back in the saddle

So, we could have made a whole baby in the time since we last posted.  Not that we're making babies around here, it just helped to put our slackness into perspective.  One thing is for certain, lack of posting does not infer lack of activity for these Hamiltons.  In fact, it was the over-activity / "don't even know where to start" feeling that prevented us from keeping up.  All that said, at this point, a month-by-month catch-up is probably the only chance we have at efficiency:

October 2011 (Yeah, we're going there). . .We bought a house!!!  It was one of the most wonderful experiences of our lives.  Stressful as all get out to get everything organized in time for closing, but wonderful nonetheless.  It's a one-story ranch, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and an unfinished basement on about 1/2 acre.  Fits us perfectly.  

November 2011 We immediately began raking leaves, cleaning, and painting. . .and were able to move in by Thanksgiving.  We literally shoved everything in our house and left town for a week :)

 

bye bye ugly mint green

December 2011  We wanted our families to see our new house so we had Christmas at home.  This gave us a great goal to work toward being unpacked and ready to host all the folks we love the most.  It was a wonderful time and we were so excited to have Curt's grandad come from south Georgia and his brother all the way from New Mexico!  Yes, this is the ONLY pic we have from Christmas.  What can we say?  A whole package of Sharpies is pretty big news. . .

January 2012  We continued to work on our house.  Nancy taught Susan Ada how to remove wallpaper, thus giving our hall bath an entirely new look.

February 2012  This month was pretty packed.  Susan Ada's parents came to help us work on the house.  The boys built pantry shelves in the basement and the ladies stripped the wallpaper in the dining room.  A few weeks later we had a huge snow.  We actually have a very steep hill in our backyard so the sledding was spectacular.  We finished off the month with going to get our new puppy!!  Ruby is a Vizsla (think petite, red Weimeraner) and was only 7 weeks old when we brought her home.  We were immediately in love.

  

 

March 2012  Cute as she may be, we spent most of March adjusting to life with a puppy.  We've been told it's not so far removed from having a baby.  We hope any future infant doesn't run faster than we do, pee all over our house, and bite with puppy razors. . .

April 2012  Curt is still traveling to SC every 6 months, so he was gone for a few weeks in April.  Susan Ada stayed in Lynchburg, and that proved harder than she anticipated.  She was very thankful for a few visitors.  Having Curt return and being able to plant our first garden certainly cheered her up.

May 2012  In May we joined some friends at their house on the Pamlico River in NC.  It was a wonderful chance to get away and it was fun introducing Ruby to the open water.  We also started a 6-week puppy class with Ruby in hopes of returning to some resemblance of calm in our home.

June 2012  Not much to say here.  We stayed in town to do some projects on our house and rest up for travels later this summer.  Curt is trying to get some additional insulation in our attic, but all the "little things" that need to get done before the insulation goes in are keeping us busy.  He is definitely making progress and we now have 2 bathroom vents, a microwave vent, recessed lighting in our mudroom and are in the process of getting recessed lighting in our living room.  Yay for handy husbands!!

July 2012  And that brings us back to this month.  Our week-long trip to Evergreen was definitely the highlight.  Some friends came for a few days, and Susan Ada's family came for the rest.  Over all it was a restful week.

You made it!  We certainly hope it isn't another 9 months before we check in.  If not, at least we've left you with one happy puppy :)

maine, part 4

We're almost there folks. After leaving Acadia, we had planned to drive down onto the blue hill peninsula in hopes of finding some neat art galleries. However, on the way there, we realized that we didn't quite have our finances in order for the house we are trying to buy and that it was urgent so we literally parked on the side of the road in this tiny little town and made phone calls for a few hours. By the time we got everything figured out, the shops were closed so we changed our plans. We actually stumbled upon a cute roadside motel in Searsport. . .the Bait's Motel, to be exact. Haha! It had an attached restaurant where we ate Susan Ada's birthday dinner. She tried fried clams for the first time, and they were quite good!

Friday we started our day of shopping with bagels in Camden. Delicious! Then we strolled around the town and wandered in a few shops. Our destination for the day was Freeport, perhaps most widely known as the LL Bean headquarters. There are lots of outlets there in addition to LL Bean so that kept us busy for quite a while. We celebrated the completion of our shopping with Ben & Jerry's. Dinner and hotel that night were uneventful.

