More pictures from the party. Boy, it was the best one yet with lots of people from Albany and Margaret from Vermont. Thank you Margaret for all of your help getting ready and cleaning up afterwards.

Isabel and I had fun getting ready for the party. She kept asking to help with painting the various things I was painting. I kept trying to find time when Calvin was sleeping so that she and I could concentrate without his wild interjections of messy paint strokes. Finally, I gave up and let Calvin get in on the action with this rocking chair. About halfway through, covered with mustard yellow paint reminiscent of the color of his infant poop, I sent him off to take a nap with Dave, while Isabel and I attended to the finer details. Isabel insisted that there be some point of assymetry in the paintjob and so painted one of the knobs on the back left leg a differnt color from the right. This way, we won't have insulted any of the gods. Our joint efforts resulted in the drap black rocker looking like this:

Adirondacks:

Dave says:
Calvin and Isabel's combined birthday party at the cabin was apparently a success -- lots of old and new friends showed up, and the food was plentiful and tasty, and all the kids seemed to have a good time. True to my standard pattern, by taking a day off to start the final assembly of the new deck on Friday, I almost got it completed by the time the party was due to start. Streznewskis used the deck that evening to set up two tents for sleeping in (until a downpour at three in the morning drove everyone inside.)

Sarah got to climb the mountain and go swimming twice over the weekend, once on Saturday night with Cousin Margaret and once on Sunday with Isabel, Fiona, Kelly, Alex, and Bob. Meanwhile, I took Calvin on an expedition to Putnam Brook, where we threw in 150 rocks -- and then we bushwhacked all the way along the old logging road around the Great Swamp, where Calvin enthusiastically learned a whole set of new words: "hobble-bush", "hemlock tree", "fern", "moss", "newt" (after two rainy nights, there were newts everywhere in the woods.) We'll see if he can still apply the words to the right objects, on our next walk.

Isabel finally reached her long-standing goal of climbing all the way up to Crane Mountain Pond Lake and back down again, without needing any help from anyone. I think next week when we're both on vacation, we may go looking for some new mountains to climb...

Three Generations of Greenes. Just look at them!

This Indian pokeweed started as a small volunteer last year. Now it is a giant umbrella over the kids' sandbox. The combination of green, pink and blue-black on the clusters of berries (poisonous) is spectacular.

Sunday, August 7th, 2005: Escape From the Great Escape

Adirondacks:
We had been planning to use our Great Escape tickets on Sunday, but the previous day's perfect weather and congenial surroundings had brought us to our senses: a _huge_ number of people were going to be at the Great Escape on a day like this, standing in interminable lines in the sun waiting for rides. (I was able to confirm this afterwards, since my fellow MapInfo office-dweller Jennifer Tadros had taken her family there the day before.) Even Isabel was intermittently persuaded to agree that we were much better off right where we were.

I started the day relatively early, removing Calvin from the tranquil scene (Isabel, Sarah, and Ed all asleep in various corners of the cabin) before he could tweak any noses or let out too many piercing screams. We went first to the site of the previous evening's bonfire, and piled up the various unburned ends of logs and planks into a couple of piles, to finish the cleanup.

It was still too early to disturb the sleepers at the cabin -- so we took the car out to Johnsburg Market, which had opened shortly before we arrived. Calvin had gone back to sleep (the ride out Crane Mountain Road is apparently quite soporific) but I bought breakfast supplies -- eggs, milk, bacon, juice -- and dropped in at Pearsalls to see if anything exciting was happening there. Luckily my Crane Mountaineer seventh sense (sensitive to incipient food preparation) had not failed me, and peach pancakes were just coming into existence, fresh off the griddle. Calvin woke up just in time to have a pancake, with plenty of maple syrup; perhaps this seventh sense is inheritable as well as infallible...

Eventually we returned to Putnam Farm to deliver our own breakfast offerings, which were reasonably well received. And since the rest of my day was largely taken up with cooking and eating said breakfast, wrestling with the support logs for the new 12x17 deck, taking a nap with Calvin, and driving back to Albany, it's probably better if Sarah tells the rest of the story.

Saturday afternoon, August 6th, 2005: Putnam Farm

Dave says:
After racing the train and losing honorably -- we did catch up with it eventually, after all -- we went on from North Creek to Johnsburg, and found the Pearsalls hard at work at Putnam Farm, putting new first-floor siding on the barn.

In the early afternoon, a contingent made up of three generations of Putnam descendants, along with Al Huggard, our next-door neighbor over Pine Ridge, arrived for a surprise visit -- Jasper Putnam's daughters Myrtle Putnam Boyce and her sister Doris Lasselle; two of Doris's children, Linda and Dick, and Dick's wife Karen; and Linda's daughter Linanne and her husband Tom Conroy.

