When the Internet finds it's way back to Center Rd and Bliss, we'll be back online with updates and pictures! Until then, please just call for updates... Oh, but don't call either of our cell phones because those don't work at Center Rd and Bliss either!
Loving the country life. No really. We love it.
Quickly:
Tegan is a dancing queen (princess, really). She puts on self-written plays for us and has really begun making up great dance routines. Maybe she's telling us she wants to take dance lessons?? And she couldn't be happier coloring a brand new Tegan original picture. She is a true artist.
Finn is all about playing outside (now that we have grass!). Soccer, baseball, bikes, lacrosse, landscaping. We have to literally drag him in for dinner. He is a true athlete. Actually Tegan has quite a mean baseball swing...she almost took my head off with a line drive up the middle last night!
And now that spring has sprung, The Parents are enjoying prioritizing the projects we have on our famous Homework List. Never bored. Usually challenged. Quite happy with all of it.
Happy anniversary Nana & Papa!
Peace.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Perspective
For real. 18-1…ugh. But I woke up this morning and I felt good. Grandma and Grandpa AND Nana and Papa came over for an unreal chili dinner and to watch the Patriots/Giants Super Bowl last night. Now we’ve been as focused as anyone on the Patriots this season. All season. Each week we watched with awe as they slowly rolled over opponents and created this mysterious shield of confidence around themselves and we believed all the hype about maybe the “greatest quarterback ever” and maybe the “greatest team ever” and all that historical nonsense. It sure looked like it. Tegan and Finn can both pick Tom Brady’s picture out of Sports Illustrated (and Brett Favre’s too, thank you Grandpa) and they understand that we like to watch Tom play football on Sunday afternoons. So you’d think the loss of the game last night would have put me in a rough mood this morning.
Especially because right when I was heading up to bed, bummed about the loss and tired from the weekend, I heard a huge crash at the front of our house outside. I went downstairs and Cristin and I looked at where a huge chunk of snow and ice had fallen off the roof and broken a storm window in the playroom. We shook our heads and inside I was thinking, “Yeah, so that’s the kind of night this is.” I went back upstairs, re-tucked the snoozing kids, shaved and went to bed.
Sure, I didn’t want a broken first floor window at 11 PM on a Sunday night. And of course, I wished the Patriots had won the game. It would have been special for them.
But it was special. It was truly special for us. We got to have dinner and uninterrupted play time with all grandparents at one time. How cool is that? Then Cristin and I got to watch a whole game and discuss all the details and laugh and joke and have some beer and wine with our parents. How cool is that?
Tegan and Finn (who were in bed by halftime) woke up this morning with smiles though Finn was “coldies” and didn’t want to get out from under his covers. Neither one asked how Tom Brady did or who won the game. Did they care? If you asked them about last night, they wouldn’t say we watched football. They’d say we had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa AND Nana and Papa and got to eat in the living room. That was the really big deal. Football games come and go. A whole night with just their four grandparents (and their mommy and daddy) is rare. Quite simply, it was a great night to be them. It was a special treat. And they thought the window with its cracked pane and broken glass looked kind of cool and interesting this morning when I showed them what happened. They were all smiles.
Boy, have I got a lot to learn from them. I’ve said it before but it doesn’t hurt to repeat: our family may not be wealthy, but we are filthy rich in love and that’s all that counts.
Especially because right when I was heading up to bed, bummed about the loss and tired from the weekend, I heard a huge crash at the front of our house outside. I went downstairs and Cristin and I looked at where a huge chunk of snow and ice had fallen off the roof and broken a storm window in the playroom. We shook our heads and inside I was thinking, “Yeah, so that’s the kind of night this is.” I went back upstairs, re-tucked the snoozing kids, shaved and went to bed.
Sure, I didn’t want a broken first floor window at 11 PM on a Sunday night. And of course, I wished the Patriots had won the game. It would have been special for them.
But it was special. It was truly special for us. We got to have dinner and uninterrupted play time with all grandparents at one time. How cool is that? Then Cristin and I got to watch a whole game and discuss all the details and laugh and joke and have some beer and wine with our parents. How cool is that?
