October 2007

I tell you what! New England is surely beautiful in the fall. God does this, I'm sure, so that people will continue to live here, and not inundate Texas and the Southwest with Yankees. We did go to Santa’s Village, but not with the Cochran kids. Instead, Hannah took Rebecca, and Michael decided he was too old to go. On the way, we stopped at an auction in Lancaster, and Garry picked up some memorabilia from one of our favorite movies, “The Rocketeer”. I got a couple of nifty wooden folding chairs, made in Maine. Hannah and Rebecca found a chipmunk eating ornamental corn on the sign at the entrance.

In October, we enjoyed beautiful weather, and Garry & I took every advantage of being outside on his days off. Randy and Donna Amonett, friends from Big Spring, came up the 2nd week in October and joined us for dinner at the Sunset Hill House, one of our favorite restaurants. They, too, have a house here, farther north. It was very nice to see them again.

Garry had a lot of photo opportunities around Monroe during this gorgeous season. We had the camera with us everywhere we went. We attended a couple of auctions at Alumni Hall in Haverhill, NH, and purchased a couple of neat items. Our prize was a 96” church bench with the numbers (assigned seats!) still stenciled on. We also ate at Polly’s for the last time, as it is closed for the season from late October until late May. We often took the dogs for walks to the Monroe Cemetery, and we also found a field in McIndoe Falls, VT, down a dirt road and over a wooden bridge behind the town building.



Hannah played soccer – her favorite sport – and had a good time. Her team, the Monroe Mustangs, are blue and gold, and have one of the prettiest soccer fields we've ever seen. We got to see many school campuses around NH and Vermont, the most interesting of which was in Lunenburg, VT, which had a cemetery next to the soccer field. Hannah also attended her first school dance, as did Garry and I, as chaperones.

Michael also attended a dance at the Academy, during LI weekend. St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute celebrated their 103rd rivalry football game during “LI Weekend”, which is celebrated with pep chapels, a parade, themed dress up days, a bonfire and BBQ, the game and a dance. Unfortunately, Michael got soaked to the skin on game day, only to watch SJA defeated by LI 10 – 7 in the last 3 minutes. The weekend before, he was invited to travel to NYC with a friend from school. Adrian is a boarding student from Hong Kong, whose American guardians live in Connecticut and work in New York. Michael and Adrian and another friend from Hong Kong flew from Burlington, VT to JFK, where Lanelle picked them up and took them to her house for the weekend. She took them into the city a few times for trips to museums, the UN Building, Times Square, etc. Michael spent all his spending money at the Apple Store in SoHo, and on a hotdog from a street vendor. He had a really fun time, hangin' in the Big Apple "on his own" (Lanelle was there, but not Mom or Dad. Cool.) I furiously painted a couple of rooms, and we spent a few days raking leaves off the lawn. We missed the West Texas wind to just blow them away! ha/ha

The photos above feature the dining room, our "dooryard", Christy, Amanda, Rebecca, Hannah and Melissa on our new bench before the dance, and Hannah and me and Izzy and Al heading down the hill to the McIndoe Falls bridge. We must have blueberry soda from Paul's Whistlestop!