In the Great Outdoors

Christine Smith, well-known on many Hamiltopia blogs









These photos are from a delightful and refreshing January Sunday afternoon spent in Patapsco State Park with Shannon and Boog, Greg and Laura, and Rachel Heinz and her boys. The air was very cold, but being in the outdoors is good for so many reasons. What God has made is so much more beautiful than anything man has made. Being in His creation helps clean out the mind, allows time for contemplation, restores perspective.

A Special Visitor From Portland

Aunt amy came to visit in mid-January!! We were so happy to see her and be with her. Here are a few shots of a day of snowtubing--her and Jenny's Christmas gift to all the nieces and nephews.

Two days after the tubing event, we all trekked up to the Ranch for a wonderful afternoon of hiking, sliding down the skate ramps, airsoft wars, and Christmas dinner and presents with Amy! (Mom, Dad, Betty, and Grandmom were all there, but for some reason, I don't have any pictures of them this time!)

It pays to run, people! This is just some of the spare change I've found in in the first two weeks of the new year. Who knew running through Hamilton could be so lucrative? Hey, it's nothing to sneeze at--as Tim's boss says, "Every little bit helps."

There's always a party when Amy comes to town! Come to think of it, there seems to always be a party in Hamiltopia!

Looks like Maddie is cooking up a scheme...

What's new in January?

Views from our school room of our first snowfall of 2008

A Surprise 50th birthday lunch for my friend Vicky!

We know that Vicky really wasn't expecting anything because she had

already invited several of us to a 50th Bash that she was planning for herself! Is this what we all have to look forward to when we turn 50? Trying on Gail Holt's therapeutic shoes with trouser socks?

Since the party was at Josef's in Fallston, my kids went to visit GreatGrandmother Giordana, just around the corner, for a few hours.

Skiing and snowboarding at Roundtop with Willow and Drayton was a blast. Except that Willow took a bad fall and smacked the back of her head pretty hard. Drayton and I tried to tell her it wasn't that serious, but when she spit up some blood later that night, I was feeling a little sheepish...

She's okay now...well, mostly okay.
Cool cooks
Yes! We got a trampoline for Christmas! And best of all, we got it the freegan way. A friend was getting rid of it; said we could have it for free if we came and took it down and hauled it away...which we did (that is, the Tim part of "we" went and took it down and hauled it away and set it up in the dark, in the rain...) The kids are on it every day, except when it's pouring down rain (and even then, they've been out there a few times). And to think, we almost blew a few hundred bucks on a Nintendo Wii...which would've been so inconsistent with the Hamiltopian philosophy of simplicity, and enjoying what we already have...in a word, NATURE!