Happy Halloween!!!

Ben went to school today in costume...he had a great time with all of his friends...they all shared fun snacks...


Ben's friend Kelsey was dressed as Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz...this picture looks to me as though Dorothy is being chased by a ravenous vampire...



They are very good friends, and always have a good time playing together...Ben is convinced that he's going to marry Kelsey...



She's a very mischievous, and sweet, little girl...and Ben's lucky to have her as a friend...



After school, we all went into Saranac Lake for some trick-or-treating...the powers that be close off the main streets, and kids and parents wander all around the city visiting the stores, being greeted by shop-owners in costumes with treats for the wee ones...



Ben had a great time wandering up and down the streets dressed as a creature of the night, while his daddy was wearing the world's loudest Hawaiian shirt and lei...



We had a great time wandering around town, meeting people, getting goodies, scaring locals, and working up an appetite for supper, which we had in town at the Jreck's Sub spot...yum...



We met Emma Rose in town, dressed as a sunflower...Emma Rose started at Ben's school at the end of the Summer, and everyone has grown to love her...



We also ran into Jacob, a great friend of Ben's who will be going to school with him at the little school in Lake Clear...Jacob makes an awesome pirate...



We had a blast dressing up, wandering the town, getting lots of great stuff, and enjoying the whole pagan holiday!!!

Halloween Preparations

October 30th, we are busy getting ready for Halloween...our design crew is wading through piles of drawings for our pumpkin cutting team...


The team dives into their work with gusto, cutting and carving and gutting the pumpkins...and saving the seeds for roasting...


A scary pumpkin looks like this!!!


Ben facing off one of the pumkins in a flash-less shot...


Both of this year's pumpkins with their lights in and on...they look awesome!!!


The next morning, Gail helps Ben get into his vampire costume...including make-up...


Ben makes a very scary vampire...


YIKES!!!


Breakfast of champion Vampires...blood-soaked bananas...


They fuel you up for a day of senseless slaughter and creepy transformations and unnerving entries and evading stake-wielding heroes...


I would have posted these earlier, but my internet access at LPCS today was out for the whole day...we're off now for trick-or-treating in Saranac Lake...more pictures to come...

Driveway Accomplished!

We drove down to Newcomb yesterday to see the driveway that was just finished on our retirement property/nest-egg/camp...it's a bit less than 2 acres of waterfront on Goodnow Flow. We purchased the empty lot a while ago, and it has taken us a while to get the driveway put in, put now it is essentially finished (minus a final layer of gravel on top)...above, you can see Ben playing with a big stick that he used to build a bridge between these 2 big rocks...the driveway is curling around some land contours behind him from left to right...

On our arrival, we surprised a huge rabbit down by the water's edge, and found lots of deer poop...and on our way back out to the car, we found enormous deer prints overlaying our footprints...

Ben had fun deconstructing a rotted stump down near the water's edge...

Gail already has a favorite sitting-rock...we spent some time planning where we're going to put a tiny cabin and a lean-to...

This is our shoreline to the left, all the way out to the point...


This is a tiny island directly off of our property...a dock will extend from my feet as I'm taking this picture out towards the island, and we'll clear out a tiny boat-launch/beach at my feet...

This is our view to the right...there are some houses in our view, but not many...

Gail and Ben enjoying a glacial erratic about 50 feet back from the water...

I like this rock-grabbing birch...

Cool fungus...

Busy bug-eating birds must be plentiful in the woods hear...these woods are more diverse and open than those surrounding our house in Lake Clear, and we look forward to exploring them (and the 14,000 acres the association leases) in the coming months and years...we drove back to Long Lake for lunch, the Newcomb VIC is just 5 minutes from this new spot, and enjoyed another great lunch at the Long Lake Diner (which Ben has renamed "Woods" because of the decor)...after lunch, despite the nasty-cold rain, we stopped off at the little playground near the Long Lake War Memorial before driving home...

We're obviously very excited about the land down in Newcomb, more so now that there's a driveway giving us non-bushwhacking access to the land and water, and look forward to enjoying it as a family and sharing it with our family and friends...it opens up a whole new part of the Adks to us (in terms of being a basecamp for overnight excursions into the central region), as well as being a (hopefully) solid place to let our retirement savings grow over time...

More to come as we continue to explore and improve the spot...

NOTE: we have not as yet established a name for the place yet, as the pressure to come up with clever/cute names is overwhelming at present...any and all suggestions will be taken under advisement

Snow...

Ben was feeling a bit sick yesterday...tummy troubles, so I stayed home with him, and we had a fun day!

We started out by working on the computer a bit...Ben loves the Fisher Price website, and is having lots of luck with his new wireless mouse...

