Live Free or Die!

Welcome to New Hampshire! Home of the most bitchin' state motto of all time! We made it, unpacked (mostly), got internet, and started fellowship. Our house is on Big Island Pond with our own pier and floating dock.  It's pretty amazing and the whole first week felt like vacation.  It'll definitely be hard to leave here come next August.

 

The dogs are out of control with water induced euphoria!  On the dock, in the water, on the dock, in the water...for HOURS.  They're still not great swimmers, but Moose is happiest laying on the beach, in the shallow water, and Munroe is happiest disrupting the peace.

Needless to say, their fur is softer and they stink like garbage.

The first week here we took a day to go to Rockland Maine's official Lobster Fest.  It was incredibly beautiful up there and we hope to travel a little further north to camp in Acadia National Park to celebrate my 30th birthday (currently accepting all gifts). 

Just sitting in the parking lot of Dunkin Doughnuts

 We're still trying to get our own kayak/canoe for exploring the lake we live on.  This has been my biggest priority since being up here, but we're trying to figure out where/what to buy. 

The area surrounding our house is very heavily wooded.  New Hampshire is surprisingly green and come fall I'm sure it will be absolutely dazzling.  (Man, I love fall!) A sister of an old friend of mine thinks the best icebreaker when visiting a new place and meeting new people is, "What kind of natural disaster's do you have here/where you live?"  I think it's really, 1) what color are the cops cars and 2) What are the largest predators in the area? The answers to all three questions for our new home are: snow storms, black and navy, and bears.  That's right, bears are the largest predator in the area, but also locally spotted are moose, bobcats, and the neighbor's German Shepherd I mistook for a coyote very early one morning while I was sans contacts...My fellowship director has found all of them in her backyard, one town west of us (not including my neighbor's dog...I don't think).  Fall and spring should be interesting around here...The other night we were enjoying the calm sunset brings to the lake when we spotted a group of bats flying over our beach. I'm crazy nuts for bats.  They're like spastic birds flying all over and eating mosquitos.  Plus their faces are all smooshy and cute so there's that.  After a rather technical conversation about daytime lighting, we decided a bat box would not be appropriate in our yard.  For legal reasons Brandon also refuses to scale the neighboring fence and tack one up in their yard, but really, that's just increasing their property value so I don't see the issue here...

That was quite the post, and I've still not covered anything about fellowship yet, but that's a story for another night...