Monarchs and Ashland

 January was a bit of a rough start to the year.  Art was in Arizona for a good part of the month trying to help get his Mom taken care of.  My friends rallied around and Olivia brought over this beautiful prayer shawl for me.  Blizz adopted it promptly but will happily share.

Such a blessing to be in such a good community surrounded by people who care.

One of my friends at the town offices had her husband pass away from a sudden heart attack this month.  It seemed there was plenty of grief to go around.  Another friend had found a tenant of hers who had collapsed.  He passed away several weeks later.  So many people had passed on this year already.

With the little snow we did get we went out and snow shoed and skied the best we could.  Our friend built this great people carrier on his groomer for a friend who had shoulder surgery and couldn't use the rope tow.

We were able to make it to a couple of hockey games together, a few I went with a friend and others Art took a friend.  We missed more games than we saw unfortunately.  Our friends came over to watch the game a few times, too.  Bruins were doing horribly at first, didn't lose a game in November, then had a rough start to the year. 

Art was back by the end of the month just in time for his annual birthday ski trip.

 This year we used our time share and went to Ashland for the week.  It was a good sized space so we had plenty of company.  Susan, Charlie, and Sam came up for the first couple of days to ski, then our friends the Wildes came up for the rest of the week, and finally Olivia was able to join for the last couple of days.
Not much snow other than what they made.  They had a great day skiing at Sunapee for Art's birthday and enjoyed Cannon a couple of times.
Us girl's snow shoed/hiked a couple of days and shopped at both Tilton and in North Conway.

 In January we took our guys and some friends on our annual outing.  This year we got a box at the Monarchs game.  They are the farm team for the LA Kings.  We had a great evening with everyone although the Monarch's lost the game.