family – Page 15 – The Books are Taking Over…

Family Emergency/How to get in touch with us Part 1 Million

We’re in the middle of a family medical emergency at the moment.

We’re in the middle of a lot of phone calls back and forth. In the middle of it all Geoff’s cell phone has decided that the speaker will no longer work. So, it will accept text messages and send them and it will work with bluetooth devices. We can use it to make calls from the car, which is bluetooth enabled, and he’s currently looking for his bluetooth headset.

If you need to get in touch with us, specifically him, PLEASE call the house or my phone. Email is also good as we’re both hooked up to the internet 24/7 right now and will be for the foreseeable future. Comments here will also be answered in all haste.

Thanks, everyone,

~Kelly

Deep-sea fishing, anyone?

A guy that Kelly and I know from church has a friend who owns a charter fishing boat. I had been thinking that I would much rather do some deep-sea fishing for my bachelor party event than the usual debauchery of some combination of gambling and strippers. That is just not my thing, and so I thought getting out on the water (in November, no less) might be more adventurous and yet less likely to get any of us in trouble with family and/or the law. So I finally had a chance to talk to the captain in question, and he has a magnificent new (2009) 37 foot boat that can handle up to six people fishing at the same time. Feel free to check out his website and see what you think. I am thinking that for the time of year (and the captain agrees with me) that our best bet would be cod and/or haddock, but at that time of year tuna are also in season. So it would sort of depend. Anyway, if we do this it will be on Thursday, November 10 (that’s the Marine Corps birthday for any jarheads out there) so we will have plenty of time to recover before the rehearsal dinner Friday.

-Geoff

Red Sox games this past weekend

Geoff here – I actually had the chance to go to not one but two Red Sox games this weekend, thanks to the kindness of my cousin John and my Aunt Donna. Friday night I went to a game with John, his brother-in-law and his nephew. We had a pretty good time, despite the fact that we kept thinking it was going to rain on us. Thankfully it never did and the game was REALLY good. In case you hadn’t heard, the Sox stomped the Orioles and almost got into a hell of a brawl. Then Sunday afternoon Kelly and I got to go together with the tickets Aunt Donna had sent us as a gift. Kelly brought her camera and she took a lot of pictures.

DSCN0884 — The Sox warm up before the game - you can see Pedroia, Ortiz, and Youkilis here.

DSCN0887 — On the screen, the guys selected for the All-Star team hold up their jerseys.

DSCN0904 — Who's on first? YOOOOOOOOOOOOUK!!!

We got more pictures than that, so I will see if I can find some more good ones to put up.

Hiking in Portsmouth, NH

Yesterday Geoff and I went up to visit his newly transplanted sister Liz, brother in law Dan, and their three kids Will, Ben, and Kate along with their dachshund Ralph. Liz was, up to that point, the only sibling of Geoff’s that I hadn’t met yet so I was very much looking forward to it. We made arrangements to take the kids out for the day so that Liz and Dan could have some time to actually get some stuff done around the house. (They just moved in and are still making the house livable.)

We took Thumbelina and Rerun with us and when we got to NH they met Ralph for the first time. The dogs got along pretty well and the kids liked the dogs. Kate was positively *taken* with having a female dog around. Thumbelina is generally not a fan of the younger set so it took a while for them to get used to each other but they did.

After a quick lunch we piled the dogs and the kids into the minivan and headed off to the Portsmouth Urban Forestry Center. It is quite an interesting place. 5 minutes from the center of Portsmouth and you can hike self guided trails, walk through meadow and forest, see salt marshes and ponds. It’s quite a nice place to go, and it is dog friendly. We packed up the kids, all 3 dogs, and we took along the Little Red Wagon of Brimfield fame and took off.

As you may imagine, an outing like this required hats, sunscreen, bugspray, and water. But, considering that Geoff is Mr. Prepared and I’m not far behind, we were set. We did manage to walk out of Liz and Dan’s house without the water bottles for the kids, which was a nice trick, but we had our own water already packed and we had a dog water bottle so everything was fine. Knowing the propensity of certain individual in the party to fall down, hurt themselves, end up in the ER, or otherwise cause calamities, we also brought along a fully stocked First Aid kit. Amazingly, nobody, human or canine, needed it.

Naturally, I had to take pictures. You can find them here. There were lovely flowers, the kids are ridiculously photogenic, and the dogs were having a great time. The forest was also naturally lovely, so there are all sorts of pictures there. Take a look, you won’t be disappointed.

