The Birthday Girl

So today is Kara's birthday! She was woken up early this morning with an off-key rendition of happy birthday and a breakfast in bed of waffles from her new wafflemaker:



They had a flip-style waffle maker at the Fairfield Inn we stayed at when we were in Nevada (wedding night) and Kara said she liked it a lot - so a little searching around found this one - which makes two waffles at a time in about four minutes. So we get waffles plus an enduring reminder of our trip. Visitors be forewarned - there are waffles in your future!

Kara gets off of work in a little bit and there's some other fun stuff planned for today. The original surprise plan had been for us to take a brief road trip up into Oklahoma and take the Talimena Scenic Drive into Arkansas. Unfortunately, I was dopy and didn't check the calendar on the fridge - Kara has a CoffeeMaster class on Saturday - so we're resetting plans for this weekend (a common occurence for us - nothing really ever goes as planned) and will do the drive some other weekend.

Deep in the heart

Well, we are back in Texas as of late Sunday night. Things have been a little nutty since then, so we've been a bit delayed in writing. Rich has a trial set for August 14th and that has kept himretty busy. We had a great trip up in Boston, but it sure is nice to be home and to not have anything on the calendar for a few weeks.

The weather was mostly overcast during our visit - but it sure was a lot cooler than Dallas and we didn't get the rain they were predicting all weekend. Tropical Storm Beryl blew through on Thursday night and Friday morning, but we really ended up only catching an edge of the storm rather than the brunt of it.

As noted earlier, we picked up a stunt kite at a local kite shop and Kara put it together on Friday afternoon. The kite is called Obsession2 - it's a big (79 inches wide), nice looking kite with vents in it so that you can fly it in heavy winds. We had a good time flying it in the winds left behind by Beryl. We have some kite-flying pictures that we'll post soon.

Friday night was dinner at the Paddock for twelve - these trips do seem to revolve around food - where Kara had baked stuffed lobster for the first time and it was another hit. On Saturday we hit the road and drove down to the outer part of Cape Cod. We made stops at the Highland Light in Truro. The Highland Light faces the Atlantic and there is nothing between it and Europe - it would be the first light you would likely see when making an Atlantic crossing and it sits high on a sand cliff, astride the rolling hills of Truro. Some two-thirds of the Town of Truro is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore, a national park.

The outer part of the Cape sits at the edge of the continental shelf and is where the last North American Ice Sheet terminated some time ago. As a result, most of the features of Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown were sculpted by glaciers and their remains can be seen hither and yon.

In any event, we then continued towards the outskirts of the Cape and the Province Lands, where we walked the beach a little bit and went to the Visitor's Center to get a nice view of the rolling dunes of the Cape. After that, we swung into Provincetown where we walked around some more, picking up some clam chowder at the Lobster Pot (it's probably the best clam chowder you can get anywhere) and eating it streetside. We walked along the fishing wharves and then began making our way back to Yarmouth for dinner at Lisa's. We took the bck roads along the way, through the Pamet River Valley and past the site of the ancestral home of Rich's family in Truro (which has been replaced with a godawful series of structures) and through Wellfleet (a quintessential Cape Cod town). We got back to the hotel some seven hours after we left and headed out the door to Lisa's for a nice dinner and time with the family.

On Sunday we headed out to the beach and took the kids into the ocean (they had been spending most of their time in the pools at the hotel) - the water was cool but not cold and we had a great time. The salt water is incredibly healing and it did wonders for a nasty burn on Kara's arm that she had gotten the previous weekend while handling a hot crock pot. We spent a little more time playing in the sand before we headed off to pack out stuff and make our way back to Boston and Dallas.

Rich's parents drove us back to Boston, by way of lunch in Plymouth (fried clams!!! for Rich and more chowder for Kara). By the way, Plymouth Rock is completely overblown - so says Kara - so we didn't even go over and see it - as a matter of fact, it's not even the first place where the Pilgrims landed - that would be Provincetown out on the Cape. In any event, we had a real nice lunch by the harbor. Traffic through Boston was a nightmare and getting to the airport was a near impossibility due to the recent tunnel closures. We eventually made it to the airport and had a restful, uneventful flight back to Dallas.

Okay, okay . . .

