Friday, July 18, 2008

Plugging Along

A long time since my last entry, and not because the is nothing to report. Karen and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on the 9th with a low-key but quite delightful dinner at one of out favorite local restaurants, East of Suez. After twenty years of marriage, I still get excited whenever I get to have a date with my wife. Life is good.

We went down to New Jersey last weekend. Alan, Sharon, John, Diane, and the whole New Jersey gang threw a graduation party for Thomas, and, as you can see by the pictures, it was a good time for everyone. Even Danny, who was feeling a little under the weather, had fun swimming and running around.

I've been making progress on the house since we got back, and the siding is finally going up, but everything is moving much more slowly than we had anticipated, which may prompt some changes in out plans. We're still committed to going out to California for awhile, but it may have to begin later in the year. That's okay; there's lots to do and we'll be more prepared for the trip later anyway.

Meanwhile, life goes on at Shaw's Pond. William had swimming lessons again this year, and he's doing great. He's also making wonderful progress in his reading. Danny's getting ready to go into kindergarten, learning to recognize letters and write and count. Thomas is settling into his job at The Strawberry Patch. one of the better places to eat breakfast or lunch in Wolfeboro--ever tried a strawberry omelette? Magnificent.

Karen is doing just fine at Lowes, and I'll be back on the job market as soon as the house is done and ready to move into. I'm trying to avoid going back to work in Portsmouth; the commute takes too much of my time and money each week, and we already have to work out transportation issues now that Tom is working.

Thomas almost has his driver's license. He passed the written test, but he wasn't able to take the road test because the local DMV office didn't have anyone available to test him, and won't until July 31st (they didn't mention this ahead of time, naturally)! We're going to try a different office but Tom's work schedule makes it tricky. Soon, though!

Weather was nasty today, with high winds and thundershowers just when I was getting down to work in the basement. I had to turn on work lights at 5:30 in the afternoon. Apparently they had some minor tornado activity to the north; knocked down some tress and took out the power in parts of Wolfeboro and Ossipee. We got lucky here; usually it's out power that goes out. Maybe I shouldn't say anything. Oh well, at least no one in this house needs to get up early in the morning.

No comments: