Old Friends

When in the basement cleaning up Martin came across Jen's old "yoga map" that she was going to discard. Martin would have none of it and immediately commandeered it.


He then showed us a number of yoga poses that Aunt Lauren had taught him including the popular move, "down dog."


When Auntie Caolan, Uncle Paul, and Jane came to visit, Martin wasted no time opening his studio and giving Jane a quick crash course.


We also took a trip downtown to the library, river walk, and eventually had lunch before returning home to nap.


We have a pretty strict practice of not starting Christmas music, movies, or decorating until after Thanksgiving. However, this year was special with friends visiting and a sudden cold snap. We decided to have our first fire of the season and play Elf for the kids. Even though it was a little premature it was nice to spend a portion of the forced holiday with old friends.


Uncle Paul entertained with many read books which all the kids enjoyed immensely.


When the kids were napping Paul finally got around to putting down a bass track to a song we initially recorded in 1998. Our band, Spruce Avenue Jam was known as "the earliest band in rock" because the only studio time we could get was at 6:00 AM. However, our struggle to complete this album has taken the better part of twenty years. Now we are one step closer to getting this one in the bag.

Look for it available for free download sometime in 2020.


Martin and Elliott were both battling ear infections leading up to the visit. Elliott had mostly kicked his and had almost finished his antibiotics before Martin developed a fever and screamed himself to sleep one night. We took him to the doctor where we had to wait 45 minutes alone in the room waiting for the doctor. The boys could not have been better behaved. Martin played with toys and Elliott read a book the entire time. I think they dealt with the wait more maturely than Jen and I did.


After a few days off Caolan, Paul, and Jane returned and Josie had a reprise of some sweet Uncle Paul snuggles which she really enjoyed during the visit.


We took the kids to the newly reopened children's museum where they had a blast and Caolan played with Josie in the baby area. We took turns trying to manage three easily-distracted toddlers throughout the establishment.


Sadly, after and on-and-off week, it had to come to an end and we had to say goodbye. While we used to see each other all the time our visits these days are few and far between. Usually they are also short so it was great to be able to spend numerous days with some great friends. We're really looking forward to the next time we can do this again.


The boys have been agitating for more reading time at night so Jen cleverly rigged up these Christmas lights on their beds so they could read by them. This has bought us a little more sanity at night for bedtime and you cannot put a cost on that.


Josephine continues to try new foods. The other day she tried her first carrots.


She did not like them.


After her first bite she began to search out an exit route.


The other day I took Martin Christmas shopping for Elliott and Josephine, a concept that was sort of lost on him. It was his first time in a toy store and he handled it better than I'd expected, but still ended up just giving the mask he'd picked out for Elliott as soon as he got home.

Jen had better luck with Elliott but he still blurted out what he'd gotten Martin for Christmas the second he walked in the door.


The boys agreed to help me, once again, hang the Christmas lights. With the biggest November snowstorm to hit Chicago in 120 years we had to act fast. I foolishly hung lights across the top of the house and set up Santa and Frosty which Elliott alternately hugged and proclaimed his love for and dismembered.

Toddlers have a tough time expressing love.


Jen made a huge batch of dumplings. Martin talked a lot about how they were just meatballs in a wrapper as his toddler brain tried to process what this new food was.


During the messy snowstorm we took the kids to the mall for a harrowing photo shoot. We were reminded why we haven't done this in a while. The kids were great and well behaved but they reached their limit quickly and the photo shoot lasted far longer than we'd hoped so we ended up racing home to try to have a late dinner with three children who were at the end of their rope and one baby who didn't really care either way.

Each year the photo shoot gets easier. This year we had two 3-year-olds, a 2-year-old, and a 7-month-old. Next year it will be two 4-year-olds, a 3-year-old, an 18-month-old, and a 11-month-old.

It doesn't sound it but that should be easier.

In Summer!

After the birthday celebration gala Nana and Grandpa stuck around a little longer than planned for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was to get some work done!


My father was instrumental in installing a new door to our deck which has vastly improved the indoor bug situation.


We also rebuilt the firepit and I permanently damaged our sprinkler system by inadvertently finding exactly where it was buried in the back yard.


There was a lot of time spent in the new sandbox while all this home improvement was going on.




Many gifts were deliverd to us by my parents from the old country of Rhode Island, all in beverage form. While the boys won't yet get to taste Narragansett beer, they may enjoy some coffee milk in the future. We just need to make sure we give it to them early enough in the day so that any potential caffeine intake will not destroy our lives.


In the morning on Saturday we took all the cousins to the mall for their most recent photo shoot.


The day before my parents left we attended the Naperville Ale Fest where many tasty beers were consumed. Reports are that they ditched the full pint glasses they handed out last year in favor of new three ounce glasses. I can't imagine why handing out full pint glasses would have been a problem at all at an event where they have over one hundred beers on tap.


