Thanksgiving

We went down to NYC for Thanksgiving, and had a wonderful time...


We started off with a visit to the Museum of Natural History, where along with numerous other great exhibits, we checked out the dinosaurs...in the above pic, Ben is mocking the T-rex's silly forelegs...


After the museum, we found a super Mexican restaurant for lunch...


The Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day Parade begins up by the museum, and they were inflating the balloons when we were up there...


It was cool wandering around, checking out the various balloons in differing stages of inflation...


Ben really liked the Spiderman balloon...


After lunch and balloon-watching, we headed downtown to MOMA to see a Tim Burton exhibit, along with some other wonderful works that Ben had found on their website for children...


"Starry Night" was one of the paintings that Ben had really been looking forward to seeing...he loved seeing the artist's brushstrokes and the varying depths of paint on the canvas...


We had also learned about pointillism, which really only comes alive when you can actually see it up close and personal...


This painting was all black, with a black frame...some interpretive signage insisted that there were slightly differing shades and shapes within the painting, but none of us could see them...still interesting though, it sparked a fun"what is art" discussion...


Ben had also been looking forward to seeing the work of Jackson Pollock, and we enjoyed viewing and examining a roomful of them in various shapes and sizes and colors and degree of fractal-ness (I don't have the right word in my vocabulary)...


The next morning, Thanksgiving Day, Ben Skyped with LaLa...they had a nice video-call...


Ben got dressed up for Thanksgiving, and gave me a serious look for this picture...


My cousin Jon's daughter, Willa, came for Thanksgiving...it was great to meet her


Anti Sarah's friend Danny came with his dog Toby, a sweet little dog who behaved perfectly all day long, even with little and mid-sized children in attendance...


Ben had a fun time playing with Willa...


We had 14 for Thanksgiving, as always, the food was wonderful!


After some of the guests departed Ben started playing with Toby in earnest...they had lots of fun together...


After an afternoon visit with my Grandma, Ben and Muz and D left the city for Connecticut, and the few of us remaining kept working on the cleanup...the lights on the Empire State Building came on and were gorgeous from the far end of their apartment...


We made some dish-cleaning cocktails, hung out a bit, and finished off the cleaning...Gail and I remained in the city for a couple of days, enjoying some movies and fancy meals and sleeping in, and then went out to Connecticut to pick up Ben on the way home...

It was a nice Thanksgiving.

Penny, our perfect choco-lab

Gail and I were with Penny this afternoon when she was put to sleep this afternoon.

She had been getting progressively worse for a couple of weeks since her surgery to be spayed. After the surgery, the doctor explained that they had noted substantial amounts of "adhesions" throughout her chest and abdomen. It turns out that these adhesions are somewhat like an immune response gone wrong, where injury to the internals of the dog result in the creation of this tissue.

When the doctor opened her up this afternoon, hoping to correct the issue, he noted that the adhesions had grown back incredibly quickly and densely through her abdomen. He presented the option of emergency surgery to excise all of the tissue, but after we made our decision, he agreed that given the rapidity and aggressiveness with which it had grown back, it seemed like a losing proposition.

Gail and I met at the Vet's, said goodbye to Penny, gave her kisses, and held her while the doctor helped to release her.

She was a sweet, silly, loving, gorgeous, wonderful dog...she loved us and we loved her...here are a couple of pictures of Penny.

Reading with Gail and Ben



At the Lake Clear playground with Ben


On a nice and muddy walk/swim trip with Ben and I


Snuggling with Cedar by Upper Saranac Lake


Swimming and fetching in Hoel Pond


Eating her birthday cake


Sleeping with Ben in the element after a long day of geocaching


Swimming with Maggie and Ripple


With Ben on the day that we picked her up


With Gail at a silly geocaching event


Geocaching with me not far from our home.


I miss her so much, and can't believe that she's gone...she was such a love, and we only had her for 18 months, but it was a gift.

Sunday Morning

This was the look of our Sunday morning in Lake Clear...

Some pics by Ben of Maine

Ben took all of these pictures of our recent trip to Maine...


On the drive...


Mom and Dad on the Ferry to VT...


Ben in costume...

Spy-ology



Ben and Uncle Steve in alien garb...


LaLa and Ben in similar...


A great picture of Uncle Steve and LaLa...with Antennae...


They went to climb nearby Bradbury Mountain...


It was a prefect day for the climb...


LaLa and Ben on the peak...


Ben clinging for his life to the side of the mountain...


Another desperate attempt to cling to life and rock...


USGS summit marker... (made of celestial bronze)


A sign pointing the way to the trail...to the mountain...


Lucie...canus-sweetus...

Mid-November Catching up

Gail and Ben and I went to Maine 2 weekends ago, and Ben visited with LaLa and Steve while we stayed in Portland for a fun weekend together...

Our hotel and the whole experience was great, but this sign seemed a bit off to me...



As the fall season deepens, reading is more and more a part of our lives...Ben and Penny love listening to Gail reading...


They love snuggling on the couch...


We've been taking lots of walks around Little Green Pond...it's a beautiful spot...


Penny loves the swimming, and Ben loves exploring...


We've had remarkable weather lately, and have been trying to take advantage of it before the snow comes down over everything...


Gail met us after work one day...it's great when she can sneak out...


Penny almost knocked Gail and Ben over in her excitement...


Gail found this cool dragonfly, and Ben was fascinated by it...


We carved this hand-turkey pumpkin with a spare pumpkin...


I took a great fieldtrip with the Lake Placid 6th grade to the fish hatchery in Lake Clear, where they farm and breed landlocked salmon...


The hatchery workers milk the salmon for eggs and sperm, and grow the salmon to fingerling size for release into ponds and lakes all over NY...


The orange "beads" are the eggs, and the white fluid is the milt (sperm)...


The incubation room, inside the hatchery building holds and processes more than a million eggs each year...

After the hatchery, we went with the 6th graders to the Wild Center in Tupper Lake...it's a great natural history museum, and at this time of year, we had the whole facility to ourselves for the afternoon...



Our students had a great time exploring the museum, learning about the woods and waters and mountains and beasts that live in this great part of the world with us...


We ended our visit with a slideshow/movie made up of Carl Heilman's superb Adirondack photography...

We took another great nice walk around Little Green Pond today, enjoying the great weather...



It was a beautiful day, but the weather was starting to change a bit, and fog started creeping up off of the surface of the pond towards the end of our walk...


It's been a gorgeous couple of weeks in the Adirondacks, but it always is...