Hurricane

Yeah yeah I know the hubbub of the hurricane is way over but I have to share our adventures of that lovely weekend. First of all we were very lucky. No power out. No trees lost. Just a bit of a chimney leak which I had kinda forgotten about from last years rainy summer.

So, we spent the whole weekend watching movies and making great food. However, during the height of the storm my love starts to make Zucchini Bread for our gathering the next day and she realizes that we don't have Vanilla. So, I text all our neighbors and no one responds. I jump in the car and run to 711 two blocks away and they don't have it. I text a few more further away neighbors, no one responds. So, my love says we have to go to the grocery store. In the height of the storm, we (plus the dogs) get into the car in our pajamas and go to the grocery store for Vanilla!


PS. The Zucchini Bread was awesome :)

The damages to our neighborhood was minor. Our walking path was obstructed by a big fallen tree and our playing field became a pond.




And after everything had passed and some trees had been cleared we had a lovely goodbye gathering for a midwife friend who is moving to CA. Here she is with two of the babies and their mommas she delivered last year!

Labor Day in DC

My love and I spent Labor Day in our nations capital. We were celebrating a three day weekend and a year of togetherness. It was a truly lovely day of city exploring together.

We started our day at the National Museum of American History. We were both a bit disappointed at how many war focused exhibits there were but we did love seeing Julie Childs kitchen. She was a Smithie like me you know :) Check out this part of the exhibit referencing her time at Smith.

If you can't read the quote it says:
"When I came to college I was an adolescent nut...someone like me should not have been accepted at a serious institution. I spent my time growing up and doing enough work to get by."

We also loved seeing the original muppets. Did you know that Kermet is the only original muppet? Some of the other originals were named, "Mushmellon" and "Moldy Hay" and my favorite "Icky Gunk".


We then went out onto the mall and did the classic tourist thing. Take stupid pictures with the tall fallic monument :)






And we ended our day with a beer at the brewery and a cupcake from Red Velvet as the sun set.


Thanks love for a great day and the best year of my life so far!

Found Object Art

One of our favorite pastimes on the Bay is to stroll along the shore line and look for stuff. Wood stuff. Metal stuff. Glass stuff. If we like it then it comes home, goes into the shed, and someday becomes art. This past weekend my mom hosted a junk art day for us and it was fun!

The pizza oven area became our studio.


Here is my love with her little creature.


He can't quite stand up on his own yet so here he is leaning on the steps watching us make more masterpieces.


I made a bouquet of junk flowers. It is hard to see each individual flower in this picture but here is the bouquet in the vase :)


Our final junk sculpture was this totem pole of floats. No we did not steal any of them. They have all washed up on our shores. Now they stand high in sky on a cedar tree that also washed up on our shores.

Potato Crusted Quiche

The truth is, I hate making pie crusts. I generally make everything myself to avoid the trans fats of processed things but I almost always buy pie crusts. So, I decided to completely forget about the pie crust and use potatoes (my loves favorite veggie).

I don't ever cook with a recipe but here is the gist of what I did.

Saute veggies until tender (anything will do but I did peppers, onions, and zucchini). Mix veggies that don't need to be cooked into beaten eggs. Approx 6 eggs for a quiche.


Slice potatoes very thin and line an oiled pan with them. Bake for 10-15 minutes all by themselves to get them soft before adding the egg part of the quiche.


Don't tell your wife how to slice the potatoes more than once :)


Put sauteed veggies into the egg mixture. Poor the egg mixture on top of the precooked potatoes. Bake at 375 for approx 40 minutes, or until egg is fully cooked and there is a slight brown huge to the top of the quiche.


I kinda followed this recipe on this blog if you need more details :)

For the Love of Cooking

Duttisty Play Day

Do you like this merge of our two names? I think it is funny!

This past weekend we joined families for a play day at my parents house. It was wonderful! The moms took off in kayaks first thing in the morning.


We took parents and kids over to Rocky Point to scavenge for sea glass, sea shells, and cool drift wood via canoe.


Turns out swimming is a lot more fun than hunting for sea glass.