Later that evening we were paid a visit by our friends Jocelyn and Matt who were passing through on their way to moving to sunny Davis, California. So far this first year has been extremely rich with house guests, something we sincerely wanted but did not thing we'd actually get. Apparently people traveling from New York to Chicago with a frequency we had not previously been aware of.


Immediately after all our guests left, the following Monday morning, Martin woke up with a fever. It got quite high and he talked of his mouth hurting. After a trip to the doctor it was confirmed that he had hand, foot, and mouth disease once again.


On Wednesday morning Elliott woke up with a fever as well so he accompanied Martin to the doctor even though we could safely assume that they had the same thing. While this time was horrendous Martin was almost back to normal by Thursday even though Elliott was feeling pretty miserable.


We went for a walk to pick up Martin at day care and decided to extend it for a bit. We ended up at a pond where Elliott glared upon the algae in disgust.


After more walking and a trip to Grandma's we decided to chance it by walking to the nearby Italian restaurant where Elliott appeared to make a full recovery. It must have been the medicinal properties from the linguine and chicken tenders.


After a brief nightmare the hand, foot, and mouth was gone and they were back to normal. It was four days, one bad, two horrible, and one bad. Then we were done! It could be our minds buidling the previous bout into legendary status but this second run, while awful, seemed much more mild in comparison. Even after some pretty bad nights we felt like we'd dodged a bullet.


On Sunday we went to the Morton Arboretum before I left for work where the cousins got to splash and play in a lot of water and Elliott had a significant meltdown when we broke him free of play to go eat lunch.

We will see what August brings. Temperatures have only been in the 90s once or twice and it has been the mildest summer I have ever witnessed. Let's hope August does not bring the heat because this has been one of the most enjoyably temperate summers of my life and, of course, my first ever with central air conditioning.


And with all that the boys have discovered a love for the movie "Frozen" along with every other child in America. Hopefully this is more of a humorous homage to the shockingly mild summer we're having and not an omen for another horrendous winter.

In summer!

I Believe in Miracles

Do you believe in miracles? I do. We technically only woke up once last night. Once! That's five minus four times. Once. One time. Sure we went to bed pretty late and woke up fairly early but still! I just keep on hearing Lauryn Hill's voice in my head: "One time! One time!"

This is a dramatic improvement to our quality of life. It's hard to even know how to function on so much sleep. After enjoying the feeling for ten minutes we decided it would be best to spend the rest of the day doing laundry.


Part of their new found sleep prowess may be from Martin's bizarre new sleep pose. For one of the first times ever he outslept his brother so there has to be something said for looking this foolish.


After returning home from work last night it was all I could do to simply put out every leftover in the fridge in a strange assortment of dishes ranging from Ethiopian food to pesto pasta.

It was like tapas for lazy, uninspired people.


For a drink I enjoyed this Recousse from Dieu du Ciel! in Montreal, another gift from Jen's father. This was a really great German-style altbier. I'm kind of wishing this brewery had beers available in the States. Perhaps they do but I have never come across them in my travels. Of course my travels really only consist of the road from my house to work and back again.

I also enjoy the beer because it sounds like the name of someone who would have fought Goku on Namek.


Recouuuuuuuuuuuse!

After dinner I had a quick little ceremony to retire my Canon EOS Rebel XSi. We've had a good run these past four years. In that time I went from having no clue how to use it to sort of knowing how to use it. What a wild ride it has been. Now I have a brand new camera that I have no clue how to use as evidenced by the slightly blurry picture of some beer posted above.

There's no telling where we'll be four years from now.

Problems Solved!

After getting home from work today I tended to the babies for several hours while Jen went to get her nails done. This sounds like it may have been a lot of work but the babies took a great deal of pity on me by sleeping the entire time.



This is pretty unprecedented. Elliott slept a record six hour stretch last night as well. Life has become suddenly much more manageable.

The only problem that I can conjure up is that my camera is pretty bad at taking low light photos.

My life knows only struggle.


Jen went to pick up the farm share this afternoon while I worked. This week we got two pounds of tomatoes, a tiny butternut squash, two Oriental eggplant, two heads of broccoli, purple basil, shallots, red cabbage, Chiogga beets, hot peppers, and tomatillos. The tomatillos were "take if you like" so Jen took two. To me this seems like the most comical quantity of tomatillos possible. It reminds me of why I love my wife.

We also got a bag of donut peaches and a bag of nectarines.


To start off the night I served up a piece of Leonora from Spain served with fresh Black Mission figs and Marcona almonds.


I also served up a salad with some of the tomatoes from the farm, some of the tomatoes from the farmer's market, purple basil, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Once again, not breaking any culinary ground but quite tasty.



