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Wallace Horse Cemetery – Littleton, NH
Who spends a beautiful weekend day visiting a horse cemetery? Apparently I do. The Wallace Horse Cemetery is one of those quirky small town things that I knew about, but had never bothered to stop and look at. I had seen it mentioned in a book about bizarre New England attractions. I see the sign all the time. Yet, it was just one of those things that you don’t really make the time to check out. Until we were going for a drive after getting some ice cream at Bishop’s and Ryan started asking questions about the horse cemetery. Then it seemed like the perfect time to stop and check…
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Summer Sunday – Sunday Snapshots
Ever since we moved to Littleton (over a year ago now!), it feels like we are constantly doing something. For a while, I was great about making sure to take a picture and post about our adventures on this blog. Sometimes, though, it is just so much easier to just enjoy the moment and not worry about documenting or sharing with others. This is the same reason that I used to post massive albums of our family adventures on Facebook, but now only rarely post. I want to spend my life living it – not just documenting it. With that said, I love this blog and what it can be.…
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The Talisman
The little white door blended in seamlessly with the wall around it, and Lucy probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if Connor didn’t point it out to her. It was small, the top of the door was level with the top of her head and it was maybe only a foot wide. In place of a doorknob, there were two latches – a tarnished old slide latch and a shiny and new-looking latch with a lock. Connor pulled a small key out of his pocket and started fumbling with the lock. Lucy looked at the door and wondered what could possibly be hiding behind it. It was much too small…
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A Trip to the Ice Cream Factory (Ben and Jerry’s) – Sunday Snapshots
For the past month or so, Saoirse has been talking about going to the “ice cream factory” during all of her pretend play. Fortunately for her, we live about an hour and a half from the Ben and Jerry’s factory. I was really looking forward to checking out the Littleton Farmer’s Market on their opening weekend of the season, but an impromptu trip to Ben and Jerry’s was the perfect treat for the kids today.
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Memorial Day Weekend – Sunday Snapshots
Spring has sprung and there is so much going on in our little mountain town. It is Memorial Day weekend and our town is packed with people from all over (but having grown up on Cape Cod, the activity here is nothing like the full-scale tourist invasion that Cape Cod will experience this weekend). We have a busy weekend planned, but the most important part of that is just family time. In Friday, Ryan sang at his school’s Memorial Day celebration and then we spent the evening hanging out with good friends. Yesterday, Ryan and I went to our local small town movie theater (Jax Jr) to see the new…
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The Picture Frame
The girl searched through the dusty old boxes in the garage, looking for some treasures worth keeping. Amid the crumbling papers and broken records, one item stood out – an empty picture frame with beautiful swirled edges. She didn’t know why she felt so drawn to this empty frame, but she quickly took it home and filled it with her artwork before hanging it on the wall. She soon realized that there was something special about this frame. She leaned closer, the artwork seemed to be moving ever so slightly. When she reached up to touch the picture, her finger just kept going until she found her whole self pulled…
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Fairy Judgment
This post is a response to an assigned writing prompt for my local writing group. We had to respond to the question “In what way do you judge strangers before getting to know them?” through the eyes of characters in our writing. I answered this question using some of the characters from the novel that I have drafted and am currently working on editing. “Fairies are always so judgey,” the creature complained. “We are not ‘judgey’!” Maeve argued. “Judgey isn’t even a proper word. How would a groundling like you even know what fairies are really like? I can’t imagine that you have many fairies visiting you in this…place.” Maeve…
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Unblocked
It has been a crazy couple of months, and sadly I have completely lost my writing routine. I have a long and ever growing list of posts that I want to write for this blog, and yet every time I sit down in front of the computer, I feel completely blocked. I was in a great blogging rhythm right up until I took a break from my blog to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November. Clearly, I should have made more of an effort to to stay current on this blog, because I completely fell out of the habit of posting here – and I really love continually…
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Winter Skies – Sunday Snapshots
My phone camera has really been filling up with pictures of sunrises and sunsets lately. I love taking in the beauty of every season, and right now the cold winter sky is absolutely stunning.
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Learning to Love Winter – Winter Activity Programs in Schools
We moved to New Hampshire when Ryan was starting first grade. We were eager to move right away, and so we looked everywhere to try to find an affordable house rental in a good school system that was within commuting distance of Concord/Manchester. We ended up in a sleepy little town with a tiny school, right next door to Mount Sunapee. The town wasn’t the right place for us, but the tiny little school was fantastic. One of my favorite things that the school offered was their Winter Activities Program – for four weeks in January/February, the kids spent the second half of every Wednesday either skiing, ice skating, or…