We're up on Cape Cod and having a great time. We arrived -late- Wednesday night (really Thursday morning) and stayed in downtown Boston overnight. We got up to get some coffee and walk around Copley Square a bit before Bob (Rich's brother-in-law) arrived so that we could all ride down to the Cape together. We got down to the hotel just before noon and spent the day playing with the kids and relaxing before heading out to dinner at The Tugboat, where we both had the Native Chatham Scrod and Kara fell in love with Clam Chowder.

Kara is out at the pool right now, putting together a stunt kite and I just got in from playing a round of golf. We both felt that we should have either spent the morning either golfing together or hanging out together because we miss each other when we are apart needlessly.

More details on the trip later, but in the meantime, here (finally) are some pics from the clambake:

On the road again . . .

Well, we have barely had time to recover from the party and now we head up to Cape Cod tomorrow evening for a few days with Rich's family at the Red Jacket on the beach in South Yarmouth (pronounced Yahhh-muth) . We had some great help on Sunday getting all the tables and chairs packed up, the house picked up and the remaining clams shucked - we're hoping to have some time to make some New England Clam Chowder before we leave.

I'll get a few pictures from the party up today - we don't have a lot of pictures as we were both busy for the most part with other things.

The trip to Cape Cod should give us some much needed down time once we get there - and some relief from the heat. Forecast is for 107 degrees here today - ugh; forecast highs for the Cape during our visit are 75, 80, 76 and 75 degrees.

The party's ohhhhhhhverrrrrrrr . . .

Well, after 500 pounds of sand; 600 pounds of rock; 150 pounds of wet, hot seaweed; 100 pounds of littleneck clams and mussels; a wheelbarrow full of corn; 30 pounds of potatoes; 20 pounds of butter; 18 pounds of onions; 10 pounds of linguica; and a lot of beer, margaritas and lemonade - the party is over.

Some sixteen hours after it was last stoked, the firepit is still hot and steaming. The digging and firing of that pit is a story - a hot, muddy, backbreaking story unto itself.

We'll fill in in with more detail later (we seem to write that phrase a lot), but we had about a hundred and twenty guests through the day and probably eighty or so stayed for dinner. It was a great crowd of friends and we were very fortunate to have them join us. Rumor has it that some of them will return today to help us clean up, much as so many friends helped us to get the party together. We simply could not have done it without them.

There were a number of requests that we make the clambake an annual event. Candidly, we had so much fun putting on the party, that we will certainly make this a staple of summer. Our bulky trash pickup is always the third full week of the month, so it is our parties will be the preceding weekend.

Accordingly, please mark your calendars (yes, it was originally reset in July, but that was just too dang hot):

June 16, 2007

Clambake II

A Midsummer Night's Steam

Add this event to your

Party prep continues . . .

Well, we continue to get ready for the party. Kara has some friends coming over tomorrow to help get the house together and we have a very long list of stuff to get at the store. It looks like we'll have a good hundred or so people spread out over the day, maybe more. Kara continues to feel better and stronger every day as long as she doesn't overdo it.

I need to start digging a pit tonight for the clambake. It has to be about three feet deep and four feet square - this should be interesting.

In the meantime, we've added some more pics to the slide show (which we have now, semi-permanently located to the top of the page and not as part of a post) and an RSS feed - which is a real easy way to keep up with the site without having to check it everyday. If you use My Yahoo, just click the link and it will set up a little box on your page that will keep you up to date when we post new missives.

Back to reality

Well, we had hoped to get some pictures up on the blog and provide more detail about our trip, but the weekend was absolutely crazy. We've gotten all of the pictures developed and whatnot and they look great - but there are a lot of them and we're trying to get them loaded onto the page here in an efficient way. Also, we're having a party this Saturday and there's just a lot of stuff to do.

We are also running into a fundamental problem: we don't like being apart from one another unless absolutely necessary. As a result, there's very little division of labor and things take a little longer. It's a problem that we are blessed to have. That said, we did get all of the announcements and invitations ready to go and, with the help of friends, planted nearly five hundred flowers at the front of the house. We also learned that the back of a VW Golf can hold fifty-one cubic feet of bagged hardwood mulch!

