Happy Halloween!

Halloween tally 2010:
Houses visited - 2
Candy consumed by Clara - 2 lollipops and 1 three musketeers (funsize)
Trick-or-treaters - <10
Left over candy that will be consumed by Chris in the next 24 hours - 3 bags

Over the hills and through the woods.

A few weeks ago we all piled into our buggy and headed to the rural backwaters of Connecticut to visit Clara's grandparents. Actually, we got in our new Subaru Outback which still retains some of its undoubtedly mildly toxic newcarsmell, merged into the torrent of traffic headed down I-90, and visited my folks, who live in a suburb of Hartford, pop. 877,312. Either way, we still had to go over the hills and through the woods to get there.

Upon our arrival, Clara attempted to sate her tremendous hunger (such a long trip!) by munching on a mylar balloon.

Of course, Grandma's house is not the sort of place where little girls go to lounge around and eat bonbons. No, it was work, work, work.

Clara then decided that she had strong feelings about work, work, work.

She did condescend to clean out a bucket that needed to be carried all over the house, however. Naturally, Grandpa was designated as the recipient of whatever the previous bucket contents were.

As a reward for all of her work, she received five from Grandma.

Claraglish.

As we strive for mutual understanding in our bilingual home, we are constantly confronted with what linguists describe as "false friends." The false friend of the week is "up," which has a variety of meanings in Claraglish, including "please stop filming and show me super cute video footage of myself."

Aunties and Apple Acquisition.

Katie's sisters and Clara's aunts visited at the same time a few weekends ago, and we simultaneously celebrated their recent arrival and lamented their impending departure by going apple picking in search of the eastern cider donut (Donutos Cideryumus). Due to the depth of experience present in the hunting party, we bagged quite a few exemplary specimens; after proper dressing and preparation, we also managed to relocate many of them from outside our bodies to the inside thereof. Coincidentally, in the course of our hunt, we also kept stumbling upon apples which were unusually ripe and delicious, so we decided to take these home with us to snack on in order to break up the monotony of the donut diet.

Clara resolutely prepares herself for the upcoming pursuit.

Alie helps Clara store a last-minute talisman (aka that minute's lucky rock).

"If I just take a little bite, I'm sure no one will notice."

Mmmm.

Discovering that Elliot doubles as both a cousin and furniture.

Apologizing for her furniture confusion.

Apology accepted.

Can you tell that they're related?

Newfoundland, Part 5: Ferryland

After gallivanting all over a good portion of eastern Newfoundland, we headed back to St. John's to visit a few more friends and catch our flight back to Boston.  We lucked out in general with the weather on our trip, and nowhere was this more the case than the last day that we were there; we drove down to a little town named Ferryland and had a picnic with some friends at a lighthouse waaay out near the ocean.  It was lovely.   

Well, that's it for the highlights of the trip - we hope you enjoyed the tour through our tour. Of course, if this hasn't quenched your thirst for vacation pictures, I have a couple of thousand more that you can check out.

Newfoundland, Part 4: Hm?

Lest you think that our vacation was filled entirely with stunning views and mugging for the camera, we wanted to share some of the more puzzling aspects of our trip with you. Because we don't have any recordings of the peculiar accent endemic to this area, we must instead opt for some of the pictures that made us chuckle, chortle, or even guffaw.

Taking the notion of cleaning the front steps to an entirely new level. 

This was actually a fairly common sight in some of the outport communities that we traveled through - I guess that if you're building a house, that's probably the best time to put in a front door, but isn't that the right time to put in front steps, too?

Taking indecision about travel destinations to its logical conclusion.

When Katie told me that Newfoundland was really just a rock in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, I thought that she was speaking metaphorically.  This photo illustrates that, no, it really is just a rock, and one that is really hard to sink postholes in to boot.

The other option that the author weighed before writing this was "I'm mad as, hell and, I'm; not going 'to take, it Anymore?"

In case you were wondering how to identify intelligence, the main resident of this house glued some helpful characters to the top of the fence to assist in communicating the subtleties of his message.

This sign answers all of the questions about knitting that I could possibly have asked.

Newfoundland, Part 3: Bonavista

Our third stop on the trip was the Bonavista Peninsula where we hiked the spectacular Skerwink trail, which offered views of sea stacks and the beautifully restored town of Trinity (as well as a dead moose floating in one of the coves).

Clara's favorite part of the hike was eating the wild blueberries that grew along the trail. Katie was happy to oblige, since it may have been the only fruit Clara ate for the duration of the trip.

Clara did well in the hiking backpack, as long as she was being carried by her Mama. Luckily this freed up Dad for picture taking.

While on the Bonavista Penisula we randomly selected a B&B in the small town of Dunfield (pop. 50) that happened to be run by the parents of one of Katie's elementary school classmates from Mount Pearl. Ed and Marge took exceptionally good care of us, inviting us into their own home for supper and taking us to the "Kitchen Party" at the Lion's Club where Clara had a fabulous time clapping and dancing to Newfie folk music.

However, Clara's favorite part of the Dunfield stay was Ed's gravel driveway where she moved around a fair number of rocks.

