First Run...Almost Made It

So last night, Central Massachusetts got it's first meaningful snow for the season.  We got a dusting for Christmas and about an inch on Friday morning.  But last night, we got about 10 inches of fresh, fluffy snow.  And Dave couldn't be happier.  All night he kept running to the windows,checking the accumulation.  Actually, I'm surprised he didn't wake up and jump up and down on the bed, exclaiming about how much snow we got.  I'm very proud that he didn't.

While we wanted to take our snowmobiles out, we haven't registered them yet and today the agent office was closed.  So we went cross country skiing at Great Brook Ski Touring Center.  It was a great day for it.  The sun came out, the powder was perfect for gliding, and I only fell once (over some ice at the very beginning). 

Dave and I came back home and cleared out some snow from around the house and Dave killed the downspout with the snow blower.

The little dark chunks to the left of the downspout are more pieces of downspout.  Dave is ashamed.

Then we decided to have some real fun.  Even though our snowmobiles aren't registered, we can ride them on our own property.  Behold: Dave turning our backyard into his own private, albeit tiny, snowmobile trail. (My apologies for the sideways-ness of this video...I actually thought I was taking it correctly.)

It was actually pretty fun.  Until we went to put the sled back on the trailer and Dave came up the slight incline only to run out of gas.  We didn't have that much gas in it to begin with, and I'm sure the slight tilt didn't help, but it was pretty funny to see that after going around the yard about 8 times, he didn't have enough in the tank to bring it home.

So close, yet so far.  Dave is again ashamed.

So on Dave's agenda for tomorrow is registering the snow mobiles and stopping for gas on the way home so we can get the sled back on the trailer (and hopefully go out on a real trail later this week).

Harpoon Brewery or Beer at 11:30 am

Dad came up to spend Christmas with Dave and I this year.  So we thought the perfect thing to do would be head to the Harpoon Brewery in Boston and take the tour.  If you remember, Dave and I visited the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT, and took the tour, which resulted in a lot of beer consumption, specifically because another woman on the tour didn't like the beer and kept giving her portion to Dave.

Well, the Boston tour was equally fun.  It happened to be Ugly Sweater Day, so most of the tour guises were dressed in hideous Christmas sweaters which was of course, amazing.  The fun thing about the Harpoon Brewery in Boston is that because of Prohibition, the Harpoon brewery license is noted as 001, the oldest continuously operating brewery in the state of Massachusetts. 

The tour starts with a tasting, this time of their Rye IPA.  Then we got to taste the IPA straight off the line, unfiltered and very cold.  Then later another taste of the filtered IPA for a comparison and finally a free for all at the tasting taps.  I tried the Harpoon Dark, the Raspberry UFO and the UFO White.  Dave tried some of the more dark and unique offerings, and both Dad and Dave tried the Apple Pie, which is the combination of the Winter Warmer and their Apple Cider.  It legitimately tastes like apple pie in a glass.  So we bought a six pack of each of those to enjoy with Christmas dinner (since I didn't make apple pie for dessert, it seemed appropriate. 

Then we had to get lunch, cause we were getting a little tipsy before 1 pm.