We went up to Malone to go shopping at IBC and Walmart (not just any Walmart, a Super Walmart...and let me tell you...it's not just a clever name...)

Ben's done massive amounts of growing in the last few months...he's 42 inches tall and weighs 46 pounds...so we got 3 new pairs of shoes, 2 new pairs of snowpants/bibs, a parka, 2 hats, a neck-gator, 2 pairs of mittens, a couple of outfits, socks and underwear aplenty, and a super lunch at a funky McDonald's with a 50's diner theme...we drove back down, and ran into snow about halfway down...

We ended up getting about 5 inches in all overnight, Ben gave me his tummy troubles, and we headed out this morning on a whole new set of adventures...but not before placing an early-morning singing message/wakeup call to Ben's Grandmother

Happy Birthday Muz!!!

We stopped in to see Ben's personal hair consultant, Patty...he was long overdue for a haircut, and looks great now...

After the haircut, we headed over to the playground at Petrova Elementary School...here, he can be seen modelling his new parka, snowpants/bib, boots, mittens, and monster-hat (not visible is the Backyardigans outfit he is wearing underneath the cold-weather gear)...

We had the playground to ourselves...not surprisingly, given the snow-cover, but that didn't stop us from having fun...

After Ben broke a trail through the snow on the slides, it was amazingly fast going...after the first couple of times, he actually caught some air going over the lip at the bottom of the biggest blue slide...


On our way home, we drove by the SLHS playing fields and saw (click on the photo to see it larger...) the SLHS football team warming up for a football game...Ben thought it was funny, while I remembered playing football in cool rainy weather as being unpleasant when you made contact with other players at high speed...

Columbus Day Weekend

Ok, Ok, we're a little late with this post, but I couldn't find my camera for a while, and then it seemed less dire, and then I got busy...anyway, here it is...we had a great Columbus Day weekend...Saturday morning, Ben and I got up, kissed Mommy goodbye (she went off for a week to her first residence for her Ph.D program) and headed over to LP to see Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus!!! They set up a trailer-city on the Olympic oval in front of the school that I teach at a couple of days before the show that Ben and I saw, so I had a chance to watch and wonder at the carnie-life during the days leading up to the show...

We got there a bit early, and were allowed to head down to the floor to meet some of the performers and to watch some of them warn up...including the dog and trainer below...Seeing the people and animals up close prior to the actual show was as fun as the show itself for Ben and me...



The dog and clowns and trapeze people and horses and other performers were great, but the elephants were awesome, and we were sitting close enough to see their eyes, smell the jungle smell of the beasts (not bad, but strong), and see the hair on their backs...Ben loved the elephants, so did I.



After the show, we headed down to my parents' house in CT for the rest of the weekend, but not before stopping off at Lake Placid's new Starbucks Coffee for "driving fuel" for daddy...it's may not seem like a big deal to people who live and work within walking distance of numerous Starbucks places, but we're excited, so I'm sharing...


We got to CT, and had a great weekend with my parents, Ben's Anti-Sarah and Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Brad...and Maggie, a 5 month old lab puppy we met this summer...boy has she grown since July...we had a great time playing with Maggie, although she sometimes gets a bit wild for Ben...

Every dog on the planet likes to chew on my boat shoes...what can I say, they taste great...



Ben had fun playing all sorts of games with the NYCbranch of his family, includng hide-and-seek, as shown below...he also got everyone to read books to him, old and new books...some of them 10-20 times...



D showed Ben how to play with and love Maggie in the right way, so that she stayed mellow...it worked some of the time...the rest of the time they both orbited around each other, us, the house, the outdoors, and lots of knock-over-able stuff...



Sunday, we went into Cornwall for a book sale at the library...Muz read some books to Ben while I scavenged the boxes for a mix of books for Ben and me...L O V E B O O K S....


After the library, we went down to Cream Hill Lake, splashed in the water a bit, and found a cool newt swimming along the bottom of the lake just off the beach...



When we got home, we all did some stuff around the outside of the house, including picking the mutant squashes that grow out of my parents' compost pile...the seeds from their suppers mingle and mesh in some weird Gaian/composty/de-evolutionary process...the things that end up growing don't look like any of the squash my parents ordinarily eat, and taste shockingly bland, but haven't killed anyone yet...



Maggie watched us messing around outside, doing her jaded farmer imitation...



but eventually she decided to help D load up the wagon with the mutants for relocation to a secure facility...just kidding, they just made a short trip up to the house, where D worked at parcelling them out amongst all of us...



We organized a line-up of the uber-squash...don't turn your back on these things...they have been tempered in the evolutionary furnace/foundry of West Cornwall's best compost pile, and although they are mostly seeds and wrinkles, they seemed to multiply every time I walked by...