Get it?  Aaargh?  R?

Well, then . . .

Ahoy thar maties!

We was overrun with pirates last weekend!

and what a great time we had too, in spite of the showers on Saturday.

We played sink the ship

And made beautiful fairy houses down on the lake front.

We also had some pirates who showed their walking-the-plank skills

There were plenty of landlubber games too, like a ping pong tournament, swabbing the deck game, hook making, scavenger hunt and jewelry making.

Two pirates who were marooned here,

taught the kids how to be pirate-y by making a damsel in distress, practicing their Aaaarghing and sword fighting

with noodles.

When they felt the little landlubbers were ready, they swore them in be pirates

And Debbie gave them tattoos to seal the deal.

I had so much fun, I didn’t want to put my pirate eye patch away.  But Tami got tired of me knocking things over with my antlers.

Tune in tomorrow to see some photos from the awesome magic show we had Saturday night by The Magic of the Steelgraves!

We had seventy campers check in last Friday and Saturday . . .

70!

And that doesn’t include our 50 seasonals.

Poland Spring Campground went from totally deserted to hopping in just a few hours.  Everyone seemed so happy to be here, which was kind of strange because  Tami was about to   make them her slaves put them to work cleaning up the place.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny.   Tami laid out 10 dozen donuts and 5 dozen muffins at 8am and two hours later, they were pretty much gone!

Of course, she came right to me.  “Maxwell!  What did I tell you about scoffing down all the donuts and muffins!  Those were for the Clean Up crew.”

But I was ready for her.  I had proof that I wasn’t the only one enjoying their sweet, gooey-ness!

“Well,” she said, “that explains 7 of them. Where’d the other 163  go?”

Why does she always blame ME, when food goes missing?  Didn’t she see all the hungry rakers out in the campground?

They were working hard

Everyone did an awesome job!   From the tallest and oldest, right down to the littlest

And not just at raking. There were sweepers

and dog watchers

and Paula too!

In the afternoon, some of my camping buddies came up to the store to get their trees. We like to encourage them to plant between the sites to replenish what might have been trampled or crushed the year before.

After all, what would a campground be without it’s trees??

A parking lot!

When the work was all done for the day, some of our campers found time for ice cream

while others found a quiet spot to fish

right alongside the loons.  Do you see it, to the left of the boat?  The fishermen were sitting so quietly, that the loons just kept diving and surfacing around the boat.  One of the loons came up with a big fish in its mouth, threw it back and swallowed it whole!

I’d like to give a big, big thank you to our entire Clean Up Crew.

We couldn’t have done it without you!!

And Tami probably would have made me her slave for the month if you hadn’t of shown up.

Come see us again real soon . . .

I can’t wait to hang out with my little camping buddies . . .

eating donuts and doing some of this  . . .

and maybe some of this

and even some of this

Wait a minute . . .

Tami’s trying to tell me something . . .

WHAT??!!

What do you mean this weekend’s all about cleaning up?

You mean I have to  . . . gulp . . . rake?

or do some of this

or some of this

to earn my donuts??

TAAAAA-MI!

Did you hear that Governor Baldacci signed an emergency law into effect for open water fishing to begin a week early?  How cool is that?

The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife says effective immediately, all lakes, brooks and ponds are open for fishing except for those that have normal opening dates later than April 1.

When the ice went out early, all my fishing friends couldn’t wait to drop their lines in the water and try to catch some big ones!  That was really good news for them.  But Tami read an article that said none of the bait shops were ready . . . that was really bad news.

Speaking of big fish, David got a chance to talk to some ice fisherman back in February, who were fishing right off our point.

The fish in the photo below was caught on a earlier day, but in the same spot, and the fisherman e-mailed it to Dave for the blog

They said they were having great luck, in spite of the eagle stealing a fish right out from under their noses!

Sneaky eagle!

Then again, if you fish within a few yards of an eagles nest . . .

Here’s a couple more fish pictures Tami really likes,

To see all our fish pictures, click the fishing tag to the right.  You’ll also see the photos from the day the game wardens released brown trout right off our point.

Happy Fishing Everyone!!

