Thanksgiving and Mt. Greylock

Hey Everyone and welcome back!  Sorry we took such a long hiatus from posting on the blog, but we want to start back up!  For our first post back, we wanted to share some photos with you from our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, and our hike to the top of Massachusetts.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our place, and we had an awesome spread, including turkey and all of the fixings.  We also had some good friends over, and everyone enjoyed their day!

The next day we figured it was time to burn off some turkey, so we decided to hike Mt. Graylock, the tallest point in Massachusetts at 3491 feet.

It is a long way up!

A cool tree to hang out in.

Caroline joined in too.

There was snow towards the top,  but the warmer temperatures were melting the snow, so the streams were running strongly.

More snow, lots of snow, and lots of water runoff.  

Frozen up at the top, very windy and cold!

The Mt. Greylock monument, honoring all of Massachusetts fallen soldiers.

View from the top, as it was getting cold and the sun setting we did not spend too much time taking pictures.

Almost back down, Caroline is getting excited to get home.

It was a great hike, and hiking up into the snow and getting chased back down from the running water was fun.  Until next time.

Hello Spring!

Once again we seemed to let time get the best of us and here we are on the first day of Spring...

Well, that was the start to a blog post we had intended to enter in more than a month ago.  So now time has evaded us even more...  But we have had a LOT going on!  Caroline started a new job about a month ago and is absolutely loving it.  She was able to go home for a week between leaving her old job and starting the new job, and she had a great visit with family and friends.

Mike went to California for a week in the middle of January to present a poster on his work.  Then in the middle of February he headed down to Georgia for another conference.  This time he hosted his own talk on his current research efforts and it was very successful.

Also at the time of the research conference in Georgia, Dadichi arrived.  Dadichi is currently working towards his PhD at Saarland University in Saarbruecken, Germany.  Mike visited Saarbruecken last summer for a conference and met Dadichi.  In efforts to collaborate, Dadichi visited for 8 weeks to work with Mike on joint projects.  Also visiting was Joachim, a physics technician that works at Saarland University and he helped Mike and Dadichi on their projects.  It was the first time both visitors were in the States, so we tried our best to show them a good time!

Anyway, our plan is to ramp up on our number of posts/month so please keep an eye out for our next post- coming soon!  And hopefully we will get some pictures up too :-)

Hello 2011!

Sorry for the long wait on this post, but Caroline wrote it up, and well Mike dropped the ball, so Mike will finish it up now and post it, even if it is a little late!

Merry Christmas and happy new year everyone!  We both had a wonderful holiday home with our families.  Mike got to Michigan on the 21st and spent a couple of days with his family, cross country skiing around the backyard and getting ready for Christmas.  I was able to visit Grandma and Grandpa'a house one day, and well, my Dad and Grandpa we wearing the same pants, its hard to tell they are related huh?

By the time Christmas rolled around I was ready to eat, open presents, and see everyone who I have not seen in a long time.  This was real fun, and then it was time to go up north!  It was Kelly, my Mom, and Dad for the first couple days and then my buddy Nick came up as well.  We had a great time relaxing, hanging out in the snow, and one day we all headed over to go cross country skiing at Hanson Hills.  Below are a few shots:

 Nick skiing

Mike skiing!

Caroline had to wait until the evening of the 23rd before she headed home.  She had a great time seeing her family and partaking in the Dove Christmas Eve holiday tradition.  And in true Dove style, all of the Christmas presents were opened before the night was over and everyone already knew what presents they were getting.  So, come Christmas day, all there was left to do was eat chocolates by the fire and relax.  On Sunday, after being home for only three days, Caroline had to catch a plane back to the East Coast, or so she thought...  An unexpected blizzard ended up canceling her flight and the earliest she could get rebooked was Wednesday night!  So Caroline made the supreme sacrifice of missing a few days of work to have an extended holiday and spend extra time with her family :-)

On Wednesday night (or early morning), Caroline got back to our place at 1:30am, got a few hours of sleep, headed to work for 10 hours, and then headed back to the airport to pick up Mike.  And boy was she happy to see him!  After being together long distance for two years, you'd think we could easily be apart for a week, but we've just gotten so used to having each other around that it's not so easy anymore!

We rang in the new year by having a few friends over to celebrate.  Mike made an awesome spinach-artichoke dip that everyone loved.  And Caroline ate a huge bowl of ice cream (out of the wonderful new ice cream dishes that Mike got from the Forish white elephant), and was ready to go to sleep by 12:30.

On Sunday we went on an exhaustive run up Mount Toby (remember those pretty fall pictures we showed a few posts back).  The scenery was much different this time around, with bare trees and a covering of snow/slush on the ground.  We ended up running (with maybe a little bit of walking) the 3 miles up the mountain, climbing 900 feet along the way.  Walking back down topped our trip to a total of 6 miles in about an hour and a half and a great way to end the weekend!

Nor'easter Snow Day!

While Mike is off wine-touring his way through sunny California, Caroline is stuck (literally) in their apartment!  A Nor'easter storm has covered the entire state of Massachusetts in heaps of snow!  As Caroline was getting ready for work this morning, around 6am she peaked outside to see this...

And this....

After watching the news and hearing more about the weather conditions, she decided to make the supreme sacrifice and work from home for the day (as the 1.5 hour commute would have been at least doubled).  Around 12:30 Caroline ventured out into the snow with her and Mike's friend, Melissa.  The rest of the story is best told in pictures :-)

Same view from the morning picture- just with more snow!

What's left of Mike's car...

And what's left of Caroline's car...

View of our backyard/potato farm.

Street behind our apartment complex.

Caroline knee deep in snow!

Caroline's favorite view- on clear days you can see mountains in the background.

Melissa "swimming" in the snow!

Caroline's car, partially uncovered.  Don't worry, she managed to finish the job and cleared off Mike's car too :-)

The snow is still coming down, strong as ever.  It's been constant since early this morning, with 1-2 inches accumulating per hour.  And with that, it's about time for some hot cocoa!