If you've seen our house, you know we have walls of windows on two sides of the house and we back up to the woods. These were features that made us fall in love with the house. The uncertainty of the impending storm led us to the tough decision to stay in NJ and visit Grammy later in the year. In hindsight, we may have been ok to make the trip -- we had no damage here and the main roads were mostly clear, but it just wasn't worth the risk at the time.
The first week of November, Mike and I rented a house on the bluffs of Manomet/Plymouth and headed up to MA to celebrate Grammy's birthday and spend some time with family and friends. We had a great time visiting with Grammy, Grampy, Aunt Kathy, Aunt Mary Ellen and Gabriel.
My friend Abby and her daughter Collette came down to Manomet for an overnight visit. We had a great time building with the new block set we got Coco for her 2nd birthday. We also went for a drive down to the cape and visited the Thornton Burgess Society and Green Briar Jam Kitchen. Coco really liked tasting the jams! Afterwards, we had lunch at one of the local seafood shacks (Sam's, I think...but Abby can tell us for sure). It was delish... though anything fried tends to be yummy.
We were also able to organize a relatively well-attended "trudge psuedo-frisbee thanksgiving" on short order. Some of you may already know this, but from December 1998 (when I graduated from RPI) until December 2005, pretty much the only time I saw Mike was at our annual "Frisbee Thanksgiving" reunion weekend. It was a pretty great tradition for many years -- we would all meet up in Troy for a weekend in November and spend the day playing ultimate with the undergrad club team. As the group grew larger, we would play a 4-team round robin with mixed teams... followed by the MAIN EVENT -- Alumni vs the undergrads. Saturday evening would consist of a big, traditional turkey dinner (or to-furkey for us veggies!) followed by a night of reminiscing, "concentrating", and a midnight round of disc golf. Sunday morning, the "old doods" would head to South Troy Diner for a greasy breakfast before we all went our separate ways. Frisbee Thanksgiving has been the source of many entertaining stories, so be sure to ask Mike or I about it some day!
Anyways, this version of Frisbee Thanksgiving was a bit different... primarily because we were nearly outnumbered by the kiddos running around (18 adults - 11 kids!)... and secondarily because Jim and Sherry were gracious enough to host us all at their home (apparently, the group has *some* level of respect for real grown-up homes... compared to "frisbee-houses" in Troy!). It was great catching up with the old gang and getting to know their incredible mini-me's.
Last, but certainly not least, I was able to spend some time hanging out at the beach with Maura F and Mike and I spent some time with my brother.
It certainly wasn't a "relaxing" vacation, but it was definitely a productive one... full of friends, family and laughter. There is just something about being on the ocean that, no matter how busy life gets, makes you take time to pause... breathe... and take it all in.
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