Being Together is Enough

This winter we have had a surprisingly little amount of snow here on the coast. I never remember a winter that we've had so little snow, but the good thing is that when there's not much snowfall then usually that means the ice is good on the ponds. The harbormaster said we could go ahead and have fun skating on his pond which is very nice. It is bigger than the one we used to skate on and you can skate from one little pond, down a little canal to a second bigger pond that's more sheltered from the winds that come across the ocean and up over the fields. What a lot of fun we've been having over there! The other day we asked Gram if she wanted to come skating with us. Gram's always ready for a good adventure, so off we went.

  Mum and Gram were great skating on the ice. They fell down the least of any of us. :-) They have had lots of practice over the years and know some fun things to do on the ice.

 Mum and Charity on the pond

Mum is such a graceful skater. She even knows how to skate backwards. We girls have attempted it too, but for some reason it doesn't come out nearly so graceful as Mum's does. :-)

Pam and Charity's fancy skating technique

Why take figure skating lessons when all you have to do is just watch some figure skating and then go out and try doing it yourself. What's the worse thing that can happen...you get yourself covered in bruises so you can hardly move the next day? Oh well, at least we had fun!

A couple weeks ago, Charity made the mistake of looking at puppies for sale online. Needless to say, this is Dixie, our newest edition to the McFarland household. She is a Great Pyrenees, Border Collie mix puppy and we all have fallen in love with her. She loves snuggling with her mommy,Charity.

All of us girls had taken some time off in early February because we were originally thinking about going to Canada to see family; however, once a puppy came on the scene we had to edit our plan. We went down to Freeport to meet April and Kyle and had a blast with them! We met them at the L.L.Bean there in Freeport which was the first time that some of us had been there so we had fun. 

They had a cute little living room area set up in L.L.Bean. They had a nice hot fire going in the fire place that we enjoyed for a little bit while we were waiting for Kyle and April to get there and meat up with us. 

The famous L.L.Bean boot (that you're not really supposed to climb on). :-) We had lots of fun together with April and Kyle and also on the drive back home again that night. Kyle was so patient with us and our lack of knowledge about the city. He kindly told us how to get out of town again and back on our way home, and we actually made it without any wrong turns! Thanks a ton, April and Kyle! We'll have to do it again sometime!

Winter Fun

 For a couple of years, we've had fun trimming some evergreens on our own land to use for Christmas trees some year. This year we cut our first one off the land and brought it home to fill the extra space in the dining room. Sometimes if they don't have that perfect full and fat shape it adds an old touch that fits our old farmhouse.

Pam having fun decorating our tree in the dining room. It was Pam's idea to use the extra space in there to put a Christmas tree, and we all loved it!

It's always fun to help Gramp and Gram decorate for Christmas! This is Great-Great Grandma's village that Pam's putting up. Gram always has done such a great job of preserving some of the great old family decorations.

We did their tree in gold with burgundy bows this year. It really looked nice. It's a good thing we had Gramp there to tell us if some of the ornaments needed to be adjusted or let us know if the tree was "leaning toward Sawyers" (don't ask me which direction that is). Gramp is always so much fun!

Christmas at Matt and Victoria's was a blast! We had their Christmas on Sunday and ours on Monday so it wasn't too hectic all in one day. I love Mrs. Wardwell's stockings she makes for the kids. She does such a great job!

This year we heard about a new place to skate over on Billy Grant's bog. He keeps it nice and cleared off to make a nice place to go skating. He said we were welcome to have fun skating over there, so we tried it out, and it is the best ice I've seen! We've been having a blast!

It was about 10 degrees that morning, so we only skated for about an hour when our toes began to feel about 10 degrees also. So we went home to warm up by the fire and talk about what to do next. We very very rarely all get a Saturday off together, so we were going to make the best of it!

So after we warmed up, we decided to head off to Hermon Mountain and  go skiing. It had been several years since we'd been skiing, so it took a little bit to get the hang of it again, but we sure did have a great time! There's nothing like the feeling of skiing toward the woods and not being sure exactly how or if you'll be able to stop. :-) Good times!