A little bird told me I’d better check out the blog, and it’s a good thing I did!  That Maxwell!  He’s always sneaking on  to post something.  Even when I ask him to do the posting, he never does it like I tell him to.

I say: Tell your camping friends, the Calendar of Events will be out in the mail soon.

He posts: Hey!  Guess what?  I kind-of-sort-of- got a sneak peek at the 2010 Calendar of Events and here it is!

I say:    Maxx, post a little blurb about our Medieval Weekend.  Throw three or four pictures in there too.

He posts: Twenty pictures and two pages about all the fun medieval recreation games we had that weekend.

I say: Don’t post that picture of me in a gas mask!

He posts:    That picture of me in a gas mask.

Sigh.

This week, Maxx was really worried because one of his facebook camping friends told him they couldn’t “Think Spring”, no matter how hard they tried.

“Tami, Tami, what do we do?” he asked.

“Did you mention the cracklin’ campfire?  Remind her of the sad loon calls?”

“I did, I did!” he said.

“Really, Maxx, she’ll be fine,” I said.

Maxx wrung his hands.  “No, no she won’t.  She needs some spring NOW!“   And he ran off into the campground to find spring.

I don’t think he’s going to find it, do you?  Even the groundhog insisted there’d be six more weeks of winter, no matter how hard Maxx tried to get him to change his mind.

But maybe these pictures that the Snowdon’s sent in will help.

They camped with us last August and caught these beauties

There’s three generations of fisherman there!

So what about all of you?  Can you help poor Maxx out?  If you have any pictures from your stay at Poland Spring Campground that can help us all start Thinking Spring, e-mail them to us and we’ll post them here!

I was heading up to the house today to see if Tami wanted to go for a walk, and it looked like she had the same idea!

Great minds think alike!!

“Heading to the lake?” I asked.

“Where else, big guy?” she said, patting my antler.

So we started down the main road, and tromped into the middle of the playing field.  Tami checked the seasonal sites on both sides of the field

before we walked under the basketball  hoop into the woods. As always, Cookie had to be in the lead

She’s such a five year old!

Tami stopped a lot  ’cause she said she wanted to take pictures.  She thought I couldn’t tell, but she was really getting winded from the wicked bad cold she has.  I asked her if she wanted to go back, but she really wanted to see if the eagles were down at the point.

When we first stepped into the woods, four huge ravens started squawking and shrieking.  They swooped low over us

and landed on a branch where they kept taunting us.  They didn’t worry me at all . . . really!  But Cookie was so freaked out, she ran back to walk next to Tami.

“Never mind them,” Tami said.  “They’ll stop.”

It was so pretty outside today.   The sky was a bright blue, and the sun was shining down.

The animal prints above came all the way across from the beaver hut to the campground point.  Then it followed  our marked trail alongside the lake and up  into the 20′s.  Tami tried to take a picture of the prints so she could look it up, but they just looked like blobs in the snow.  They weren’t big like mine, so they weren’t moose.  But they didn’t look like Cookie’s either, so they weren’t from a dog. I guess they could have been from one deer, but deer usually travel together, don’t they?

When we got to the point, Tami called Cookie back off the ice and made her sit.  “I thought I heard the eagle cry,”  she said.  We stood quietly,  looking up and down the lake.   Tami even used the telephoto lens.  We saw some ice fisherman down by the state park.  We saw some snow mobilers out on the lake.

But we didn’t see the eagles.

“Did you hear that?” Tami asked.

“That squeaky, squawky sound?” I said.

We listened some more.

“Um, Tami?”

She held up a hand.  “Shhhhhh!  I still hear it.”

“But Tami-”

“Maax! What?”

“You’re making the squeaky, squawky sound.  When you breathe.”

Tami just looked at me for a minute, and when she squeaked again, she started giggling  . . . which made her cough . . . which made her decide it was time to head for home.   We took the path alongside the lake that lead us out of the woods across from site 29, and we walked up the hill through the 30′s

Tami’d like to go out tomorrow too.  I sure hope her cold is better, and not worse!

