15 Year Anniversary at Chillingsworth

Hey!
Married 15 years now... Amy and I just celebrated our 15th anniversary. Good time... most expensive french food in town, parents babysitting, pouring rain, hurricane on the way, power out during coffee, too dark to use the bathroom at the restaurant, used the beach instead... romantic? almost. Now putting the 1-month old to bed. sigh...

Cake 13 - Mixed Media - Butter Cream on Chocolate

(click on images for a larger view)
Max turned 8 a few days ago, but we celebrated his birthday today. Every year I make a cake for the kids on their birthday (Max 8 and Sophie 5). This was Cake no. 13. Sadly, it's the only art I do these days. Fortunately, it's fun! This year Max had no idea what theme he wanted. A dinosaur would have been a good way to go, but apparently I've done two for him in the past. I remember one. I can barely remember my street address let alone what cakes I've made over the past 8 years, so I didnt' argue.

So what to do? He loves baseball, and with the season coming to and end and an all but guaranteed slot in the playoffs, I went with Fenway Park. He (we) had gotten a pair of tickets from Amy's Dad as an early birthday present this year. We watched them beat Texas back in August for Max's first-watched-win at Fenway (poor kid, he's 1 for 4).

These are the pics of the cake. I have pics of the Mini Golf party up on Flickr. So those of you who care to view them, send me your account name so I can add you to my viewers list.

(click on images for a larger view)

Has a week really gone by?

My day started yesterday with a 7:00 am dentist appointment. Now its 39 1/2 hours later and I'm still up... somehow. Somewhere in there I had 4 hours of sleep in a row, I think between 1 am 5 am this morning. Will is now asleep too. He's snoozing next to me in his bouncy seat. He's stirring though and should be up any minute, so I've only got a few minutes...

Max turned 8 today, and he had fun opening presents and eating a "pudding cake." His REAL cake will come this weekend at his "Kid B-day" with all his friends.

Sophie loves "Mothering" with her new "living doll". She's so good with Will; changing him, holding him, giving him bottles. She's great, but now is acting out more often these days trying not to slip into middle-child-obscurity. I don't blame her.

Soccer draft was tonight. I'm coaching again, and I think we'll have a fun team this year. I've got 9 kids this time as opposed to 15 last year. Subbing will be much easier with 9. I was able to get a couple of Max's close friends on his team, and maybe he'll make some new ones too.

The days are getting shorter and nights are definately cooler. We still don't have any storm windows for the downstairs, nor do we have gutters, insulation in the cellar, nor tires for the Prius. Ugh.

The Last of the Summer Quahogs

Hanna came and went so quickly that if you were a heavy sleeper, you'd never know that the eye of a tropical storm passed over you. That huge mass of clouds shown in my previou spost passed to the west of us and the wind whipped up on the other. We'd be lucky if we got a full inch of rain out of it here in Brewster. The wind was weak too. Aside from a blanket of locust leaves on the lawn and a few dead ends off a pine tree, our neighborhood was left untouched. And, above us, a perfectly cloudless blue sky. The day remained breezy, but with the heat, it felt good.


I was itching to get down to the water to see if there was any damage to the coast, and checking the tide chart, I found low tide was at around noon. I figured I'd see if there were any leftover quahogs from the August stock while we were down there. Amy wanted the kids out of the house, so off we went. It was gorgeous down there. Some of the best weather we'd had all summer and only 4 or 5 families camped on the beach. The usual mob of clammers for a sunday noon low was sparse and quiet. We walked out, found 10 good stuffers and called it a day. The kids played on the flats and played in the warm September water. I've got to get out there one of these early mornings to see if the Stripers are hungry again and if the big blues are in close. Not many weeks left for fishing.

(Max found a clam with a message! Click image for full size)

Hanna's Knocking

All day we have been waiting for the arrival of T.S. Hanna. Hanna's not particularly a dangerous storm, but could bring some good rain and wind. Certainly, the beaches will have some erosion.

The outer bands of the storm have been passing over weakly since about 1:00 this morning, with occasional downpours, but nothing torrential yet. The center of rotation is still about 250 miles to the south east, but is moving at 28 mph toward us. It looks like we'll be in the top right quadrant (with the strongest winds) so it should be a good blow tonight. Most of the rain looks like its west of us. We'll see. It's always exciting to see what these storms bring.

End of Summer

So it's back to school for the kids, and alls going well so far. Labor Day weekend had it's ups and downs. The highlight was the Kreegers "End of Summer" aka "Jumpy Tent" aka "Margarita Machine" birthday party for Ale. The kids jumped for over 5 hours straight, and the Kreeger kids were bounding before and after I left. I'm guessing they might still be sleeping it off. As for the adults, well... some of them might still be sleeping it off too, considering the number of machine-fulls of margaritas that were drunk. Man were they good!


On the downside, I ended up working most of Saturday morning and Max was so sick on Labor Day that we didnt' get to go close the Wychmere Harbor Club like we do every year. It's the only day Amy lets us go play in the big pool and eat the great food and drink the expensive drinks... but I guess there's always next year...