February vacation 2010

February vacation came in like a lamb and went out like a lion. Maria and I started off the week in Jefferson for a few days while Paul was in D.C. at a conference for work. Maria enjoyed strawberry ice cream cones at least once a day and we had a pretty relaxing time visiting family and friends with no real agenda and no schedule. Maria and Aba played very well together and while we were waiting for Babcia and Dzadek to make their way to the car Aba jumped in to clean crumbs and keep Maria company.

Someone mentioned it was like old home days for me because I got to see several high school friends over vacation. We met up with the Marcos while they were visiting their family in Jefferson. Very soon now they will be heading to Guam for an extended stay as Jeremy is in the Navy. Gwendolyn, Julia and Bella were also there for the visit which brings the total number of little girls to six between us all. We got them all together on the couch for a picture. Left to right: Paige, Pasquelle (sp?), Peyton, Maria, Bella & Julia.

That reminds me, it's a girl! We're having another daughter ourselves in July.

Maria and I returned home in the monsoon that soon became the Power Outage of 2010. Driving home in the horizontal rain for three hours was NOT a blast but we made it safely and with not much time to spare before I headed out for dinner with some mommy friends. We went to the Black Cow in Newburyport, MA where the food was excellent and the restaurant so close to the water that the storm surge sent waves flying against the windows and flooded the parking lot with not just water but lobster buoys and a piece of a dock that was getting washed away. Driving home in horizontal rain with flashes of lightning (or maybe transformers blowing up) I thought about how unhappy my parents would be that I was out in this weather. I got home about 20 minutes before Southeast NH lost power-our own personal outage lasting for five days. There were reports the next day of the wind blowing windshield wipers off of cars and nearby us trees were broken or just completely uprooted and laid upon each other in a domino effect pulling power lines down and blocking roads. Fortunately we suffered no damage of any kind and since I've stewed about the lack of power enough for the whole town we'll leave it at that.

The upside of the outage, for us anyway, is that we have good "powerful" friends living close enough to entertain us in the evenings until bedtime. We shared several meals with Susanne and with the Miskinis' and end up thinking that we should pretend to have power outages every once in a while to get together like that more often.

On Sunday Old Home Days continued with a trip to Carrie and Tim's house where the Gagnons, visiting from CA, met us for lunch. We had delicious pasta there and we brought some home with us which we ate tonight in fact.

Maria & Maeve Molly & Sam