the big trip, day 3

On our third day, we rented a car and visited our friend from Baylor, Laura Sheehan McGinniss, who lives in neighboring Bedford. It was wonderful to get to see Laura again. She and I lived together our senior year at Baylor, and she is just as hilarious as she always was. She has a son, Logan, who is a year old today! Happy Birthday, Logan! We loved getting to catch up with her and relive some old memories. And it was great fun for her to get to meet Will and Ben, who were completely at home in her house because of all the Thomas gear. Logan is a very happy, beautiful baby & Laura seems to love being a mom.

When we got back to Concord from Laura's, we were off to Quechee, Vermont, which, I contend is one of the greenest places on earth. Everywhere we looked it was green; so different from our parched Texas landscape. And there are so many trees, you only see a peek of the sky and could only dream of watching the sun sink on the horizon. It's gorgeous there. We rented this incredible house, which had plenty of room for us to roam. The first night, there was a serious game of freeze tag outside (see picture above to right). And then some serious boy-with-a-stick play for the big kids (as pictured right...Will is pretending to be a moose, in case you can't tell; the rest of the gang looks pretty warrior-like). The sticks eventually (somehow) turned into an elaborate game invovling a meat trade. I'm not sure exactly how it went because Madeleine and I escaped to the grocery store in Woodstock to get a few essentials. But that was the report from Jim and Brian when we returned.

The drive to Queeche was amazing in and of itself. We drove through New Hampshire, which clearly earns it's nickname "the Granite state" without contention. There would be just piles and piles of huge pieces of granite alongside the highways. Ben loved seeing all the rocks. In fact, one of the first things he did at the house in Queeche was to begin his search for rocks. We found a massive piece of slate that he had hoped to take home with him. However, it just didn't make it into the car when we left (wonder what airport security would have thought about a huge, arrowhead-shaped piece of rock on our luggage...).