Once we were done we headed into town and went to Canine Cupboard in downtown Portsmouth. It was 5 whole minutes away from the Forestry Center. It’s a gourmet dog treat store, toy shop, and all around fun place. We had called ahead to ask when they were closing and if they had any suggestions about places where we might be able to find outdoor dining that would seat us with the dogs. When we arrived the owner remembered my call and had an additional suggestion for outdoor, dog-friendly dining, the Portsmouth Gas Light Co. Also, he had the bumper sticker I have been looking for forever. The My Dachshund is Smarter Than Your Honor Student sticker. For $1.00. The one we got looks different than the one linked, but you get the idea. For $1.00 who were we to say no?

We thanked him and headed off for the Portsmouth Gas Light Co. We met up with Liz and Dan along the way and, after finding us a table to seat 7 humans and 3 dogs, we had a great meal. The folks at the restaurant were super and even brought us a bucket of water for the dogs.

All in all a great day. Uncle Geoff and Aunt Kelly are a bit tired today. We’re not used to having kids around and it’s been a while since I’ve had 3 dogs on a lead at the same time, but it was great fun. We’re already making plans for a trip back up north when we can take Aunt Donna with us. More photos will most certainly follow when we do.

~Kelly

My brother takes pictures

As I think I’ve mentioned before, my brother periodically flies to far flung places and builds houses. For charity. He gets to work with cool tools and learn interesting languages and see really neat stuff. Usually when he gets back he send us a link to a photo album of his exploits.

We just received this link the other day. Some of the photos are really outstanding. As he said, it is a work in progress, so not all of the captions are in place yet. But I highly recommend that you look at it.

Enjoy.

~Kelly

Fort Warren trip photo album

You can find all of the photos (along with my commentary) at http://bostonharborislandjune2011.shutterfly.com so go check them out.

-Geoff

Wedding update

There always seems to be more wedding stuff to do, even when you think you’re done. I know that we won’t be done till after the wedding is over, but most stuff is finished.

Anyway… for those who are interested, the wedding website has been recently updated to include tuxedo rental information, new vendor info, and hopefully, by the end of the day today, all of the hotel rental information will be there as well. Geoff called to schedule an appointment with the hotel but we haven’t heard back yet whether or not the sales manager is available to meet with us today or later this week. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the room block info up there by the end of this week.

For those of you who might be looking to share a room at the hotel to cut down on expenses, please feel free to use the guest book feature on the wedding website to post that you are looking. Don’t post any personally identifiable information other than your name, I’ll know who you are. Cousins on my side of the family, you might want to talk it over on Facebook.

Some folks have asked if we have room at our apartment for guests for the weekend of the wedding. The answer to that is that as much as we all love you, no. The Inn is closed for the weekend. We are happy to match people up to share rooms, but that weekend is going to be too hectic to have house guests and pets underfoot.

Also, some folks have asked about the Save The Date Cards. I am still waiting on a couple of addresses. I am hoping those will go in the mail by this weekend.

Questions? Post them in the comments, please.

~Kelly

At least today was pretty constructive

Today Kelly and I managed to: take Rerun to the vet (he had a problem with one of his paws); take care of the details at the tuxedo rental place (details to come later for those renting tuxes) ; take Kelly to an interview (which went well); do some research on things to do this summer and fall with visiting family; picked up some prescriptions; picked up some clothes from our tailor, Mr. Sordillo, and dropped off two more pairs of pants of mine to be hemmed; and stopped at the hardware store to pick up a few odds and ends we needed. So all in all, a pretty constructive day for a Monday. – Geoff

So, ecards.

Some of you may have heard that today is my Birthday. I have received some nice phone calls and a couple of nice emails and ecards.

Leave it to my brother to send me this. My brother is the best.

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/7clWWHieJGp9P2Mv

Kinda makes me wonder what else the day will bring?

~Kelly

Geoff Graduates

Some of you may have heard that Geoff graduated yesterday. He finished school back in December, but like a lot of his classmates, he finished his internship a day or two too late to walk in December. So he and a bunch of his compatriots from his NCIS class at Lincoln Tech in Somerville got their Diplomas last night.

I shot video from our seats which were back halfway in the auditorium just past the middle. Before you scroll down and click, there are some things you should know. There were a LOT of people there with no concept of how to behave in public. Many of them talked through the whole thing until it was time to award diplomas. There were probably hundreds of infants and children, many of whom cried, fussed, or otherwise made noise. There were friends and family of the graduates as well as the graduates themselves who were arriving late to the ceremony right up to and through the awarding of the diplomas, so there were people wandering into my shot, completely oblivious of what I was doing.

The most important part of the ceremony was that Geoff was selected as the student speaker. Out of all of the graduates, he was the only one who was selected to give a speech and it was the only speech that actually got the attention of the audience enough that they quieted down and more or less stopped talking.

I’ve embedded the videos below. His speech is there in its entirety along with the various processional, recessional, line up, and diploma stuff. He’s going to blog the whole text of the speech and write about his own experiences at a later date.