"And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there..."

Merry Christmas everyone, here are a few scenes from around my house today, Christmas Eve.

Above is our living room fireplace and below is a close up of the manger with Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the folks and animals that came to see him.

And on that night all of the animals were blessed with the ability to talk,
they too came to share the blessing of the new born king.

It is beginning to look alot like Christmas around our house, the tree is up, the lights are in the windows and around the backyard fence. We still have some wrapping to do and some cooking for the big day, but mostly just relaxing and enjoying the holiday season.
I visited Mom today and dropped off her gifts, along with some of the large amount of chocolate that I received from students this week. I am humbled by the outpouring of support by The Villa families as a new teacher in the Middle School, and also by the support of the faculty as well.
The vacation week will be filled with visits to and from relatives as well as some catch up on correcting papers and planning for Math and Science over the month of January.
This week was pretty funny at school, progress reports went out on Monday, some with attachments of missing or late work. On Tuesday I experienced "The Miracle of Missing Work" as homework and assignments magically appeared out of lockers and notebooks to accumulate onto my desk.
Since it was the week before Christmas, I was able to read some of my Christmas related books to students in my classes, two of the books were written by my friend Ellen Obed and the kids were amazed that I knew such a good author.  The books by Ellen are Who would like a Christmas tree? Which tells the story of a Christmas tree plantation and all of the wildlife that would like a Christmas tree during each month of the year.  The funnies part was when I read it to the sixth graders and we got to November and the book says that turkeys want the Christmas tree in November, and "there are 18 turkeys in our flock" and I said "just like the 18 sixth graders" to a chorus of "HEY!!" and giggles.
The other story was Borrowed Black the story of a being who "borrows, but doesn't give back" and how he borrows the Moon and then some brave characters take it back. It is a good story about how the Moon got its cracks and as one student said "how not to be greedy." We are studying the Moon right now so it is a good opener to the Moon related mythology that they will be reading about after vacation.
On Thursday we had a great Christmas Mass at school with all grades attending.  Father Gerry from St. Lawrence Church in town always does a great children's sermon that ties in what the kids are learning in religion to the everyday events around them. It was nice to see several families attend the Mass along with their kids.
I'm looking forward to a restful vacation and refueling my batteries for the Snowshoe club which I'll be helping to coach in January.

Getting ready for Christmas, we put our lights outside last weekend on the deck, porch and along the dog fence.  We're still having one line short out on us in the rain, will have to fix that up a bit.
This week has been strange in weather, warm earlier in the week then very cold and windy followed by three days of rain.  The dogs are bored but we've been taking them out for their regular walks, with coats on when raining hard, this keeps me in shape too.

Today I put the Christmas candles in the windows and will check out the Christmas tree tomorrow to see if we can get one more year out of it, or if we are going with a real tree this year.  A real tree may be a challenge with Blue the dog, he likes to pee on balsams and better not if we do get a real one!!

I am looking forward to the Christmas vacation and hope that we have some good snow before then.  I volunteered to help out with snow shoeing at my school one day a week starting after the vacation until the snow goes.  This should be interesting and fun with the kiddos, and good winter exercise too.  And potential good photo opportunities!!

We had a great Thanksgiving with Mom this week.  I picked her up on Wednesday afternoon and she stayed over for two nights. She really enjoyed the company, including the dogs and cats at our house. I was happy to see her eat so much food, and we sent her home with three loaf pan sized turkey pies to put in her freezer for later.  I drove her back home to Dover this afternoon and her kitty was happy to see her.

It is nice to have a good time with family, Danny and Beth came to Thanksgiving dinner at our house with Mom and Mark cooked most of the dinner.  I am so lucky to have him, he is not only a great cook, but also my best friend.