For dinner I used a leftover piece of skirt steak from the freezer which I marinated in spicy avocado dressing and then pan seared. I served it with a salad I made with broccoli, bacon, peppadew, shallots from the farm, purple basil (which I accidentally dropped into the bowl), and sliced breakfast radishes we'd picked up last weekend at the farmer's market. I added a little mayonnaise, hot sauce, peppadew juice, salt, pepper, and sweet paprika.


For beer we had this Blonde D'Achouffe brewed under contract by Les Brasseurs RJ in Montreal. This was another gift from Jen's father, a fantastic Belgian beer that was right up both of our slightly different alleys. I've had their beer from Belgium but never the version brewed in Quebec. This was the best beer I've had in a long time. My only regret is that there are now none left.

While Jen was at getting her nails done there was a knock on the door.


It was my new camera! I've been looking forward to buying this for a while and finally, after several years, I wore Jen down. It took me so long to do it that they even released a newer version of the camera.

Everything works out in the end.


Now that all of my problems in the world are solved my life is perfect. Like any pathetic photographer I'm living under the foolish notion that a better camera will make my pictures better. While the low light settings will really help out I'm most excited about the camera's ability to take video. I'll probably not use it very often but, perhaps, there will soon be videos of the guys on YouTube for all to see. More than likely I'm too lazy for that but it's nice to have the feature available.

Well, I've gotta run. I'm going to put the Wombats in a dark closet and take some pictures of them!

Chomp de Mars

After last night's late night we were all a bit slow to start this morning. Jen and I didn't really get out until about 10:00 AM to get some coffee and tea across the street. Perhaps more than Jen I was content to just sit at that cafe for the rest of the day, perhaps the rest of my life, but that wouldn't be how we spent our last day in Paris.



Instead we walked over to Les Invalides where I, again, did not see Napoleon's tomb. We walked along the grounds for a bit but I felt that it would be wiser to leave this as a good reason to bring us back to Paris again in the future. After all, I am a huge fan of Napolean, especially after Armand Assante's amazing performance in Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story. Still the greatest miniseries ever made.



After a nice French repeat lunch (more duck, chevre chaud, etc.) we took a subway ride back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the group. Unfortunately the rest of the group had plans to return to the Champs-Élysées for shopping. After yesterday's outing to Petite Batteau I din't think I could take another round of that. I think that may be the most boring store in the entire world.



I opted to go to the Arc de Triomphe instead and climb a very tall spiral staircase to see Paris from above.



The view was pretty great and I got a lot of great photographs from the top of the monument. Afterwards I descended the stairs and met up with the group who relayed the woes of waiting in terribly long lines to buy foods for dinner. We had planned on having a picnic dinner on the Champ de Mars for our last night while drinking one of the bottles of Bordeaux we'd acquired. The only problem was that we had no corkscrew.



Jen was brave enough to go into a horrific souvenir shop on the Champs-Élysées but was only able to find a terrible corkscrew for $15.



Jen is so brave that she had enough bravery to do this again in another souvenir shop off the Champs-Élysées. This time she and Elisha struck gold.



Tacky, tacky gold. Oh, and by the way, it's also a refrigerator magnet.



From there we jumped on the subway which got stuck in the station for about ten minutes while we were all held captive by a rogue accordion busker. He seemed to do pretty well when, out of sheer boredom, people started walking up to him and giving him money to pass the time.



Dinner was a collection of sandwiches, breads, and wines that these great ladies had put together.



Jen exhibited pure delight as she used the ineffective and gaudy corkscrew to open our Bordeaux.



Matt's dreams came true and he was able to have quiche in France. It's so easy for all of us to be happy in life when our goals are so easily attained. Me with my sunflower photographs, Matt with his personal sized quiche.



I didn't feel like Bordeaux so I took some tiny bottles of 1664 from the hotel fridge and brought them along. They were probably too expensive at €4.00 each but after so many frivolities over the past two weeks they were totally worth it. I did not, however, have the foresight to buy a tacky overpriced beer opener so I had to get creative and use a 2p piece from Rene along with another bottle of beer using a technique I'd learned in Jamaica.



Jen and Elisha told tales of just how hard they fought to get these macarons for dessert after waiting in line for 30 minutes and paying a small fortune. They were worth the hassel. At least to me since I didn't have to do anything at all to enjoy them.



To accompany the macarons we smuggled some glasses out of our hotel with us and poured some peach liqueur that we'd received as wedding favors. Peach liqueur will always make me remember this moment: the cool air, the sun being out until well after 10:00 PM, endless sketchy dudes walking up to us trying to sell us booze, teenagers making out inappropriately all around us. All this will remind me of our last night in Paris with friends.

Tomorrow we try to fly out of Paris early to catch our connecting flight in Zurich. We'll see if luck is on our side and if our seatmates are a little more generous than those we've shared planes with in the past.


Kathy says: "Whatevs! Hope you lamers get home nice and safe so you can return to America and eat at Olive Garden every night. Lame!"