Did you all have a great Christmas season?  How about your New Year’s celebrations?  Things were crazy around here, what with Tami directing the church youth play, baking cookies, wrapping paper flying all over, and celebrations with family and friends.  Tami says it just wouldn’t be Christmas without a little bit of craziness, though!

And I’m sorry it took so long to post a blog entry, but you see, the laptop cord to Tami’s computer started to smoke one night, and even though she didn’t freak out for tooooo long . . . and they ordered a new cord right away . . . it was so close to Christmas that it took forEVer to arrive.

Guess what??   Tami and David invited me up to the house to celebrate New Years!  We had a blast playing a  game of double twelve dominoes.  Tami kept telling me how good she was at playing it . . .

but the rest of us were just a little bit better!  She came in last place!  HA!  So she made us all switch to Tumbling Tower

where Ben, David, Alex and Bryant stacked the tower so well, Tami came in last again.  She tried telling everyone that they’d ganged up against her, soDave suggested a different kind of game.

He put four chairs facing each other in the middle of the kitchen.   Then he told everyone to sit sideways on the chairs with their feet firmly on the floor,  and to lay their heads on the knees of the person behind them.  Then I pulled OUT all the chairs from under them, and Ben snapped this picture

It was wicked cool!  They all stayed up in the air for about a minute . . . till Tami fell on her butt from giggling so much!

THIS is what Tami says about her non-winning streak

After everyone FINALLY woke up this morning, I dragged Tami and Cookie out for a walk in the woods.  The snow was falling gently, and it was so quiet and peaceful.

Tami said it was just what she needed ’cause starting Monday, she’s got a lot of work to do!  There’s over 250 advance reservations to enter in the computer and letters to send to those campers.  Then she has to send her “Think Spring” letter to the seasonals and the 500 families who camp with us year, after year, after year.

Oh!  And she’s got to write up her 2010 Calendar of Events!  Tami said all the entertainment is booked, including Santa.

While Tami was out Christmas shopping, I took a sneak peek in her files.  All our favorite theme weekends are listed!    Pirate Weekend, Adventurer Weekend, Super Hero Weekend, two Halloweens and many, many more!

I can’t wait to see all my camping buddies again so we can make some 2010 memories!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here!   Do you know how I know?

Well, it’s not because Cookie stole my Christmas hat

It’s not because we got 12 inches of snow this week AND had a snow day off from school

And as yummy as it smells, it’s not because Tami is spending more time in the kitchen baking things like banana bread and canning apple butter.

Nooooo, you know what tells me Christmas is near??

This!

Last Saturday, the Wight’s headed out to the tree farm for their perfect Christmas tree.

Like he has every year for the last 20, David tried to get them to pick the very first one they saw . . . the one closest to the car.  But Tami and Ben were having none of that!  It’s not a hunt for the perfect tree if you don’t hike all the way to the other end of the farm, is it?

The annual tree choosing agreement is that everyone has to like the tree for it to be considered perfect.

It takes hoooooooo-ours.   Okay, maybe just one hour.  But you know why it takes an hour?

Because Tami chooses trees that would never, ever, fit in their living room.

David chooses the smallest trees he can find

And Ben chooses trees that will hold the biggest, and the most-est gifts under it’s boughs

I always knew that Ben was one smart kid!!

Eventually, they all agree.  Or one of them gets their way, anyway.

That’s not the part that had Tami in a tizzy though!   No . . . it was the decorating part.  And that’s where I walked in last Saturday.   The tree had fit perfect in the stand  , . . and it had stood grandly in the great room, too.  Even David had declared it a great find before he’d said, “My work here is done.” and disappeared to let Tami decorate it.

She’d already strung two sets of lights, and had done half the third when  *POOF*  half of that third string went totally black.

She tried changing fuses . . . and bulbs.  Nothing worked.

And she had no spare lights.

Sooooo, the crazy obsessed silly person that she is, she headed out at 7pm on Saturday night to find five color lights, with random colored twinklers.   Because it was snowing, she decided to head to the Oxford Walmart.  They’d surely have lights, she said.

Oh, they had lights all right.    Just not HER lights.

And neither did anyone else in Oxford.

