Wabash River Ride 2009

Yesterday, Anja, Isabel and myself, together with many of our friends, rode in the Wabash River Ride, the annual century ride hosted by our local cycling club, the Wabash River Cycle Club.

We had a very slow start which was not altogether unexpected given the number of young adults/children we had on the ride. Initially we had intended only doing the 32 mile round trip. The older kids were on bikes whilst Kevin had Anna in their trailer (that required two new tubes) and I had our two girls in our trailer. We managed our first 15 mile in this fashion, out to the first SAG stop. At this point Lorraine and Lisa graciously agreed (thanks once again to you both) to take some of the tired kids back home which then allowed Randy Cody and myself to continue on with an unplanned extended ride. We set out and completed the metric century ride, covering 67 miles total for the day. This was Cody's longest ever ride and he was very pleased with his feat and rightly so!

We all had a great day which was matched only by the wonderful meal that Kaisa had cooked for us very hungry riders at the end of the day!

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Lazy Saturday Morning

After the hectic travels of last week, we are taking advantage this morning of a lazy Saturday. Aside from the usual weekend chores, all we have done today is visit with some neighbours, sit around drink tea/coffee and take some pictures.

Shown below are few. A couple of shots of a flower on the front porch (me trying desperately to be artistic), a snap of the girls playing with the multitude of dolls/babies that are strewn around our house and a picture of the weekly produce from our veggie garden. Tomatoes, peppers, chillies, tomatillos, beans and some ground cherries.

Hope you're all having an equally relaxed Saturday. I believe it may even get more relaxed later. The girls are staying with Randy and Lorraine tonight so Lynne and I are planning a visit to our local Thai restaurant :)

Isabel's Second Second Birthday Party

When we were visiting my parents in Ireland, my Mum, Eilish and others organized a big birthday celebration for Isabel's second birthday. There were lots and lots of children, neighbours, family and friends. The weather left a lot to be desired but with the bouncy castles that were ordered, the food, games and other refreshments that were laid on, a fun day, evening (and night) was had by all. Many thanks once again to all who gave cards and presents to Isabel, much appreciated!

I took lots of pictures as usual, far too many to show without the help of a slideshow which can hopefully be viewed below and all pictures viewed here.

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Family Photo

One would think that with a wedding in the family one could expect to get a reasonably decent family photo! Well this was the best shot that I got on my camera. On the day of the wedding itself, Jonathan did manage to take some family photos, some where he was also part of thanks to Triona. I'm sure we'll get to see these in time but for now this was the best I had.

From the left is my Mother, Clive, Davey, myself, Eilish, Aiden and Dad. The second, a similar shot, this time with Jonathan, obviously captured under different circumstances but unfortunately Dad was nowhere to be found (I think he had gone to bed :)!

Clive and Tracey's Wedding

Last week we were in Ireland for my brother Clive and Tracey’s wedding. We arrived at my parents house to much fanfare on Saturday morning. We were a little late getting there as I messed up the car rental details. I’m not going into that at this point other than to say that having over an hour delay in getting a car when it’s in the middle of the night after a very long flight is not good.

My Mum and Eilish had organized a birthday party for Isabel on Sunday which I’ll blog about later in the week.

We travelled to Clive and Tracey’s house on Tuesday and the wedding festivities essentially started. Did I mention that the actual wedding was on Thursday, well it was and it was a rather long day. Started early in the morning as expected and finished, well let’s just say it was late in the morning.

The festivities continued the next day, the day after and the day after but we had to bail out on Saturday morning and travel back to the US. It was a very very long trip. All were exhausted before we even left on our 8 hour trans Atlantic coupled with a 2.5 hour car journey. All told it was almost 16 hours and the girls didn’t get much sleep!

I think we have all finally recovered, almost a week later. The girls had a great time throughout the trip, thanks in large part to Lynne who was very gracious in allowing me on several occasions to take the kids off to bed and allowing me to play grown up with my family. Thank you Love!

A few pictures of the actual day are shown below in addition to the slide show! Enjoy!

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Dress Up with Daisy

Before the kids arrived, Daisy was our baby. She had a full year of exclusivity before Anja arrived and boy was she spoiled. One could argue that she's still spoiled but, lets just say not as much as the kids are. We literally have hundreds of pictures of Daisy as a pup, ahh, that first year!

Anyhow, the picture below captures the scene that I arrived too one evening recently when I returned home from work. Both girls were dressing Daisy, essentially playing dress up as they often do but in this case Daisy was the doll. As you can see Daisy was licking her lips!! I found it quite entertaining indeed and upon reflection an excellent example of how far down the ladder poor old Daisy has truly fallen.

Tonight I have been sorting pictures again. I have some pictures from Clive and Tracey's wedding uploaded to facebook which I will post here tomorrow night!

A Final Look at Davey and Sam's Site

Back in July 2007, in a first post, I encouraged you all to take an initial look at my brothers blog but warned you that it was going to get active. He, together with his then girlfriend Sam, were just about to sell their UK house and hit off on a world tour. It took then a little while to get going, they never sold their house but they took off nevertheless.

Well, they are now back. We have all followed their trip with excitement every week, the places and people that they visited were simply amazing. They kept a phenomenal blog throughout the journey.

They recently posted a last entry to their blog regarding the trip, The End, which summarizes their journey in many ways. I encourage you to take a look!

By the way, Sam is no longer his girlfriend, they were engaged on a beach in Thailand!


Picture blatenly stolen from www.daveyandsam.com

Isabel's 2nd Birthday

Two weeks ago, we celebrated Isabel’s second birthday (for the first time but more on that later). It was a wonderfully hot day and we had a very nice afternoon. All our friends attended, those with small children anyhow and I think everybody involved had a great time. The ice-cream and cake disappeared anyhow!
Many thanks as always to everybody who brought gifts, much appreciated!

 

 

 

 

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Long Overdue Update

This is a long overdue update and there is much to tell. We have had a party in West Lafayette, being to Ireland and had another party there, attended a wedding and had a first day at school. So, I’m going to try and get a post every evening this week. Let’s see how I do!