joy amidst the sadness

The thing about grieving is that the world around you just keeps moving on.  When your world seems like it's come to a complete stop, or at least you feel like it should, there are still kids to take care of, laundry to fold, snow to shovel, appointments to go to and the list goes on and on...  Here is a little peek into some of the "normalcy" that we're trying maintain around here...

The meadow below our house was completely frozen over and the boys had a blast playing on the ice...
 Buddies...

  You can see our little row of three houses on our street in the background.  I love this place that we call home!

We took a fun family adventure to the See Science Center in Manchester and the boys had a blast...

 The awesome Lego replica of Manchester back in the day...

My 33 week belly (3 weeks ago)!

Now that I'm not spending every waking minute with my Dad, I'm trying to turn my attention and love to little Baby Goose.  Here's her crib that she'll probably never sleep in if she's anything like her brothers who just want to be next to Mama...

We had a huge snow storm the weekend right before my Dad's service...and he LOVED snow, so we got outside and enjoyed it!  We went for a walk into town together for donuts at the start of the storm...

 This is what we woke up to the next morning...

We celebrated Camden's half birthday!  Have I really been a Mom for 4.5 years?!?!  Crazy.

Camden wanted to dress like Daddy for church last week...My Carhartt boys!

Grieving, laughter, family, sadness, joy, adventure...all part of our day to day life right now. 

Pig Roast

We live in New Hampshire, so obviously, when we're invited to a friend's house for dinner our first thought is, will this be a normal cook-out with hot dogs and hamburgers or will we dig up our meal from underground?  Our good friends Gregor and Amy decided to have a Pig Roast and although I was a little nervous about the idea at first, it turned out to be so fun and so delicious!  Gregor's brothers were up visiting and they thought it would be fun to roast an entire pig underground "Polynesian style" - I didn't even know you could roast a pig underground, but they did it and it was awesome!  Here are some pictures from the beautiful summer evening...
What a sweet big brother...

 Digging up the beast...

 These guys live in a pretty picturesque part of town!

 Unwrapping the wire, burlap sacks, tinfoil etc...to reveal the poor pig!

 The head fell off - I guess that's a good sign that it was done!  I took a picture of just the head, but thought I'd spare you that vision...

 Camden wasn't quite sure what to think, but he sure ate a lot of meat.  I'm thinking this might be a yearly tradition. 

Have YOU ever been to a Pig Roast?