It was snowing pretty hard by then, so she bought some twinkling stars, brought them home, strung them up, poured a glass of wine and stewed all night with those stars twinkling and her tree half lit.

I told you she was silly.

Sunday morning, she went to church (she swore she didn’t pray for lights though) and then headed into Auburn.  After going to two stores, she finally found some five colored lights and the box said, “Random Twinkle”.  She was so excited, she bought THREE boxes!

When she got them home and plugged in the first set, they were half out too!

“Good thing I bought three sets,” she said, plugging in another.  It was then that I snapped the picture above.

Because it was then, that she realized . . .

only the pink ones twinkled.

The PINK ones!

Everyone in the house went to hide while she stewed some more!

I’m not exactly sure what she did after that, ’cause I didn’t come out of hiding until she declared it done.  I can tell you though, that I really don’t see a lot of pink twinklers and there’s two sets of lights by the back door ready to be returned to Lowe’s.

And don’t tell Tami, okay, because I’m afraid we’ll lose her to the funny farm if you do  . . . .

but I noticed a dark spot on the back side of the tree yesterday.

There’s a stretch of 10 lights out in the back.

She isn’t gonna like that!

But not this kind of  turkey . . .

THIS kind . . .

On Sunday, I started to beg Tami to take me for another walk.  But I didn’t have to whine for very long.  She said taking a walk before all the “turkey-day-craziness” got here, was a pretty good idea.  So, we headed down the main road past Big Joe’s site to check out the water front first, ’cause we could hear the geese honking away down there.

I noticed right away that things are a lot browner now, but we still found a bit of color here and there

When we got to the lake, we couldn’t find even one goose!  Or a duck.  Or a eagle.  Or a turkey.

Tami said it was because I kept kicking up the leaves all the way and I had to learn to tip toe quietly through the woods if I wanted to see wildlife.

Have you ever tried to walk quietly through the woods in November?  Sheesh!  Crunchy leaves and snapping twigs . . . I’d liked to see Tami try to tip toe around them with four hooves!

We did see lots of squirrels.  This one wasn’t afraid of us at all,

In fact, he sat there, looking me in the eye, twitching his tail and yelling!  Every now and then, he’d scratch his back feet on the tree too.  It kind of made me nervous.  I thought he was gonna, maybe, jump on my antlers or something, so I begged Tami to stop taking pictures and dragged her down the trail, along the lake, toward the beaver hut.

Those beavers have been busy again!  There were lots of birch trees cut down

and guess where we found them?  Yep!  On top the hut

Can you see all the branches, grasses and twigs they put on it?  Every time we go down to look, we see more stuff dragged on top and then

They drag mud up and smooth it down over everything.

There’s the top of the beaver’s hut just beyond that big log.

Tami was surprised to see dragonflies out and about.  About four of them landed on her during our trek.

And I was surprised to see boaters!

Brrrrrrrr!  It must have been chilly out on the lake!    My antlers were shivering just watching them!

While Tami and I were walking along, I asked her what she was most thankful for.

“Well, my family of course,” she said, as she took photo number 4324 of the lake.  “I’m always very, very thankful for them, and our health.”

“Me too?” I asked.

She smiled at me over the camera.  “You’re family, aren’t you?”

“What else?” I asked.

“I’m thankful for all my friends, and our campers and to be able to work at something I love doing.   I’m really, really thankful that we can take nature walks right outside our backdoor.”  Tami lowered her camera. “What are you thankful for, Maxx?”

“All that stuff!” I said.  “And my little camping buddies, too!”

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

Lately, every time Ben and I go outside to kick the soccer ball around the front lawn, all we hear is this annoying chattering.

And it isn’t Tami.

Those squirrels are busy, busy, busy, let me tell you.  Back and forth, back and forth.

And I think they’re getting desperate!  Look at this!

Squirrel butt!!

He was in and out and in and out of that pumpkin for the better part of a day!  Finally, Tami made Ben and I put those pumpkins waaaaaaay back in the woods.  Tami didnt’ want those theiving squirrels stealing her blankets.

What?  You don’t think a squirrel could steal a blanket?

Try telling the squirrel that!

I mean, really!  Where did he think he was gonna put it?