And so, now that a bit more of my day's hours are again becoming luxury after work and children and wife and the absolute necessities are tended to, I find that there was a whole bunch I was planning to post about since way back in July that just got postponed as priorities shuffled. So, without so much writing as I likely was thinking when I set the following pics aside for a post, here is some of what happened in our lives leading up to my family's Puerto Rico trip in the summer.
My mom celebrated her birthday at Vasona Park. Which is great fun anyway and extra fun for the kids because they have the train. And we got to ride the steam train.
And we rode the carousel, too. Which was cool because the kids don't ask to ride that as much but they did that day.
Here are a couple of pics from the Newark Summerfest.
They even had a little train car to cruise around in.
Some days it's nice to go out for breakfast.
This was funny. Ana was having difficulties talking on a regular phone because we always let the kids talk on our cell phones on speaker phone. She kept thinking it wasn't on until she figured out that she had to hold it to her ear to hear Tata.
My beautiful wife.
This was Tami's birthday party & All Stars Baseball party hosted at Traci's house. Ana asked to grade the cheese. She and Enzo are such helpers in the kitchen.
Happy Birthday Tami!
Knowing my family would be leaving on vacation soon while I stayed back to work, I tried to go outside and play with them every chance I could.
Enzo set up shop at the park and made all manner of pancakes in an assortment of flavors.
And Ana swung as she loves to do when ever she is not climbing on something.
Soon after those photos, my family went on vacation. While I did spend a lot of that time working, I did manage some relaxing fun time. One particularly satisfying day was when Nathan and I went for a ride. He had recently received a new Ducati as a gift from his wife Laurie and this was our first ride together with his new bike. Nearly all rides a good, but this ride was simply rejuvenating. It felt as peaceful and perfect and harmonious as so many rides did 15 years ago when Nathan and I use to ride the same roads on our first motorcycles. I love that day. It felt great. We also spent a lot of time chatting with the bikes parked which is another great aspect of many an excellent ride. We enjoyed breakfast at Alice's Restaurant, a long relaxing sit at Pescadero Beach, a superb and peacefully excellent one-with-nature ride, good conversation, and turns on two Ducatis built 21 years apart.
Lucky mud, I am.