Thanksgiving

This weekend was Thanksgiving.  We spent the morning with the Landes's and had a great breakfast that Brig prepared for everyone.

My mom hosted Thanksgiving and had the Mitchell's over.  The food was great and it was really nice spending the holiday with both our families under one roof.

The turkey coma

Friday Jeanette and I looked at houses with the dads.  We're considering moving back to the area and it was nice having the dads help us out in our evaluation.

Black Friday afternoon we headed down to Peddlers Village to meet up with Marion and Brig for some shopping and enjoying the lights.

That evening we had a sleepover with the Landes's at the Mitchell house and were fortunate enough to have the tooth fairy stop by as Mitchell bravely lost his front tooth that night.

Saturday we spent making holiday wreaths.  It was cold out so we got a nice fire going to keep everyone warm.  We came back home on Saturday to get our home ready for the holidays (lights and tree) and had a great time with the family over the weekend.

The Bathtub

A couple weeks ago I noticed a bubble on the floor of out bathtub.  Within 2 days it grew from the size of a quarter to the size of a softball.  We have an old house and it seems as though someone a while back painted our cast iron tub to freshen it up.  It appears as though it is delaminating.  I decided after a good bit of research on the web to attempt to repaint it myself.  However I started by chipping the top layer of paint off first.  This took several evenings after work to complete.

Today I took a half day to finish the chipping, cleanup and paint.  The paint takes 72 hours to dry and with the Thanksgiving holiday upon us the timing was perfect.  With spending the weekend up in Quakertown we will have the chance to let the paint dry.  Looks pretty good - keeping my fingers crossed that its durable.

Catskills Backpacking Trip - Devils Path

This weekend we finally hit up a trail in the Catskills that I've had my eye on for some time - the Devils Path.  Jeanette Shiloh and I spent the weekend with our friends Colin and Kathleen tacking the trail.  We parked at the Prediger Rd. lot and hiked through to Devils Tombstone Campground in Stony Clove.

We hit the trail around lunchtime and headed up through Jimmy Dolan Notch to the summit of Twin Mountain.  The trail was slow going - rocky and steep!

We had hoped to make it to Mink Hollow for camping but ended up staying in Pecoy Notch as the afternoon drew into the evening, setting up in the saddle between Twin and Sugarloaf Mountain.

The evening was great with an a phenomenal dinner - Katmandu Ramen Chicken concoction, exploding rocks in the campfire, late night cocoa and Hillshire Farms sausage on a baguette.

The next morning we hiked out over Sugarloaf and Plateau Mountains.  A real calf/thigh/knee burner.  There was a considerable amount of snow above 3500 feet for this time of year which made the footing fun.  All in all it was a great weekend.

Leaky Pipes

Ahh, the joy of old homes. Jeanette astutely noticed the sump pump going on yesterday and we hadn't had any rain.  I went down in the basement to find water on the floor and hear that dreaded hissing sound.  This is the third time in the past couple months we've had a tiny pinhole leak in a copper supply line.  Nottice the tiny little dark are in the center of the pipe on the right side of the valve - that's it.  The fix this time was pretty easy but man this is getting annoying.

Location : Appleton Rd, Landenberg, PA 19350,

Great Falls

Jeanette and I went down to the DC area this weekend with Mike and Amber to hike the Billy Goat trail.  This is a really neat area along the Potomac river separating MD and VA. Its very rocky, hence the name, and makes for a fun time.  The weather was perfect and we had a real nice time.

Location : Appleton Rd, Landenberg, PA 19350,

First Frost!!

You know what that means, the ice climbing season is on its way!

Halloween

This weekend was Halloween.  We started out the weekend heading up to Peddlers Village with the Lades family and went trick or treating with the kids through all the shops.  It was really fun hanging out with the Princess and Bumblebee, seen here refueling before more candy scavenging.

Saturday was the 7th annual Smith family Halloween party.  This year there was am 80s theme.  Everyone really got into the spirit and dressed the part.  Some of the costumes included:

Jeanette and I as Strawberry Shortcake and Waldo

Timm as a troll

Pete, Katherine, Jeff, Janice, John and Pauline as the cast of Clue

Dr, err Nurse Reynolds

The Magyars as a functioning Tetris  

The Masons

The Koenig Clan