Vacation is still awesome. Tonight’s sunset:
But pictures never do it justice…
Category: Family
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Vacation Morning
A beautiful early morning at the Cape. That’s Tori in the lower right, she’s an early morning girl.
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Fourth of July Fun
Victoria fishing at a friend’s place in Westchester. That dock was a nice place to watch the fireworks.
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Aerial Yoga
Yes, that is a thing. For my wife’s sister’s birthday, her daughter in law organized a group class here.
It looks something like this. Silks are hung and you can stretch, hang, flip, do all kinds of funky things. Needless to say, my girls loved it. Victoria learned to hang herself upside down.
Danielle learned all kinds of moves.
I did it too, but there is thankfully no photographic evidence…
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Puerto Rico Redux
We didn’t have any imagination with our vacation this year. For the third straight year we went to San Juan. And we had a similarly great time. You could refer to either of the past posts and it was basically the same vacation.
With older girls, there was more night swimming:
We went to El Morro as usual:
The big new thing was a rainforest excursion. We had been meaning to do this in past years, but didn’t find the time. This year we also wanted to check out zip lining. So we rented a car and drove towards El Yunque, the rain forest. First we headed here. We had no detailed information, we just showed up. It was around 11:30 and they told us the next group would zip line at 1:00. So we had some time to kill. They suggested the nearby beach, Luquillo. So we headed over there for a bit.
We ate some great alcapurrias at a local joint and walked along the beach.
And then it was time to zip line. They said you had to be 8, so Victoria aged a year that day. We were worried it might be too scary for her. At first she was a little scared, but she rallied and had a blast.
Tori getting ready:
And she’s off…
Danielle about to go:
And off..
And to give you some sense of how far these lines, go, the video below shows both girls zipping off to a final landing spot you can’t see:
And we followed this up with a hike in the rainforest.
To a beautiful (and very cold) waterfall. Tori is usually my cold water girl, but only Danielle would swim with me.
It was a great vacation…
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Journee Simone Vargas
My wife’s brother’s first child. I’m an uncle…
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Coby
It has begun. After years of pleading, we got our girls a puppy. We got a rescue dog from the North Shore Animal League. He’s a Terrier mix, 12 weeks old, and his name is Coby.
This is us leaving the shelter. Wish us luck…
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Tori’s Birthday Party
Victoria got to celebrate her birthday in style at a rock-climbing, obstacle course, general athletic fun place. Below are the obligatory pictures.
We got there early, so Tori and Danielle hung out together
The obstacle course part was well done. They started out small:
And about every 10 minutes, they’d add on something at the end. So next they had to use the springboard to get up on the wall.
It was freezing in Brooklyn that day. Danielle was still cold, though I don’t think vaulting with a scarf is recommended.
Then, as they kept increasing the obstacle course, they took two kids at a time to climb the walls. So the kids were never waiting, they were always moving.
No problems getting to the top.
Danielle’s long legs give her a big advantage.
The usual pizza and cake followed, with some time left over for parachute fun.
And finally a dance party (can’t really tell with the flash, but it was dark with disco lights and smoke).
A very happy birthday for Tori and friends.
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No Storybook Ending
Our nephew’s soccer team fought the good fight in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but there was no storybook ending. They got the #9 (at the time) ranked team in the country, York (PA). The match was in Hoboken at Steven’s Institute of Technology (ranked #5) so I was able to go see it.
You could tell from the beginning that York was good, particularly their defense. Someone told me over the season they only gave up on average 4 shots on goal per game (not 4 goals, 4 shots).
Mount Saint Mary played them tough, sending it to overtime 0-0, but finally lost 1-0. York would go on to beat Stevens (also in OT).
But overall a great season, and something Mount Saint Mary can really build on. The team is young and almost everyone is back next year. Should be fun to watch.
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 