we took brian and hope to concord on friday.  the first stop was walden pond where henry david thoreau famously lived for a year and wrote a book about his experiences.  here is a replica cabin:


but we were there for a lovely winter walk around the pond:


interesting ice formations:


then we went over to the concord north bridge site of the minuteman national historic park, site of a battle on the first day of the american revolution:

this is bean taking a bath in the lap of luxury in my new "snoogle" pillow (really big curvy body pillow for us pregnant chicks):


bean retrieving her new favorite mouse ball toy that "santa claws" brought her:


brie taking it easy on the rocking chair:

here's a shot of our guest room that i repainted this past month.  it's now a more earthy tan/putty color, which we like far better.  we also rearranged the furniture which has made it seem so much larger!  this is good because we needed to move 2 things from the baby's room to this room and also gives more space to our guests!  jeff switched out the old unsafe outlets and we bought a new flat panel monitor for the computer.  all in all, we are really happy with how it turned out!  here is one photo, more are here on our site.  there are some before pix, the last 3 are the new room.

we have gotten 3 snow storms in 8 days.  we already have more snow this winter than all of last year!  here are some pix from this morning...  there is at least a foot or more out there from all the storms.

buried:


view into the backyard a bit:

here is our house from the outside, i finally could get the tree in the front window!  you can also just barely see the good 1+ foot of snow on the front porch.



the tree inside in the dark.


stockings hung on the staircase with care.


so far the cats are pulling their usual routine of dragging ornaments around the house and chewing on the fake branches.

hope you all are enjoying the holiday, or at least the nice long weekend!

we got quite a snow storm yesterday!  it started around 1pm and dumped about 10 or so inches on us in short order.  it gave us the chance to answer the question:  "what happens when the entire boston area lets its workers out all at the same time?".  answer: massive gridlock.  it took me an hour to get home on my normal 15 minute commute and jeff an insane 3.5 hours for his normal 40 minute commute.  poor jeff!  our neighborhood is pretty well tucked away and we didn't get plowed out until about 7:30pm.  fortunately, jeff managed to make it into our driveway around 6pm.   we let the snow fall the rest of the evening and this morning jeff started the task of digging us out.  it is a beautiful morning, blue skies and snow all over everything!

here's a shot to show how deep the snow is on the front porch:


here's a shot of our buried cars in the driveway:


i couldn't resist the snow on the leaves and branches:


and here's jeff valiantly shoveling us out!  i felt really bad for not helping out!  thanks for doing that jeff!

jeff continues to be a deck building machine!  he's been waterproofing and building railing sections and yesterday he put up some sections in the snow!  it is really looking good out there, here are some shots.

in this one you get a good idea of how high the deck is off the ground.  at the bottom of the staircase is the sliding glass down that leads to our basement family room.


this one is just a zoom of the lovely railings in progress...


for my part, i was inside repainting the guest room to the color i originally had wanted (a tan/putty color - "stone house" from benjamin moore).  pix to follow when that is finished up, but i am already much happier with the space.

and fwiw, i keep trying to get another "bump shot", but there are have been various failed attempts.

this past weekend was jeff's company xmas party at the top of the hub restaurant, which is atop the prudential tower in boston.  we were treated to yummy food and great views!

here we are all dressed up:


here's a view from the top... it's not great, but the best i could manage through windows in the dark!