Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hile Lukey and Kenzie were visiting with us, we headed up to Burlington for an afternoon on the waterfront in the sun.  Our plan was to walk the waterfront from the Boathouse all the way up to North Beach and then back again.  It was a really beautiful day for this sort of walk but, unfortunately, my health was rather poor this particular day and by the time we reached the short distance to the Coast Guard Station, we had to turn around and find something else to do.  I was weak and generally feeling quite lousy.  We decided to head up to Church Street to have lunch instead. On the beginning of our walk, we walked up to Battery Park.  There is a long straight path to Battery Park that is lined with trees forming a nice canopy over the walkway.  When I first decided to start doing some infrared photography, I had this particular location in mind for a photo.  I wanted to see this tree-lined walkway and canopy in high contrast and with bright white leaves on the trees.  I like how thes

Last night, Sheila and I did the lazy Saturday afternoon thing and had only a couple of snacks for dinner.  It rained all day so we were indoors...  I took a much-needed nap (I'm still trying to recover from a trip to Burlington with the grandkids)...  we watched a few movies and shows...  it was definitely a very quiet Saturday.   At around 5pm, I made some mozzarella sticks.  Wow...  they were good! Then at around 7pm, I made some beer cheese dip and hot pretzels...  that was even better than the mozzarella sticks!   I thought that I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling very hungry since we didn't eat much for dinner but I had no problems.  I could definitely go for more of those hot pretzels and beer cheese dip this morning though!

W hile Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for a few days (mom was in the hospital giving birth to Sophia), we spent some time in the backyard.  We had a fire in the firepit, nice Adirondack chairs, a putting green, and the new homemade Giant Jenga game.  Later in the evening, I made some Shish-Ka-Bob on the grill in the outdoor kitchen, we had S'mores and we played a few games of Dominoes.   We had a good time playing quite a few games of Giant Jenga!   I shot video as well as photos but I'll put together a video soon for another blog entry.  Hmmm...  maybe I'll put together a video of all the things we did in the backyard on this evening.   For now, here are some photos of Giant Jenga with Gee, Lukey, Kenzie and Pop... We had a really nice time on this afternoon and night!   We're looking forward to the next time some or all of the grandchildren are at the house.  It is always fun to play!

Ever since Lukey and Kenzie were infants, we've always made sure we have the correct size life preservers for them.  We've been kayaking with them since they were born so we made sure they had appropriate life preservers to wear.  They also needed them while at the lake house for playing in the water.  So, we started with infant life preservers, then to small toddler life preservers, then to larger toddler life preservers, and then to child life preservers.  Now it was time for them to get new life preservers again in the next size up.   We were at Dick's looking for running shoes the other day for Kenzie and sneakers for Lukey but, while wandering around the store, we came across these O'Brien life preservers on a Buy-One, Get-One-Free sale so we took advantage of the sale and purchased two new adult-sized life preservers for them.   Lukey and Kenzie tried on the much more comfortable O'Brien vests to ensure they fit and then we headed on to the shoe department to

L iza and John gave birth to another child the other day and they are now home from the hospital. Lukey and Kenzie stayed with us while Liza was in the hospital and we had a great time with them, as always.  I believe they are still enjoying their time with us too which is a good thing!  I'll be writing more about our very busy days and nights spent with Lukey and Kenzie in other blog entries soon.   In the meantime, this blog entry is about bringing Lukey and Kenzie home yesterday so we all could meet their newest sibling, two-day-old Sophia...   In this photo, below, we are on our way to meet Sophia.  Lukey and Kenzie were unusually quiet on this ride.  I'm not sure if they were just exhausted from everything we did while they visited with us (I know I was!) or their minds were simply on the baby and getting home... Ace was very happy to see us and, naturally, he was looking for attention since he is no longer the baby of the family and, understandably, likely feeling a bit a