Saturday we continued driving down the coast. For lunch, we drove out to the fabulous little spot in Georgetown. You walk in, tell them what type of lobster you would like, they bring the live boogers out and weigh them for you, then you go sit at a picnic table and wait for lunch. It was a beautiful view, great weather, Susan Ada was feeling much better. . .one of our more memorable spots. Here ya go:

We continued on to Portland for the afternoon. Honestly, a hoppin metro on the water. Really enjoyed our time there. The rest of our trip pretty much consisted of driving home. Yippy. One thing we drove by really caught our attention:

Apparently, it's the only one. . .and that is a crime! Sadly, we had just eaten breakfast and couldn't make any excuses for eating so we didn't get to try it, but the menu was ridiculous and everything looked superb! If you ever go, just don't tell us how great it was, and if you work at Stonyfield we've got some great real estate options for you in downtown Lynchburg.

And that's it. We're home! Well, we were home. One of us just left this afternoon for SC for the next month. It is NOT the other one's favorite thing. However, we just might meet up later this week to share some exciting news. . .

maine, part 3

On Wednesday morning we woke up in a quaint bed and breakfast in Eastport, ME. It's just about as north as you can get on the Maine coast. After a ridiculously delicious breakfast, we drove around Cobscook Bay and over a big bridge to Campobello Island. . .which is in Canada! It was Curt's first visit and he was stoked to say the least. We started with a quick tour of the Roosevelt summer "cottage" and then drove to the northern tip of the island to see the East Quoddy Lighthouse. In case you're not familiar, the water levels in the Bay of Fundy can vary up to 60 ft between high tide and low tide. Pretty crazy. Because it was low tide we were able to scramble up and down multiple ladders to get out to the lighthouse. A few hours later and the paths would be covered in 20-30 ft of water. Once again, crazy. It was wicked windy, but the views were stunning. . .and we were in Canada! A few shots of the pretty.

That afternoon we drove down the coast to Acadia National Park. Wouldn't ya know a cold front was blowing in from the north?? It was unbelievably windy and the expected low was 30 degrees, but these snugglebirds roughed it out and camped in Acadia anyway. Perhaps not our best decision. Susan Ada pretty much hacked her lungs out all night and was begging for a doctor by Thursday morning. So on the morning of Susan Ada's 30th birthday sweet Curt put her in the car, packed up camp all by himself, drove to the nearest doctor, and begged them to examine her. Thankfully, they obliged. She walked right in and was diagnosed with an ear infection and general yuckiness. Z-pack in hand she was out the door with hopes of improving quickly. We spent a little time in Bar Harbor looking in the shops and ate a yummy breakfast. Then we returned to Acadia to drive the Park Loop Road. It was gorgeous!! That wind had blown all the clouds away, the sun was shining, water sparkling, and the crowds weren't so bad. Here's some of our favorite shots:

The top of Cadillac Mountain on Susan Ada's 30th birthday!

the north, part 2

After staying at the B&B in Southern Vermont we took a swing up through Burlington. One of the differences between Vermont and home is that there are little road signs everywhere listing nearby attractions and other businesses everywhere. Well, as we were driving into Burlington we noticed a sign for Magic Hat Brewery and decided to just run in and see what could be had.

There was, in fact, a magic hat outside. They weren't offering tours that day but they had a neat balcony overviewing their bottling operation. The only thing we didn't see at Ommegang was their bottling operation running and it was awesome, loud and just all around fun to watch the high volume bottling going. We're suckers for a good factory.

. . . Like the Ben and Jerry's factory that we also went to just on the other side of Burlington. Their tour was pretty neat but it was a lot fancier than the low budget brewery tours that we'd seen before. It did come with a tasty sample at the end though. Curt might have neglected to take the camera on the tour with him so there aren't any good photos; although, we do have this photo of the big tanks out back.

So we'd been through the White Mountains in Vermont, through Burlington in the northwest of Vermont so we then headed over to New Hampshire and the Green Mountains where we camped for the night. We found a nice campsite in the woods. There was a campground host trailer there but we never actually saw any other people in the whole campground. We particularly liked the loud creek running near the tent.

The drive through the Green Mountains was particularly beautiful.