From Dunfield, we made our way to the tip of the Peninsula where we explored the Town of Bonavista (discovered by Giovanni Caboto (aka John Cabot) over 500 years ago).

The weather at Cape Bonavista was cool and breezy enough to require winter clothing, which provided the perfect opportunity to replace Clara's too-small Old Navy fleece hat with some traditional Newfoundland knitwear. Katie insists those are kitty ears and not something more diabolic.

Newfoundland, Part 2: Baccalieu Trail

After plucking the fruit of St. John's and drinking all of the juice that we could squeeze from it, we headed out across the Avalon peninsula to see what else there was to see.  It turns out that there was still a lot of juice left in the pulp of Newfoundland...

One of the little towns that was recommended to us as being particularly quaint and picturesque (cue the camera) was the town of Brigus.  And such a lovely little town it was.

In some ways it was a little too lovely, in fact, for it was as if we were walking around in a eerily beautiful movie set, and the symmetry of our personal movie plot dictated that there must be an army of horrifying zombies milling about around the corner for the sole purpose of ruining the pastoral serenity of the surroundings.  Luckily, I am happy to report that no such zombies appeared to gnaw on our flesh, and that the town is both beautiful and safe.

From there, we went on to the hamlet of Harbour Grace to stay at that night's B&B.  While the place we stayed in provided Katie and I with the nice home-cooked meal and the chance to get out of the car and stretch that we were very much looking forward to, Clara was more excited to meet O'Malley, an extremely tolerant Newfoundland dog that looked like he could eat her for a midafternoon snack, if he was so inclined.  Luckily, he was not so inclined, and Clara calmly went about petting the heck out of his fur.

There was also a steamboat run aground in the middle of the harbor.  This seems like the sort of thing that would provoke all manner of explanatory signs and scenic parking lots here in Massachusetts, but in Harbour Grace it appeared to be as prosaic as the potholes that one can find in abundance on Massachusetts Ave. 

We also visited the Salmonier Nature Park to see our obligatory Newfoundland Moose.  This particular moose was amused by Clara's variety of giggling, squeaking, and general chattiness, and followed us along the fence as we ambled by.

Over the course of the sojourn, we also found this fishing shack off of the side of the road, which was doing all it could to look casual despite the excitement that it felt because I was taking a picture of it. 

Finally, we visited the black sand beach (who needs volcanos?) at Salmon Cove, and Clara went berserk chasing the seagulls and marveling at the beautiful scenery. 

She's probably still be there today if we didn't drag her away. 

Newfoundland, Part 1: St. John's, &c.

After many years of talking much but doing little about taking a trip to Newfoundland, that "looks little but is actually quite huge" rock located in it's own special timezone in the North Atlantic, we finally bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and headed up to visit that special place that taught Katie about the joys of cod jigging and what serious snow clearing equipment looks like (fyi: Boston does not have such equipment).

In order to record our experiences for our posterity (now that we have posterity), I took our relatively new DSLR camera along for the ride.  It turns out that one of the less-advertised features of such cameras is that they make it extremely easy to take more pictures than you really need...about 2150, in fact. Now that the sheep finally are separated from the goats, as they say, we can get down to the business of sharing our trip with you.

Our trip started in St. John's, the largest city on the island, which was conveniently located next to the suburb-like town in which Katie grew up.  From there we visited a number of different small "outport" communities and little capes (not like Superman) that jut out into the ocean.

Clara practiced her death-defying balance beam moves, while Katie practiced maintaining her patience, and I practiced pushing down the shutter release button on the camera.

This area is referred to as the Battery, and is located in the harbor of St. John's.  Of course, when I say "in the harbor", I am using a figure of speech to describe all of the buildings except the one which appears to be rapidly heading toward a point below the waterline.

We also visited a new museum named "The Rooms" (the locals do have quite a way with imaginative names, as you will see) which houses a provincial history museum, an art gallery, and a lot of well-cleaned windows. 

Of course, Clara did what she could to make sure those window-cleaners had something to do.

We also visited Cape Spear, the eastern-most point in the North America.  The fact that it isn't actually part of the continent is only considered a minor detail.

What cape would be complete without a lighthouse?

And people taking their pictures nearby?

We also visited Pouch Cove, pronounced "Pooch Cove" - all of those vowels are pretty much the same, after all.

We also visited a favorite park of Katie's when she was a tot, named Bowring Park after the dude who owned the estate on which it is located.  As it is located in Newfoundland, it is not pronounced as it one might first assume, but rather "Boring", which it seems would be a boon to children who would rather sit in front of the television than get some fresh air.

We also visited Topsail "Beach" (if you can call a large pile of small rocks a beach) with some friends.  Clara felt that there were dangerously few mushrooms in the vicinity, and decided to improvise.

Thankfully, we were able to convince her that we don't need representation from every kingdom, phylum, &c. on our outings.

We also drove out to a wildlife refuge named Witless Bay.  I don't know about you, but the next time that I find myself in an unnamed part of the world, I'm going to call it something like "Halitosis Harbor", or "Stupidhead Valley", or maybe just "Boring Park."