Our trip to PA

Here in New England, most schools give students a one week break in February and a one week break in April. Personally, I'd rather have the extra time off in June, but I'm starting to dream about warm tropical vacations right about now, so perhaps a winter break isn't such a bad idea. Well, we did go south, but it wasn't tropical...it was southwestern PA to visit family. Here are the girls with Pap Pap and Mamaw S:


EJ and Mamaw played dress-up one day and then played cards. EJ looked like a real card shark!

Here are the girls with their Great Great Aunt A:

On Wednesday evening, EJ, Pap Pap, and I went tubing to Hidden Valley Resort. We had a lot of fun - mostly because there were only a dozen other people there, and after the first 75 minutes or so we had the whole hill to ourselves!

Here are the girls striking a silly pose with their Great Great Uncle C:

And here they are with their Great Grandma K (my maternal grandmother). Sophie loved riding in the wheelchair!

The first night we were there, we met up at a local pizza shop with some family and friends. Here I am with two of my best friends from high school, S and R:

We had a lot of fun, despite the foot of snow that fell the day before we left, or that K, Sophie, and I were all fighting colds while we were there. A wind storm tore through southern NH and knocked out the power at home on Thursday night. We were hoping to return home Saturday afternoon, but we had a late start (still recovering from the snow at my dad's and the traffic jams in the Scranton area), so it was around midnight Saturday when we pulled in. The house was only 45 degrees, but thankfully it hadn't been cold enough to freeze the pipes. We plugged in the generator and fired up the furnace and the pellet stove. The power didn't come back on until Monday afternoon, but we were prepared. Our only loss was everything in the fridge and the freezer on the fridge (everything in the basement freezer was still frozen solid). Sheesh, two major power outages in 15 months! I do give PSNH a lot of credit for their communications plan this time. They waited until they had a full assessment of the situation before releasing estimated time of restoration to everyone. And they had regular updates on Twitter, which were great to follow!