Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Family

Random Fun

A catch-up kind of post, since I haven’t posted pics of the girls recently.

A couple weekends ago we went apple picking. A little late in the season, but it was a gorgeous day.

Danny likes to climb the trees:

The farm also had a playground. Tori likes to climb too:

And the obligatory Halloween picture. Danielle was a Cereal Killer, Tori a cat and I’m apparently wearing a large rodent as a wig.

Of course, Tori had to try on the wig…

And Danielle celebrated her 11th birthday with 9 other girls. It was a sleepover. Sleep was not actually involved.

Today we are all recovering…

November 3, 2013
Hat Trick Sunday, Game Winner Tuesday

Our nephew, Matt Garcia, is on a roll. We saw his hat trick Sunday (against an admittedly not great team). Today he had a much more challenging away game against a good team.

It was tied 1-1 after regulation. Still tied after the first overtime.

Garcia had the game winning shot in the 110th minute of play off of a free kick he bent around the line of defenders to place it in the left corner of the net, lifting the Knights to a 2-1 victory over the Hawks.

He had a similar free kick goal last Sunday. It’s Division III, but I think he’s leading the conference in scoring.

Fun stuff…

October 22, 2013
Beautiful Hudson

My wife and I did a weekend away from the kids as a belated anniversary trip. We stayed at a cute B&B in Stone Ridge NY. We wanted to do some hiking but my wife is rehabbing from minor knee surgery so we needed something not too rugged.

The owner of the B&B suggested the Walkway over the Hudson. I didn’t know about this, but apparently they took an old rail bridge across the Hudson River and converted it to a pedestrian bridge.

It’s gorgeous.

The leaves were changing and it was a beautiful day.

This is the bridge itself (those are friends of ours who joined us):

And these are the views:

The girls stayed with my wife’s sister, who lives fairly close to this. On the way home we got to see our nephew play soccer for Mount Saint Mary College and he had a hat trick in a rout.

A great weekend…

October 21, 2013
Another Fantastic Vacation

Honestly, I could just recycle last year’s post. The weather was fantastic. The same families were in the same houses so Danielle and Victoria had built in playmates. The beach and sunsets are always great.

The gang from the first week:

Danielle, Clara, Madeline, Victoria and Hannah (10,8,9,6 and 5 respectively)

Other friends stayed with us the second week. We hit the local drive-in:

Victoria, Marieé and Cooper

This year even Tori was holding the crabs:

Danielle created elaborate habitats with crabs organized by size:

And fish:

I’m not really sure what Tori is doing here:

But she’s very proud of her new sweatshirt:

As hard as it is, I’ll avoid posting a million sunset pictures. Every night was a great one.

August 28, 2013
Over

One final spectacular subset. Heading home tomorrow.

August 24, 2013
Almost Over

Vacation is almost done…

August 21, 2013
Almost Vacation

Regular readers know our summer vacation plans. It’s the same this year. Two week (yes, two!) in Cape Cod. Same place, same beach, same sunsets. Expect very similar pictures with taller daughters.

It’s hard to believe this girl:

is now 10. But that shot of Danielle was from our first visit to this beach house in 2008.

More in a few weeks…

August 8, 2013
A Happy Birthday

My wife is celebrating a big birthday on Saturday. I wanted her to have a memorable birthday so last night I organized a group of our best friends to meet for dinner.

These would technically be Elly’s “work friends”, but this is 4 1/2 couples that we have known for 10+ years. These are folks we vacation with, kids have sleep-overs together, etc. Just good people and great friends.

We ate at Barbuto. My wife does the Manhattan dining thing with clients so she knows the good places. I had never been there. The chef, Jonathan Waxman. is apparently famous (I wouldn’t know).

The web site makes it look fancier than it is. The place has a great casual funky vibe, with huge garage doors as the front wall that open up in nice weather.

There’s a “chef’s table” for big groups. It’s just a big long table back where they are cooking. You can watch them cook, but really the fun was that they just bring out dish after dish of wonderful food. There’s no menu for the chef’s table, they just bring out tons of food family style. For a big group this is fantastic.

The food was incredible. We had a blast. Just a fantastic night.

August 2, 2013
Vacation

We had a great time last year so we are going to the exact same place. I’ll be posting similar pictures with my girls a year older in about a week.

March 20, 2013
Sand Castle Day

On our last day in Cape Cod, high tide at Skaket Beach was very late. I’ve mentioned before that at low tide you can literally walk a mile straight out. So apparently some folks decided that it was the perfect day for a big sand castle project.

Around 10:30 AM, we see about ten people with serious shovels digging a big moat and making a big pile of sand. Interesting.

By noon it was just starting to take shape. Note how far out the tide is.

12:30, two clear peaks:

By 1:00 people were getting interested:

This guy clearly came prepared for sand art:

As the afternoon progresses (1:30 PM) random people start pitching in and helping:

Here it is at 3:20 PM. You can see the tide approaching. Time is running out:

It wasn’t just the castle, there was interesting sculpture all over the place:

The artist kept building until the end. Around 4 PM:

But the tide always wins these battles. By 5 PM, it looked like this:

Such a brief lifespan, but the entire beach got to enjoy it. It made for a fun last day of vacation.

August 27, 2012