As you can see we were a bit ahead of peak leaf season. Honestly though, the trip was scheduled around the half-marathon so the fact that we saw much of fall at all was great.

We were planning to camp in Baxter State Park toward the upper part of Maine that night. As you can see though things were quite cloudy and the rain was coming. By the time we were getting into Maine it was clear that if we went camping it would be camping in the cold, pounding rain. Both set up and tear down. That, combined with the fact it was kind of out of the way and that Susan was getting sick meant we decided to find somewhere to stay for the night. Eliminating Baxter put us a day ahead of schedule and we went ahead and aimed for the Maine coast/Canadian border.

The beginnings of our trip down the Maine coast will be coming soon.

to maine and back

Secret's out. Susan Ada turned 30 last week. It was time. Unavoidable, really. To celebrate, Curt trained for a half marathon with her and then embarked on a trip down Maine's coast in the fall. Really can't think of a better way to usher in this decade. It will probably take a few posts, but we are actually going to attempt to document one of our trips! (and within 48 hrs of arriving home - Meg Robinson be proud!) We started with a drive to Corning, NY on Thursday, Sept 29. Some of our closest friends in Lynchburg are from there and invited us to join them for the Wine Glass (half) Marathon. We arrived on Friday morning so we had time to drive up to the Finger Lakes for the afternoon. It was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed lunch, wine tasting at Red Newt, shopping, and starting our vacation. Here we are with Lake Seneca:

Here is Susan Ada's impression of the Finger Lakes. Look at a map, and it will make more sense. . .

Then, we went to Watkin's Glen. There is a beautiful walk up a gorge that we enjoyed very much. The sounds of the water rushing/crashing through the rock walls were probably our favorite part. Hard to capture in photos, but here is our attempt:

Saturday, we spent the day in Corning. Had a lazy morning with our friends, then went to the Corning Museum of Glass. It was very interesting. Curt and I signed up to blow our own glass pumpkins. Here is Curt in action!

The two small ones are ours!

Sunday was the big day. The race didn't start until 8am so we honestly didn't have to get up too early. However, it was about 40 degrees and raining so that definitely hurt Team Hamilton morale. You can see our previous post about how all that went. Ironically, we have no pictures from this occasion. None. You're just going to have to trust us. We were so cold when we crossed the finish line that we couldn't get in a hot shower fast enough. It's all about priorities people, and we choose to keep all of our toes. That afternoon we said goodbye to our friends and were off to see New England. We made a quick stop in Cooperstown, NY to visit the Ommegang Brewery.

After our tour, we ventured into town because it happens to hold THE Baseball Hall of Fame. We looked at it, but we had to eat dinner and keep on driving. We spent the night at the Buckmaster Inn in Shrewsbury, VT. Once again, too tired to take a picture of our room (it was lovely!), but we grabbed a shot the next morning before we left.

More to follow. . .we promise!

half marathon anyone?

A quick on the road update: Susan Ada and Curt just completed the First Annual Wineglass Half-Marathon in Corning, NY!! It's the 30th anniversary of the marathon and it seems to be a pretty big deal in these parts of the woods. We didn't exactly have ideal weather conditions - 45 degrees and rainy the whole time. We literally dumped water out of our shoes when we completed the race. Susan Ada definitely enjoyed it, but Curt's still making up his mind (he never really finished getting better from being sick before the race) but odds are good he'll be happy about it soon. Now we're off to our next adventure.

yay for autumn!

The crisp air this weekend convinced us that fall is well on its way. We took our new Africa basket to the market Saturday morning and filled it to the brim with autumn yumminess! Here is our spread:

Then some friends from Raleigh came to visit for the day and we had the best time showing them around town. It was so refreshing to just know folks and not feel like we were trying to "get to know" another new family. Don't get us wrong, we are enjoying building relationships in Lynchburg, it was just nice to have a little break. Sunday, we went to see the Lynchburg Symphony Orchestra's opening concert for the season. It was based on music from the Civil War and we really enjoyed it. Susan Ada tried a new do to try to change up the shortness haircut. . .notsomuch.

We had to laugh when we looked in our dishwasher Sunday evening. Curt has been sick all week and apparently all Susan Ada knows to feed a sick kid is soup. This might just be every bowl we own. . .

Now we are off on our next adventure. We are really excited to tell you all about it when we return!!