Spring Sprang

Last week was Spring. The cherry and magnolia trees started donning their floral finery and the sun was blooming. Around the base of every tree, the Daffodils made their yearly appearance and the heady scent of of plant pheremones saturated the air. This is a pic of a couple of the trees in the yard. You can also see the daffodils. I ate outside for lunch, went on a refreshing bike ride, though the temps didn't get higher than 65F. It was near perfect weather and reminded me why I love enjoy it out here so much.
Then Fall bullied Summer into staying home. The rain and clouds came back, and the wind started throttling the flowers. Last year at this time, it snowed. They say it won't be sunny again until after Easter. Oh well. Just gives me something to look forward to next year.

Dungeon Paintball

Met some guys from Team GBH, Kent and Ron, downtown at Tower Paintball to get some trigger time before the tournament on the 5th. Took the train into Waterloo, then hopped on the Tube to London Bridge. Took about an hour total, but I had to heave my 30lb pball backpack around town. Got to the field right next to the London Dungeon and found myself in a damp dark cold storage facility beneath the London Bridge (I think). The field (there was only one tourney field) was about 70 feet long and 20 feet wide. The concrete floors had a thin layer of astroturf that my Osiris skateshoes just barely gripped. Water constantly seeped through the walls and saturated the floor. The only drill I didn't like was 'jousting' in which players from opposite corners ran toward the center cone guns blazing. Ideally, the first person hit or the first person to the center wins. But the way these guys played it, it didn't matter if you were hit, so they just kept charging and firing 12 balls/second until they reached, or often passed, the cone. This is what I call 'pain'ball since it's basically the first guys to give up from the pain. Stupid. It was defintely an interesting experience, though, got a bit of training in, found a source fro cheapish paint, and spent some quality time with Kent, Ron, and some spicy chicken wings, so it was a good time overall.

NorthDownsWandererers

Mens Retreat March09

Gabriel Stroud and I took a little ride along the Pilgrims Path over the weekend. More details to come, but here are some pics...

She's growing!

Evangelyn does all sorts of neat tricks, now. She can roll, sit, eat food, spit the food out, and she loves to read (or eat) books! She's also figured out how to peek out of her crib and see if we're in the room to play with her.

Rollin' rollin'

....keep that baby rollin'. So here's Evie's new trick. The back to front roll. She uses it to get closer to things instead of crawling. Especially since she can't crawl. I'm teaching her to roll up stairs next.

Baby's Eating Food!

Evangelyn entered a new stage of life last Saturday - real food. So far, she's had potatoes, carrots, apples, butternut squash and baby rice. She loves the butternut squash and baby rice. The apples were definitely not her favorite, which surprised me because apples are sweet. Maybe she didn't inherit the Bussjaeger sweet-tooth, or the Chong sweet-tooth. Maybe she takes after her Nanny who has never eaten many sweets and prefers the crunchy, salty chips! We'll have to wait a while for Evangelyn to try chips, of course. It's pretty funny watching her figuring out how to chew and swallow. She usually sucks her bottom lip while trying to get the food down. Somehow, it works. Today as I was feeding her, I gave her the bowl to play with because I was advised that eating time should be fun. I forgot that she likes to fling things from her hand until the bowl of bright orange butternut squash went flying across the room, splattered across the window and landed, splat!, on the carpet. Silly me. No worries, though. It's school housing.