New Years in Tyringham

We flew back from TN on Thursday night, then Amy and I both worked on Friday, and then on Saturday it was everyone into the car and off to Tyringham to see my dad and Joanie and other assorted relatives. The drive out was uneventful, thank goodness. Once we arrived it started to snow-- hurray!

Saturday afternoon we all decided to take advantage of the weather and do some cross-country skiing and/or snow-shoeing. The snow was coming down pretty fast at this point, but the conditions were excellent. Ethan has boot and skis that fit him, but Lydia's feet are now way too big for the boots that we bought her last season... luckily her uncle Rustin brought along another extra pair of boots, and her feet managed to fit those (although she had to use my skis, since Rustin's boots aren't compatible with the bindings on hers). Anyhow, we all managed to make do. Photos-- here is my dad:

Joanie and Michele snowshoeing:

Lydia skiing:

My brother:

Michele:

Lydia and Ethan:

My dad again:

... and some more of the kids:

At this point it was snowing hard enough that I had to turn off the camera for a bit.

Lydia is now in this weird phase where she doesn't want to be photographed. Any time I turn on my camera and point it in her direction she immediately puts her arm up to block the shot -- makes me feel as though I am a sleazy celebrity photographer trying to take a picture of Justin Bieber getting a speeding ticket. When I am lucky enough to get a photo of Lydia without anything blocking the shot, half the time she is rolling her eyes or scowling.... oh well.

Michele brought along a fiendishly difficult jigsaw puzzle; we had fun trying to piece it together.  When I saw the cover I thought it would be an easy one, but it actually took quite a while to put together.

The living room was nice and warm with the wood stove going:

This is a shot of the game that Lydia's aunt Lucy gave her for Christmas; we tried it out and it was a lot of fun. It's a combination between "Pictionary" and the "Telephone" game, called "Telestrations".

Photo of Lydia reading her grandfather's latest joke book.

This particular book has an entire chapter devoted to "dumb blonde" jokes. A sample:

  Dumb blonde #1, holding up a hand mirror from her pocketbook:
     "Gosh, this looks like someone I know!"
  Dumb blonde #2 (her friend), looks at the mirror and then responds:
     "Well of course, silly -- it's a picture of me!"

For New Years Day dinner Joanie decided to make a "Turducken" -- a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey (yikes). Constructing this beasty was quite a complicated task, requiring a number of extra hands:

It's a fine dish to make if you have a big crowd, which we certainly did.

New Years Day afternoon we spent time visiting with my cousins Kate and Janet, along with their kids. Kate's kids are a couple of years younger than Ethan and Lydia, and Janet's are younger yet. Ethan and Lydia and I walked down to their house-- we had a big snowball fight, then we spent a while trying to build a wall out of snow "bricks", and then we moved inside-- the adults sat at the kitchen table and yakked, while the kids had a marathon "Hide and Seek" session.

... and of course, you can't have a good conversation without having your inflatable chicken on hand-- you never know when you'll need one of these things:

I think everyone had a good visit. Ethan is now large enough that you would think he'd have a hard time playing hide and seek, but in fact he seemed to hold his own pretty well.

Lots of chamber music (as always with houseparties). Ethan and Joanie playing:

Tuesday morning I had another most excellent session cross-country skiing -- the conditions were wonderful. If you start from my dad's place and head up into the woods behind his house, there is a path that runs by the side of a stream a long way up into the mountains. You get a lot of good exercise on the way up, then on the way down there are a whole series of good downhill runs (steep enough so that it is fun without being life-threatening). Self-photo:

Skiing through this part of the woods is also kind of interesting since sometimes you run into bits of stonework that make you realize that at one point, this was not just empty woods but land actively being used for agriculture. Here is a bit of stonework by the brook-- maybe leftovers from a bridge?

Tuesday we got in the car and drove back to Lexington... and Wed it was off to work again, whew. It took me until the next weekend to get back on track with laundry, etc.   It was a fine visit, though.