Tegan and Finn (who were in bed by halftime) woke up this morning with smiles though Finn was “coldies” and didn’t want to get out from under his covers. Neither one asked how Tom Brady did or who won the game. Did they care? If you asked them about last night, they wouldn’t say we watched football. They’d say we had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa AND Nana and Papa and got to eat in the living room. That was the really big deal. Football games come and go. A whole night with just their four grandparents (and their mommy and daddy) is rare. Quite simply, it was a great night to be them. It was a special treat. And they thought the window with its cracked pane and broken glass looked kind of cool and interesting this morning when I showed them what happened. They were all smiles.
Boy, have I got a lot to learn from them. I’ve said it before but it doesn’t hurt to repeat: our family may not be wealthy, but we are filthy rich in love and that’s all that counts.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Friday, January 4, 2008
Orange Winter Sunrise
The early peak of most mornings is usually that first cup of coffee. Not mine.
The orange winter sunrise has become my morning drug of choice. Sure, I still have my coffee, but before my first cup, before the kids are up, before I say a word to anyone, I take Riley out for her walk. Every morning. Sideways rain, howling wind, piling snow, whatever. We’re out there. Riley and I fear no weather and we’re out the door around 6am every day.
We walk on Bliss Road. Bliss is a 2 mile long dirt road that we live at one end of and that I originally thought was named because it’s a peaceful, meandering, beautiful back road of Vermont. Recently I learned it was named for the Bliss family who’ve lived on it for years. Well, either way works for me. So we take Bliss up to Turn-Around-Rock, which is (you guessed it) where we turn around and head back. But before you hit Turn-Around Rock, before you’re 100 feet down Bliss, you are in a special spot. When you’re walking down Bliss Road from it’s beginning at Center Road, you’re heading south. The eastern sunrise is directly off to the left, just over our garage’s high roof. And when it’s all going right - the right time of year, the right weather, Riley and I in the right spot, when all the ingredients are involved (which is very often) there is a magical orange sunrise. And it’s best this time of year, in the deep winter. Whenever I see it, I pick my chin up from out of my fully-zipped hooded black Burton puffy jacket and I smile. Riley doesn’t notice things like that. But she’s happy.
It seems like its mine every time. My own orange winter sunrise. I’m sure it’s not. I’m sure someone else is seeing it, too and there’s probably even people who look for it and hope to see it and focus on it and think about it like I do. But not on the corner of Center and Bliss at 6am in the morning. Nobody else is there. That’s a view I’ve never shared with another human. That orange winter sunrise is all ours. Every time.
It makes the coffee, all brewed and ready for me when we return home, that much better. But that first cup is definitely not the peak of the morning. It’s usually just the added incentive. Early mornings on Bliss are bliss. No way else around it.
The orange winter sunrise has become my morning drug of choice. Sure, I still have my coffee, but before my first cup, before the kids are up, before I say a word to anyone, I take Riley out for her walk. Every morning. Sideways rain, howling wind, piling snow, whatever. We’re out there. Riley and I fear no weather and we’re out the door around 6am every day.
We walk on Bliss Road. Bliss is a 2 mile long dirt road that we live at one end of and that I originally thought was named because it’s a peaceful, meandering, beautiful back road of Vermont. Recently I learned it was named for the Bliss family who’ve lived on it for years. Well, either way works for me. So we take Bliss up to Turn-Around-Rock, which is (you guessed it) where we turn around and head back. But before you hit Turn-Around Rock, before you’re 100 feet down Bliss, you are in a special spot. When you’re walking down Bliss Road from it’s beginning at Center Road, you’re heading south. The eastern sunrise is directly off to the left, just over our garage’s high roof. And when it’s all going right - the right time of year, the right weather, Riley and I in the right spot, when all the ingredients are involved (which is very often) there is a magical orange sunrise. And it’s best this time of year, in the deep winter. Whenever I see it, I pick my chin up from out of my fully-zipped hooded black Burton puffy jacket and I smile. Riley doesn’t notice things like that. But she’s happy.
It seems like its mine every time. My own orange winter sunrise. I’m sure it’s not. I’m sure someone else is seeing it, too and there’s probably even people who look for it and hope to see it and focus on it and think about it like I do. But not on the corner of Center and Bliss at 6am in the morning. Nobody else is there. That’s a view I’ve never shared with another human. That orange winter sunrise is all ours. Every time.
It makes the coffee, all brewed and ready for me when we return home, that much better. But that first cup is definitely not the peak of the morning. It’s usually just the added incentive. Early mornings on Bliss are bliss. No way else around it.
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