Merry Christmas!

Really, whose children are these anyway?  The traditional 'new pajamas in front of the Christmas Tree' photo shoot used to be so simple. 

Enjoy!

Catching Up

In the spirit of trying to keep up on my blog, I'm trying to catch up on happenings in the Maughan home during the fall. 

(Click on photo for larger images.)

For those of you not glued to the BHBL cross country site, you'll be happy to know that Scott's Cross Country team had a great season and at the beginning of November traveled to Long Island and Sunken Meadow Park where they won the New York State Class A State Championship (along with the BHBL girls XC team).  The next weekend, the team was at Bowdoin Park in Wappinger Falls (just north of NYC) where they placed second in the New York Federation Meet (all classes, all schools together) and two weeks later, they participated in the Nike Regional Qualifiers.  While they didn't quite make Nike Nationals this year, they did a great job and many of us are looking forward to seeing what they can do next fall.

Learning patience at Christmastime.

I have to say that I've been impressed by the patience and goodwill that I've seen exhibited by fellow shoppers in the few forays that I've made into the world of real shopping (as opposed to the virtual shopping - online - that I so much prefer!) So I'm trying to follow their example...

Sharon (to Christmas Card printing company): It's December 17th.  I was just wondering why I haven't received the Christmas cards that I ordered two weeks ago?

Christmas card printing company customer service rep: Wait, we were supposed to PRINT those? (or words to that effect).

I'm proud of the fact that I did not lose it completely and tell her that my Christmas card reputation was now in shreds. She agreed that maybe they would consider printing my cards after all and I agreed that it's highly unlikely that any of my friends will receive their card before Christmas next year unless they live next door. 

In the event that you live out of state and the card will not arrive at your home before January 2011, here's what it would have looked like: (sad violins playing in background)

I'm off to put on some soothing Christmas music....

Living in an Icy World

This picture was taken on day 3 after the Really Big Ice Storm here in the Northeast.  The cool thing is that by the time I took it, the ice was actually starting to melt.  As I stood on the porch on Sunday afternoon following the Thursday night storm, it was very still and all I could hear was the sound of cracking ice (much like pouring soda over ice cubes!).  Just imagine that in theater surround sound! 

The storm caused huge amounts of damage and extensive power outages for three days.  We were fortunate to lose only phone and internet service for a day and counted our blessings that we were able to stay warm and dry. But I have to say that the surrounding area looked like the most amazing ice wonderland (well, except for all the snapped tree limbs!).  The ice-covered tree branches were bent to the ground and as one friend said, it looked like everything was bowing.  When the sun came out, everything looked dazzling against the blue sky. Very cool. (No pun intended.)  But I think that most of our friends without power would have taken warm house over cool landscape any day!