The Plains of Abraham and the Citadel

 Our hotel in Quebec, for those interested, was the Charles-Alexandre on the Grande Allee and within walking distance to just about everything in The Old City as well as some interesting shopping areas.  I stayed here when I brought my parents to Quebec in 2000, rooms are pretty well priced for so close to the Old City and they have a very nice light breakfast served either at 7 or 9 a.m.  We chose the 7 a.m. serving so that we could get out to the City earlier before the days got too hot.
Once we were checked into our room and stashed our luggage, Mary said that her dream since fourth grade history was to see The Plains of Abraham where Major General James Wolfe fought and won against the Marquis de Montcalm in what we Americans call "The French and Indian War" and the Quebecois call "The War of Conquest", I guess it is all in the perspective of things.
Anyway, Mary has always wanted to see this and lucky for us, it was just a few blocks south of our hotel.  The Plains area is now a large park that includes several gun turrents that were build by the British just after the War of 1812 to defend against those pesky Americans who might lay siege against the City again.  The Americans never invaded, and several of the gun turrents remain.

Gun turrent facing the river from the main path through The Plains of Abraham

Close up of one of the window of a gun turrent looking south along the river

Mary took pictures of all of the plaques that were posted around the gun turrents and other items of interest so that she could share the information with her family when she got home, I didn't so am working from memory here, if Mary reads this she can let me know what I missed.



From here we walked down and into the Old Cit stoping on the wooden pavilion to check out the statues and the view from the top of the hill. Some good views down into parts of the Old City from here, gives one an example of what some towns in France look like.

     

The building in front here has an interesting mural on the side depicting life scenes of this area from the French colonial period up to modern times.  Several large building in this area had similar murals on the walls.  We saw a good number of people posing in front of the murals standing to resemble a person in the scene or to fit into the scene.  The murals are quite impressive.

We decided to walk down to this area and when going down the first time you don't realize how many steps it is down the hill that you have to repeat going back up the hill, but we did it several times during the week after this first adventure.

At the bottom of this section there are some remains of the original buildings of this area, they are preserved by the Quebec historical society and show the size of some of the dwellings that people worked or lived in during the early French settlement period.

Dwellings built right on the side of the hill, the French were noted for using any shape rock in their foundations.  Later British buildings differ by the use of squared rock for foundations and building materials.

One of the oldest French churches is located in this area, one of many that we ventured into during our stay in Quebec. 

Noteworthy is the ship hanging in the middle of the church, I found this interesting due to the large number of cod fishermen that were part of the foundation of New France.

After our visit to the church it was getting late so we headed back up to the Grande Allee where all of the restaurants had their outdoor seating set up for the summer.  We chose to eat at St. Hubert's this night and had a great dinner followed by two different but amazing desserts.  We planned to come back here just for dessert before the end of the week.  By the end of dinner it was dark and we headed back to the hotel, planned on where we wanted to go tomorrow and called it a night.

Quebec - Summer 2012 - Greenville, ME. for the first night

This past spring my sister Mary mentioned that she wanted to go to Quebec for a real tour instead of just driving up and back in a day from her in-law's house in Greenville, Maine.  I wanted to do something fun for my 50th birthday and recent graduation from the Master in Education Program at UNH.  So we decided to do a trip together and chose to go in June when the weather is a bit warmer in the upper latitudes.
For our trip we planned to take the first day as a drive up to Greenville, Maine and stay overnight there before heading to Quebec city.  We left on June 17th after Mark and I dropped the dogs off at the Greyhound Placement Service kennel in Dover for a week stay. (Mark figured it would be a good week to redo the hardwood floors in the house with both myself and the dogs away.)
The trip up the Maine Turnpike was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Greenville around 5 p.m. or so.  Mary's father-in-law lived in this house while he was growing up, after the family moved to Maine from New Brunswick.  His mother lived here until several years ago when she moved to a nursing home.  The house is a Sears-Roebuck kit house, one story with a very low ceiling in the basement due to the foundation being on a filled in swamp area.  The water table is very high and all of the heating equipment is suspended from the ceiling in the basement to avoid being destroyed in event of higher water.  A constantly running pump would be handy in this house along with some mildew extraction.