They all headed up the road eventually to find the cave and natural bridge, but were temporarily sadly misled by Adam's new road to the Sand Pile (really the old road to Kenyontown -- though it looks much better these days than the road up to Putnam Junction.) Adam and Sara had made signs to clarify where hikers should go, but someone had since absconded with the key one that pointed out the trail. We'll have to come up with a more permanent solution sometime soon.

In the late afternoon Isabel really wanted to climb Crane Mountain, so we went up together around 4:30 while Calvin got a long-delayed nap.

Isabel's first words when we reached the swimming spot were, "This isn't a pond." "What is it, then?" I asked. "It's a LAKE!" [Obviously a true Crane Mountaineer: almost from Day One, Adam has insisted on calling this body of water "Crane Mountain Pond Lake."]

Perfect weather for swimming, and I'd brought just enough warm clothes along to keep Isabel happy afterwards. We bushwhacked up the back of the Northwest Ridge, and found one patch after another of the very last blueberries of the year -- big and blue and sweet. We wanted to get to the crest of the ridge, to see if the crop was any better up there, but were reduced to quoting Frog and Toad as each new patch came into view: "We -- need -- more -- willpower!"

Eventually did get to the ridgetop, where no really good patches of blueberries appeared (probably already picked out) but there was a gorgeous sunset to remind us that we'd really better be getting back down the mountain. Isabel climbed halfway down on her own, and was headed for a complete ascent and descent on her own two feet... but we were running out of time. It's dark at the bottom of the mountain when the top is still up in the sunset.

So for a while I helped her jump off rocks, and we made great time until I chose a more ambitious landing spot for her than she had chosen for herself, and she bumped her shin on a rock as she aimed for the lower target. So I carried her the rest of the way down to the base of the escarpment, by way of apology.

-- And the day _still_ wasn't done: Ed DeWald, an old fellow Tech Supporter from MapInfo, had arrived after all, and with no direction but a couple of scrawled notes from me, had managed to construct a square pyramid of old rejected barn boards that flared up into a beautiful 20-foot-high bonfire after dark, with sparks reaching up a hundred feet. From the barn, the entire Great Maple was backlit with an amazing orange glow.

We put Calvin and Isabel into the wheelbarrow to see the show, but Isabel fell asleep snuggled up in the sleeping bags very shortly after we arrived in the upper meadow. Calvin, on the other hand, stayed up watching the fire for some time, finding small sticks to donate to the cause, and generally looking very impressed by the whole affair. Hope we haven't given him _too_ many ideas...

August 5th and 6th, 2005 -- North Creek:
This weekend had so much in it that we had to start half a day early to get it all done --

Dave says:
I took half a day off from work and we all drove up the Northway, singing "The Keeper Would A-Hunting Go" (with Calvin joining in with his private version of the Alphabet Song: "A, B, C, B, A, B, C") -- so as to get to North Creek for a good night's sleep before Racing The Train on Saturday morning.

Grandpa didn't seem too put out to see us all... but he had long since declined to provide any babysitting for the big event, so we'd arranged for Sara-without-an-H to show up just before race time. In the morning we hiked over to the railroad station in plenty of time for the starting whistle. (Well, actually, at that point we just caught the train south to Riparius; the starting whistle was down there, and we had to get back to North Creek under our own power.) Tried to do some warm-up stretching on the train, but our hearts weren't really in it; if we made it back those 8.5 miles in any kind of pseudo-jogging-like speed, we were going to be happy.

And so we did. Sarah jogged along at her patented slow-and-steady pace, which I utterly failed to match: had to either run faster, or walk slower -- so I alternated, and thus avoided having to run on any of the uphills. The run started at 9am, so the trees along River Road shaded us for most of the trip -- perfect weather for train-racing.

Passed Grandpa's house just a little beyond Mile 7, and Calvin was mighty glad to see me arrive but didn't want to watch me go -- so he got carried in to town the last mile and a half. 135.5 minutes... slower than my last train race by a fair bit, I think, but we had plenty of good excuses -- and neither Sarah or I arrived at the finish line feeling particularly tired this year. There's hope yet.

At 11:00 Isabel ran her first one-mile race -- in flip-flops, because her running shoes had mysteriously disappeared somewhere between Camp JCC and the North Country. Switched universes, no doubt. Isabel was a very good sport about it all, so we're betting she'll do much better next year, when she doesn't have to keep running back to retrieve flip-flops that fell off her feet. (We'll be sure to bring three pairs of shoes next time.)

Isabel did some great drawing in Kindergarten. Here is just a sample of them. She sometimes wrote whole words backwards, including her name. Over the summer she has continued to read books, and has impressed her camp counselors. We hope she continues to draw too.