Family, Friends and Farewells

Phew! It's been a busy week! Just a quick summary and then I'll share some pictures. James and I both took Thursday and Friday off last week. My brother Curt, sister-in-law Mandy and nephew Andrew were in town visiting from TX. Andrew has to be the cutest thing ever - and that's coming from a dog person not a baby person, haha. We hung out at my parents lake house for most of the time. Between breaks in the rain storms we made it down to Harkness Park on the shore for Andrew's first visit to the beach. He wasn't impressed. James introduced him to the world of RC cars and he liked that much better. Greeeeeeat. When the sun was out we got a chance to feed the ducks, when it rained I put everyone to work assembling wedding invitations and when the rain stopped, we were treated to another rainbow!

On Saturday we headed up to Southbury, CT for the wedding of a close friend of mine, Ryan and his beautiful bride, Kelly. The weather cooperated (no rainbows this time!) and everyone had a wonderful time. Congratulations guys!

Sunday was spent recovering from the wedding. Monday was a "get stuff done" kind of day (it was a mandatory furlough day for me) and Tuesday was Sandy's (SP) retirement party at Hurd State Park. The weather was once again less than ideal but the party itself was great. Despite the rain (and hail), lots of folks came out to celebrate SP's career and wish him well in retirement. Of course, the sendoff wouldn't have been complete without a serious geocaching adventure. Joel and Emily helped me plan a three stage cache which was led by Sandy and his GPS. It was great fun. We also placed a permanent cache in the park to mark SP's transition to retired life. Hope you enjoyed yourself SP, we'll sure miss you!

Of course...I cried. so predictable.

And yet another rainbow...

And now, life resumes some bit of normalcy, at least for another week or so. Then it's another wedding followed by James' two week stint in Singapore (more on that later) and then it's really crunch time! So long normal life, we'll see you again at the end of September!