The House

After we arrived and turned on the water heater, we went to visit Mary's grandmother-in-law and uncle-in-law a few roads over.  Grandmother is going to be 91 years old this summer and is doing very well living in her own house with her son next door to check on her daily.  She was quite spry and talkative haven just arrived home from dinner and an ice cream with her son who is Mary's mother-in-law's brother.  (I had to keep the whole family organized in my head because both sides of her in-laws live in this town, these folks and the folks that owned the house above, her father-in-law's folks.)
We finished our visit and went to dinner at the Something Moose in town.  The food was very good, I would go here again, doesn't matter that I don't know the full name, it was one of only two or three restaurants on the main road in town.
With no television, radio or internet service, we spent the evening reading and talking then went to bed around 9:30 for an early start in the morning.
I was up early the next morning, June 18th, showered and then went out for a short walk while Mary got ready for the day.  I walked down to the waterfront and took a few pictures.  It was an overcast morning, cool with the feel of warming up to be humid later in the day.

This spot is only a five minute walk down to the main road from the House.

When I returned from my walk, Mary was up and getting ready for the day, I had breakfast and we packed up the car again to head north.  Before leaving Mary showed me the inside of the garage/workshop that is next to the house.  Her father-in-law's father used to make different carpentry things and reupholstered chairs too.  The red trim around the house and garage were made by her father-in-law in his wood shop class in high school.

I didn't get a good picture of the outside of the barn, but I got the Indianapolis (Indian Apple Us) thermometer on the front and some good shots of the chain that holds the walls together on the inside.  When the chain rusts through, this garage will fall pretty quickly.

The Chain in the center with Mary

The Chain above the styrofoam cooler on the left side of the garage

The Chain on the right side of the garage

The Indianapolis thermometer with a view of the open door and trim made by Mary's father-in-law

Once we closed up the garage, we hopped into the car and headed north.  Along the way we stopped at a scenic area along Moosehead Lake where you can catch a ferry to go out to one of the larger islands.  We took a few pictures here too.

The island across the lake is a geologists dream...

Facing the east, the clouds were just starting to clear to allow for sun reflection here.
The waves on the lake were pretty rough on this morning.

From here we stayed steady until we got to the border, we did see two moose on the way north, one small one that headed back into the woods and a larger one that seemed to be posing for pictures for the folks who had stopped near it.

At the border, the Canadian Border Patrol checked our passports, asked us the usual questions and told us to have a nice vacation.  What he didn't tell me was that I didn't sign my passport... And on to Quebec City we went, arriving around 3:30 p.m. to check into our hotel and begin our tour of the city...

The dogs....

After the addition was done, we took a break for a few years and then I decided that I wanted to get a Masters in Education and become a teacher.  I'd been working as a paraeducator for 13 years and figured it was time to take a step up.  So.. I started by taking one class in the fall of 2006 and half way through realized 'hey I can do this' and went through the graduate school application process.  I initially started in the Elementary Education program, but after I became fully certified as a teacher I switched into the Teacher Leadership program and graduated from there in December 2011.
During the time that I was applying for the Masters program, I felt the need to add a dog to our house.  We attempted a puppy during the Christmas break of 2006 but shortly realized that a puppy was not a good thing with our work schedules.  We returned that puppy who found a great home and kept looking.  Eventually, we decided that an older dog would be the thing for us.
In August of 2007 we visited the Greyhound Placement Service in Goffstown (now in Dover) to look at dogs.  We saw three dogs that were cat friendly, two females and one huge male.  After walking the dogs we went home to think about it and by the end of the weekend decided to go with the pretty black dog with the white feet and tail tip, we thought she had the best personality and would fit into our home well.
We returned to the GPS and picked up Toots along with all of the information about keeping one's former track greyhound on a leash due to the strong prey drive to chase small animals.

When we got her home, we realized that Toots would have to take the whole moving into a house on her own time.  We started with her crate in the basement and took her outside to use the yard.  She had to learn how to go up and down the stairs, so I took her to the back deck and taught her by placing her feet on the steps and lifting her butt up until she figured out how to climb.  Back in the basement she figured out on her own how to master the stairs up to the living room and kitchen.  She still goes up and down like a ballerina touching each step to avoid falling, she probably would use the railing if she could.
Toots needed only one correction not to eat the cats and has pretty much ignored them ever since.  The family cats are not to be chased or eaten, but out on a walk she will get excited and get the look of 'can I mom?' if she sees a cat, squirrels, birds and other small animals get chased no questions asked, except that darn leash keeps them safe.

Catch up continued, aka why we have the most expensive garage in the neighborhood.

