What happens in the backyard when no one is looking....

This is what happens when your 13 year old finds your ipod......

 

And really likes horses.....



Belated Happy Birthday to Aoife!

Aoife turned the big 13 years old on September 15th!

 

 

Where did the time go??????



4H State Show

Aoife and Marley competed at the 4H State Horse Show September 8-9. There were 18 miniature horses competing at this show - a huge jump over last year's show. This is the fastest growing division in MA 4H.
Aoife and Mr. Marley had a wonderful show - taking Reserve Champion in Gymkhana and Reserve Champion in Performance. Most importantly - great fun was had by all!

Trail Class - turning around in the box

Marley over fences!

Marley, Aoife, Stephanie, Wii, Marlena - Stephanie is the owner of the horses and the girls trainer.

The dynamic duo - Marlena and Aoife

All the loot....;-)

IEA Show 1 and 2

The IEA season began September 23 with a show at Aoife's home barn, Heritage Farm. She is competing in two classes this year: Flat and Crossrails. This first show she pinned first in her flat class and first in crossrails. The Heritage Farm Middle School team placed first overall.
The second show was October 13 at a barn in New Hampshire. This show was a repeat of the first - Aoife pinned first in flat and first in crossrails. The team took first overall.
She and her team are off to a really strong start!
Here are a few photographs of that first Heritage Farm show:

Aoife and Friends

Aoife on Zip

Checking my lead....

Team Picture - Aoife on far left

 



Liam's June 2012 Cello Recital

A small bit of catch up with this post. Liam had a cello recital in June to end his first year of lessons. He played Bach's Minuet in C. His cello instructor, Nicole, had about 15 young people play one piece each. Most were accompanied by Nicole on cello.
This is just a small snippet of Liam's performance.

First day of school! First day of school!

Everyone went back to school on September 4th. Aoife started 7th grade and Liam and Brendan started 6th grade at John F Kennedy Middle School. Big giant new school for L&B! The transition was made much easier by the fact that they have spent time in the school for other activities and big sister had quite a few question and answer sessions with the twins to help relieve concerns.

 

Here comes the bus!!

Quebec 2012 Part 2 - Tadoussac

We left Quebec City Weds. the 22 and traveled the 3 hours up and down some fairly significant mountiany bits to Tadoussac. This little town is located at the junction of the St. Lawrence Estuary and the Saguenay Fjord, in a beautiful bay. The unique junction of these 2 bodies of water stirs up huge amounts of little sea creatures and that, combined with a really deep trench that runs through the area, attracts an amazing variety of marine mammals. Which means - WHALES!

Now, we have whales here in Massachusetts - Humpbacks especially but in Tadoussac, they have those and more! Including the southernmost colony of belugas and for a few weeks in August/September - Blue Whales. 

All in all, we saw minkes, 3 fin whales swimming in a pod, a couple of humpbacks (Blizzard and Perseus), lots of harbour porpoise (usually in pairs), grey seals, a whole mess of belugas and several blue whales.

We took a couple of 12 person Zodiac trips and a couple of kayaking trips. Happily, the biggest whale seen by kayak was a minke which is pretty small!!
Highlights: several blue whales, one almost close enough to touch! - breaching minke (from the Zodiac, not kayak!) - on kayak, being surrounded, literally, by harbour porpoises and minkes surfacing. You could hear their breath sounds all around - beluga beach, a hike into a beach area where we saw about 50 belugas frolicking around and actually heard them whistle and click - Kayaking at midnight with a huge sky of stars. Every dip of the paddle stirred up bioluminescence so the water looked full of stars too. With the help of a hydrophone, we heard belugas and harbour porpoises singing underwater.

 Fin whale  - our Zodiac boat is black and actually a bit smaller!

 

 

Blue Whale - there is no zoom used on these photos!!

 

We didn't take very many photos during the Tadoussac portion of the trip. The boats and kayaks were bumpy and awkward (and often very splashy!) and our whale pictures never seem to capture the truly awesome experience of being with these creatures. I have to say, Aoife took all of these photos and she did much better than I usually do. I normally have a whole mess of ocean pictures where a whale just was......

 

 



Aoife, self portrait - Alan and Brendan behind her - on a zodiac boat

Brendan and a beluga sculpture

 

Happily, no child was eaten by whales....

It was pretty hard to come back to Northampton...