Canoeing and Mt. Gile

 On the second day my family was here we went canoeing on the Connecticut River and hiked to Mount Gile - two of our favorite activities nearby. 

 This will probably only be funny to me and my mom :) Jordan and Logan were reenacting a cheesy scene from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and it was cracking us up. My favorite part of having my family here was laughing with them!

 It was the perfect day to be out on the river. I will miss this!

 In a shallow part of the river we spotted a snapping turtle - something we'd never seen in the Connecticut River before. 

 Totally dangerous, but of course the boys had to pick it up for a few pictures. It was a feisty little guy, thrashing around, whipping it's tail about, and chomping it's big mouth!

 Hiking Mt. Gile

 It was really windy at the top of the tower and tricky to get a good picture, but this was our best attempt.

Fun day with some of our favorite people at a few of our very favorite spots!

My Family Came to Town!

This past week has been the best because my parents and brothers were visiting! They made the 15 hour journey across the country to support Josh at graduation and to visit us in New Hampshire before we move. I hadn't seen my family in almost a year, so it was so wonderful to be with them. I've got lots of pictures to post and hopefully I can do a few blog posts before we move next week and things get crazy....well things are already crazy, but you know.

The afternoon they arrived we hung out at our neighborhood park and then walked around Dartmouth campus and got gelato at our favorite spot in Hanover. It was so nostalgic because the last time my mom was in New Hampshire was when we had just arrived and she was with us when we walked around Dartmouth for the very first time and also got gelato for the first time. And now here we are two years later! Our two years at Dartmouth really flew by.

 More pictures to come!

The White Mountains

Last week we finally checked out the White Mountains and were so impressed!

We are not very spontaneous people, but this trip was completely spur of the moment. We dropped Bryn off to preschool and in the few hours she was at school and Josh and I decided to go to the White Mountains, booked a super cheap hotel, packed up our car, and then picked up Bryn and made the 2 hour drive to our destination. And it was a great trip!

Our "hotel" turned out to be this interesting little cabin situation with the sketchiest pool/hot tub I've ever swam in, but the girls had a blast and it was a fun little getaway for a night.

Our first hike was to Diana's Baths and it was beautiful!

As a sidenote, we actually found this Kelty hiking backpack in our dumpster in Huntington Beach...which maybe I shouldn't admit! We normally don't dumpster dive (I promise!), but I must say this was a good steal because we've certainly put it to good use!

We saw great reviews online for Leavitt's Country Bakery (about 10 minutes from Diana's Baths) so of course we had to check it out. Best. Donuts. Ever.

I'm not even a huge donut person but these were so good! We tried a few different kinds, but I think their simple glazed donuts were our favorite. Definitely check them out if you're in the area.

Also, of note in the area was this cute little llama farm.

Surprisingly there is a great outlet mall in the White Mountains! We spent a good hour or two doing some shopping at the outlets - which was perfect since we live an hour and a half from our nearest mall and we needed to get Josh some new business clothes for his new job. We got lots of good stuff and so it was pretty awesome! It was funny because we went to the White Moutains for the hiking, but ended up with the bonus of some outlet shopping.

After the outlets and some yummy bagel sandwiches at Big Dave's Bagels (which came highly recommended and didn't let us down), we headed to the Flume Gorge. This hike was a two mile loop and it was really pretty amazing - probably the coolest hike we've ever done as a family. 

(Sorry for the picture overload. I really did narrow it down, but we took about a million pictures because there were so many cool parts).

I'm so glad we got a chance to explore the White Mountains before we move from New Hampshire. We could have spent a lot more time there with all the other hikes and look-out points, but we loved the time we had. We really are going to miss beautiful New Hampshire!

Weekend with Jake and Ty

 We had such a fun time with Jake and Ty last weekend. (Jake is Josh's older brother and we'll be living about 10 minutes from them when we move to New Jersey in 2 weeks). They were only in town for two full days so we tried to pack in as much as we could. Our first stop was the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont. We did the factory tour, sampled ice cream, bought more ice cream, and played at the park.

 Photo fail! This picture makes me laugh :)

 The boys played basketball at the Dartmouth alumni gym while it rained and then the rain let up (hallelujah!) so we were able to spend an hour or so on the Connecticut river. 

 After the river we hiked to Boston Lot Lake, caught way too many newts, had dinner, watched a movie, and called it a night!

 On Sunday we tried to see the first edition Book of Mormon at the Dartmouth special collections library but the library was closed for the Memorial Day weekend. Bummer! Instead we walked around Dartmouth campus and then headed to church. After church we drove to Sharon, Vermont to the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial. 

 I love this sweet picture.

 Bryn was running around with her cousins, but Mya was happy to pose for a picture. And she even smiled!?

 Jake and Tyra and their five cute kids

We hadn't seen family in so long, so it was wonderful to have visitors! We are so excited to be moving so close to Jake and Ty's family!

Mt. Gile

 One of our favorite local hikes is Mt. Gile and we hiked it on such a pretty day last week. I know it's going to be much harder to do family hikes once we have baby #3 (and once Josh gets busy with his new job) so we're trying to fit in as many hikes as we can. 

If you look closely you can see Bryn and Josh peering over the top of the tower. It's actually a little nerve-racking climbing the tower with kids, so this time we actually didn't take Mya to the top. She was insisting on climbing the steps on her own and that just wasn't going to happen. So we took turns going to the top with Bryn.

 I'm not sure what's going on with this pose :)

 The panoramic view from the top of the tower is so pretty. You just see green, green, green in every direction.

 My attempt at a panoramic picture of the view

 These two walked hand in hand for a long stretch of the hike and it melted my heart. There is nothing better than sisters!