... so the excavator dude dug our foundations, the concrete guys put in the forms and poured the foundations, took off the forms and we got to work.  Well, really Mark got to work setting up the walls for the garage which is laid out to 24' by 24' so we could park two cars and the row boat in it along with all of our other miscellaneous stuff.
The four walls went up well with a little help from the 'stand here-hold this' assistant, also known as 'ME'.  I was quite interested in the cool 22 gauge device used to shoot the nails through the wall footers into the concrete, it made a good racket and I love shooting a 22 so.. but that is another story.
A week or so later the roof trusses came and Mark called two of his friends to come up and help put them up.  Remember my last blog that said we had a very wet spring....
The first end truss went up well, then Mark went around to the back of the garage, set up the ladder, climbed to the top and helped put in the second truss on the back end of the garage.  On his way down the ladder one of the ladder legs began to quickly sink into the very moist ground, Mark was on the next to the bottom step when the ladder went over completely with his right leg landing on top of the ladder.  He got up and went back to work, said it was a bit sore, iced it up a bit and kept working.
Mark's Dad and I had tickets to a Fisher Cats game and went to see that leaving Mark and his buddies to finish the trusses.  During the 6th inning, I got a phone call from Mark saying that they had finished putting up the trusses and that he was driving himself to the emergency room to have his leg looked at because it really swelled up and was very painful.  Dad and I headed home and I helped Mark's friends take down the staging, put it in the truck to take back to the rental place and then one of his friends drove me to the hospital to meet Mark and pick up the car.
When we got to the hospital and met with the doctor, he said that Mark's leg had swollen up so much that they had to do emergency surgery to release the pressure or the tissue would begin to die off.  So off he went to surgery, and then into recovery and finally into a room for the night.  He spent the next few days in the hospital until they put the final closed stitches into his leg and sent him home to recover.  He was home for two weeks before they let him drive again, by the third week he was back on the roof again finishing the roofing tiles with one of his friends that helped with the trusses.
If not for the insurance company our garage would have really cost several thousand dollars more than it did to build.
The only really good thing that came out of this is that it was the same year that Lance Armstrong was racing in his final Tour de France win (#7) and Mark was able to watch the whole thing start to finish... several times during the day.
In the end we got a great garage, it is full of stuff including cars and boats and as they said in The world according to Garp it is pre-disastered so it will last forever.

Catch Up - part 1

Knowing that its been several years since I last wrote Life in the 'burbs for the NHAD newsletter I should catch everyone up on what has happened in this time frame.  When I last wrote, I think we had just finished remodeling our basement, which came out quite nice, including the interestingly designed middle support beam in the garage ceiling.  Not that it is supporting the ceiling, it supports the boat frames during Mark's boat building adventures, no garage should be without one of these.
A few years following the basement remodel, summer 2005 to be exact, we decided to build an addition onto the house and a stand alone garage at the same time.  For this we hired several contractors mostly folks that Mark was familiar with from his work as a building inspector.  The first contractor dug the foundations for the addition and garage during a very rainy June, not much different than this year.  When the foundation contractors showed up, they actually had to pump water out parts of the excavation holes to place the forms and then again before pouring the concrete.  I documented all of this with a huge number of photos that I will have to find an post in this blog too.
That said, the thing to remember here is 'very wet and rainy'... We hired a contractor to do the main part of the addition to the house since involved removing part of the roof and installing a carry beam to support the new roof over the addition connecting the two sections of the building.
Mark decided that we could build the garage ourselves with the help of a few good friends.
The thing to remember here is... it was a rainy wet Spring....

to be continued...

Life in the 'burbs is back!

Life in the 'burbs is back after a long hiatus due to many life events including the five years that I spent completing the Masters in Education program at the University of New Hampshire.

The difference this time is that instead of being in the New Hampshire Association of the Deaf Newsletter, I am going to attempt the current technology and post in a blog when the spirit moves me to add something in.

Since the last time that I wrote this we have completed an addtion to the house, adopted a racing greyhound and purchased a greyhound puppy as part of our fur family.  The cats adjusted to the dog situation well... as well as can be expected.  We also recently lost our oldest cat Izzy, she was almost 14.

More to come on all of the above, hopefully some folks will actually read this..