Now we just have to . . . clean and organize the house, buy food, drink, a good thirty pounds of clams and a LOT of seaweed, dig a big hole in the back yard, get a bunch of rocks and sand, get some burlap, see if we can fix the misters on the back of the house, and do our jobs . . . ok . . . gotta go . . .

Home

We just got home - 4:40 a.m. Dallas time and are flat-out exhausted and have to work tomorrow. That said - wow - what a great time. We drove from Page to the spectacular Bryce Canyon and then across to Brian's Head and then down to Vegas. We had a great day and an amazing trip. We'll fill in the details (and there's lots of it) in the coming days. In the two days we were on the road, we totaled 850 miles and some 600 pictures.

And on the first day . . .

we wandered through the desert. We started by driving up to the Valley of Fire. We stopped along the way by the side of the road where we married. Even after some 15 hours of marriage, we each said that we'd do it all over again. ;-) Valley of Fire was beautiful and was followed by a drive through Zion National Park and then down through Kanab and along the foot of the Vermillion Cliffs, Marble Canyon, the Cliff Dwellers and into Page, Arizona.

It was a pretty long day and I'll fill in with more details (and I -wish- I had the capability to post some pictures now) when we have a chance to take a break. We are headed out shortly across the top of the Vermillion Cliffs and through Grand Staircase Escalante to Bryce Canyon. We need to be back in Vegas by about 7:00 for our flight out.

Kara is feeling well for the most part - overall she feels better than she has in a year, but the incisions still bother her from time to time and she is working on getting her stamina back up.

Okay, gotta go hit the road.

Our journey begins . . .

Last night, as sunset fell across the Valley of Fire with the mountains of the Sierra Nevada in the distance, we were married in the high desert, God's cathedral.

God has done great things for us and we are filled with joy.
- Psalm 126:3

Westward Ho!

Well, Kara is feeling much better today. After a few minor ups and downs, she was released from the hospital this afternoon. She was feeling a little paunchy from all the fluids, dopey from the anesthesia and icky from getting off of all those pain meds. She ate a little food and then promptly went to bed while I went out to get her prescriptions and some other things at Target.

The plan was that we would wait and let her rest for a bit in order to see if she really felt up to riding in the car for at least twenty hours to Nevada. I am so -sick- of fast food right now, but I had to get something if we were going to hit the road and drive all night. By the time I got back from the store and grabbed some food for myself, I didn't feel like driving to Nevada all night to get there by the 3rd - so I figured Kara sure wouldn't either and checked airfares and flights online. As luck would have it I found some pretty reasonable fares for just 12 hours notice.

I went in to wake Kara and tell her what I was thinking. Before I could mention the idea, she beat me to the punch. It really is amazing how we seem to be on the same wavelength most of the time. Anyway, we booked a flight to leave at 7:30 am Dallas time (only six hours away as I write this) and arrive in Las Vegas at about 6:00 am. For tomorrow, we are renting a 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville and then we'll have another car to spend a few days touring Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

I'm going to go finish some packing, get the coffee ready and head off for a few hours of shut eye. I've probably raised more questions than I've answered. Sorry 'bout that.

Heading home

July 2, 2006

Kara's recovery went well yesterday. She was groggy for a while and had some pain, but things got progressively better through the course of the evening. Friends joined us throughout the day and we are grateful for them. Clear liquids and then jello were the order of the evening and Bean tolerated them well.

I was permitted to spend the night sleeping next to Kara on a pull out bed and she slept as well as one can in a hospital. We got up during the night for Kara to take some strolls around the floor, which really helped her recovery.

By this morning, she was pretty much back to her old self in terms of personality. The plan is for her to be released soon - when her labs show she is stable. She's been walking around more and eating more jello. If Kara is feeling up to it (and the doc has already given his okay), we may try to resume the trip - but in a car and not on the bike

Good news

Kara's out of surgery and in recovery. Everything went very well.

So it's not as scenic as Route 66

But the Baylor University Medical Center ER is a lot more comforting when you are sick. Kara (a.k.a Bean) has been diagnosed with acute appendicitis and will be heading into the OR shortly. We have been here since about nine o'clock last night. She's resting, but has had more than her fair share of pain and nausea last night and this morning.