Puddle Jumping

Not that I'm trying to paint too rosy a picture about the recent storm, but at least there were some puddles for the kids to romp around in. Sam, Ani, and I headed out for some puddle jumping this morning, and we all had a great time. Somehow I managed to catch Annika in midair for one of the pictures. Enjoy.

Stormtrackers - Tropical Storm Fay

We've been silent on this end for awhile, and I think it's mostly due to how much we enjoy watching Pete's video of Samuel. Now that we've had our first tropical storm, it's probably time to bump Sam down the blog a bit. (At least until we catch him dancing again!)

This first picture is of the marsh that's between East Beach and the main part of the island. This spring we kayaked through a creek that winds somewhere underneath all the water. Usually this will look more like a field than a lake. Welcome to life at sea level.


This next picture is of the pier down in the village. Usually there is around 15-20 feet of room between the pier and the water. Today it looked like there were around 3 feet. Annika and I stopped by the beach to see what it was like, and I'm guessing the winds were around 35-40 mph, and the waves were coming in all the way to the dunes. Interestingly, we didn't have winds anywhere near that speed at our house, which is only 10 minutes away from the beach.


Finally, this last picture is of the street near our house. The spanish moss on the trees seems to fall pretty easily, and so every road on the island is covered with debris. Most of it is small, but we did see a couple of trees that were uprooted.


We're safe and sound here. Quite frankly, we've been through some thunderstorms that were more severe than Fay. I know that others were not nearly as fortunate as we have been, but we wanted to let you all know that life is wet and fine down here.

Sam's First Dance Mix

Sam Dances Like Dr. Evil

So...Sam is now walking (sorry for no blog posts about that). He's also dancing. He likes carrying around toys that make music and setting them in front of us. He then plays the music and shakes his cloth-diapered booty. Enjoy! (Video editing compliments of our friend Pete.)

Annika in the Big Backyard

We just finished with Vacation Bible School at our church. It was Annika's first VBS, and our first one here on the island. I am in awe of how much we do to make VBS a wonderful week for the children in the community. Annika had a fun time, so I thought people might like to see a couple pictures of her in God's Big Backyard.

Arachno-Files (Again)

So, I'm here in Georgia while the rest of my family is enjoying city life in Chicago for the next couple of weeks. I've had a bit more time on my hands with them out of town. (Truly it has been amazing to see how much energy caring for two children takes up!)

Anyway, I found another very interesting spider (actually two of them) in our garden. It's another harmless, large spider, but it spins an incredible web. It "writes" on the web, making something called a stabilimentum, which you can see in the picture above. I've found a fun web site called What's That Bug?, so I'm trying to become an amateur spider spotter in my newfound free time. I'm sure it'll be a short-lived hobby.

So, enjoy our crazy spiders. I hope you'll hear something about the family soon, but that will have to come from the Chicago bureau.

The Big 3-0

So...I turned 30 on Sunday. I haven't been afraid of turning thirty, so I was just looking forward to having a fun day with family and friends. When I arrived at my office, I found that some church friends had wreaked a little havoc. It was their way of welcoming me to the "Dark Side."

We spent the evening together with some other friends having a barbecue. I believe that this is the first barbecue we've had since we left Princeton, and it was so nice to hang around a grill with some fun people while the kids wore themselves out. It sure helps us feel more at home to be doing something we used to do so regularly at Princeton.

Jess had been hard at work on a gift for me, and I can say that I was very surprised at the present. Let's just say that I have one more chance to visit Yankee Stadium before they tear it down. I'm in shock. It's nice to feel loved.