Memorial Day Weekend

We were all set to go to my Mom's beach house in Stone Harbor, NJ for the memorial day weekend, but then Emma got sick and missed school Wednesday through Friday and still wasn't feeling good on Friday so we cancelled our trip. We certainly didn't want to bring any germs to Mom or to my sister and her kids who were also going to the beach. As much as we were sad not to see everyone it was nice not to have to drive six plus hours each way on a holiday weekend.

Emma started feeling better Saturday afternoon thanks to the penicillin so we decided to go to a housewarming party we were all invited to. Emma went next door for dinner and a sleep over with her friend Diana and Jim and I road our bikes over to the party about 3-4 miles away. The party was given by a Danish couple who I met through Newcomers. They throw great parties and love to entertain. (They had a great Christmas party with traditional Danish food and beverages). The weather ended up being really nice though it rained in the morning. They even cooked frikadella (not sure of the spelling, but these are sort of a cross between meatballs and hamburgers). All the kids were in the yard playing and the grown-ups had time to chat. Jim and I had a fabulous bike ride home from the party. We went by the Barrington Beach through that neighborhood which still has lots of smaller beach cottage type houses some of which have been added on to. Then we headed out Nayatt road along the shore by the golf club. There was a lovely sunset and breeze. I felt truly very lucky to live in this place and to have this time with just Jim.

Sunday we had a lazy day at home, thought Emma went to a birthday party in the later afternoon. I got out to buy some mulch, but then lost interest in actually mulching. To my credit the weather was very unstable: sunny one moment, then raining, then thundering.

Monday's weather was much much better and we all headed over to my friend Jen's on our bilkes to watch the Barrington Memorial Day parade. She on one of the small roads that run off of Maple Avenue and deadend at the bike path. She invited several families over and we had a yummy brunch with a break to walk up to the end of the street to watch the parade go by. The parade was the perfect length for the 2-9 year olds watching it. There was a fife and drum group, the High School band, the Middle School band, girl scouts, boy scouts, fire trucks -- that's about it. All the kids had flags to wave and most of them were wearing red, white and blue. Jen's daughter was just adorable with her hat and braids.

Around noon we headed home -- I was finally in the mood to work in the garden and cleaned up all the porch furniture, planted, weed whacked, etc.... Jim and Emma went off to buy roller blades. Emma had an IOU for roller blades left over from Santa at Christmas and Jim wanted to try them. At the moment Emma is much better than Jim, but we will see how long that lasts. We all walked up to the end of our road to the big parking lot at St. Luke's and I watched while Jim and Emma skated around. On our way back down the street we were invited to an impromptu Memorial Day picnic at Emma's friend Kayla's house and many of our neighbors and there kids were there. It was probably one of those things that happend when you are all out watching your kids play and just decide to eat together. I met a neighbor that just moved recently and her son -- so that was nice. She had made the most delicious blueberry crumble. Another neighbor contributed hamburger patties from his freezer. So, after working all afternoon in the garden I got out of cooking dinner too!

On top of all this I also managed to find sometime to write my column for the Technical Services Law Librarian. Nothing like waiting until the last moment, but I am pretty happy with it. I wrote about Twitter for Law Firm Librarians.

Perfect weekend -- now I just have to recover!