daily life.
Arlo wore his snow boots for the majority of the summer before switching to flip flops.
Earl Gray is still the favorite pet.
But Arlo also has his own pet, Ham the Hamster.
We have more chickens. Silas is raising 97 birds this summer!
We had a number of hens sitting on eggs and none hatched, so we ordered a bunch of chicks. The next day, these three showed up:
One of the most exciting developments of the summer was the addition of our two Finn lambs, Jupiter & Juno. They were triplets, but the Mom rejected these two. The boys bottle feed them three times a day.
The boys have so much fun with these lambs!
We got an antique cider press and have been making lots of cider.
Greenwood turned 200. The boys helped celebrate by playing old fashioned games & selling lemonade and cookies.
We stuck some fertile turkey eggs under a couple broody chickens and three hatched! The two chicken hens are currently co-parenting the poults.
The boys have been spending a lot of time excavating an old farm dump they found and have uncovered a lot of old glass bottles, so we decided to find out more about them at the Maine Antique Bottle & Glass Museum in Naples. It was a tiny little museum, but packed full of treasures and the curator gave a very interesting and informative tour. He opened just for us!