Lunch was our family's special: Pizza in the outdoor wood fired oven. The kids were wonderfully creative but unfortunately for me they LOVE meat!


And after the belly was full of pizza we went back to the dock for some more relaxing. I love seeing both of our parents just chilling together on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Icecream

Who doesn't LOVE icecream?

Adventures in the Rain

This morning we decided to surprise my mom by driving up to her church for the service she was leading. We left the house and the sky was dark but it wasn't raining. Fifteen minutes into our hour drive it started to poor. Buckets. But that let up after about 10 minutes and we continued on until we started to hit mini lakes in the road. Soybean fields were swamped. Gutters were gushing. We drove slowly through many low spots in the road until we hit a line of cars who were all turning around to avoid the bottom of one specific hill. We took a detour to navigate ourselves around that spot in the road but on this corn field adventure we found another lake in the road. As we were coming up to this bend my love says to me, "babe I can't see the end of this one". So, out I jump to walk through the floods to see if we are going to make it to the other side.



We successfully didn't flood the engine and made it to church only 10 minutes late. We walked in and shocked my mom who had just started her talk about "contemporary marriage". This New Yorker cover from this July was hanging in the front of the room.



She then led the group in a discussion of how marriage is evolving and how the legal and spiritual aspects of marriage interact. Here are some of the questions she asked. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts :)

1. What does the marriage ceremony process say about the couple and their
families and why is it so complicated?
2. In what ways does the wedding day impact or change the couple and their
families?
3. Is there an ethics question to be considered about the wedding business?
4. What does “getting married” mean spiritually/psychologically to the various
people involved?
5. What does the denial of legal marriage do to the psyches and spirits of gay folks
who have chosen life long partners?

Tubing

The new boat pulled its first set of tuber this weekend! The whole family loaded up into the plush seats and off we went into the Choptank.




Since it was the kids first time tubing, two adults made a kid sandwich. I think my love enjoyed herself as much as the kids!

Dog Days of Summer

It is hot. Really hot. I always prefer it hot over cold but wow has it been hot! So the dogs want very little to do with going outside unless there is water involved. So, we took a trip down to Wye Island this past weekend. With our friend Easton along for the adventure off we went.


The path was nicely covered with shade.


The tide was out so the dogs could wade way out into the water.


There was a rope swing which clearly was meant for high tide but my love took a turn swinging on it. Easton got wild over the swing and we captured one of his flying leaps.


Then much to our surprise a bunch of horses came down the path and plunged right into the water.


We decided to sit down in the sand and watch them for a while before heading back.


It was a lovely way to spend a sunday morning on the eastern shore.

What happened to May and June?

So sorry my dear followers for dropping off the blog world these past two months. What happened was, well, you see, I got married! So May and June were consumed by wedding prep, wedding celebrations, and wedding recovery. The pictures and stories to blog about just kept growing and I got overwhelmed. So, we are going to start fresh today with a post about Arts Fest in State College.

My wife went to Penn State and has returned every few years for a visit. Her favorite weekend to visit is Arts Fest because the streets get shut down and filled with art vendors. Painting, pottery, mobiles, clothes, jewelry, you name it and it is there! Over 200,000 people come to State College for Arts Fest every year and here we are with our dear hosts on the main street of the festival.



We spent the weekend with two lovely ladies, who showed us a great time. We even convinced Sue to try her first Cosmo :)


I pretended to be a part of the side walk art.


April ran through the buckets and only got a few drops splashed on her.


Here are the Penn State ladies outside of the dorm where they met.


As if she were going to carry me over the threshold of our dorm room?


The real stomping grounds of my love. She says I have terrible form :)

Fun Wedding Prep

The wedding planning is coming right along. We are now doing the fun stuff like wine tasting and center piece planting. Here we are last weekend at my parents house playing in the dirt and enjoying some fine (but cheap!) wine.

Genetics

Over easter weekend my family started talking about genetics. Did you know that the ability to curl your tongue and do star-trek hands is genetic? I was the only one who could not really curl my tongue!

And yes there was wine involved in this silly picture :)