A+ Weekend

That was a fun weekend. On Friday we all went to one of my step son's baseball games. On Saturday my step daughter's softabll team won their league championship, then she and I went to watch my step son's season finale. His league doesn't keep score so all of the teams got championship trophies. That means both step kids got a championship trophy on Saturday. They also both had ice cream. The softball team had a victory celebration at an ice cream place in Salem, and the baseball team had ice cream bars on the field.

After the games were over we met up with Jen, who was at work, and then met up with Larry and Nawal and their son for dinner at The Border Cafe (of course) followed by another ice cream at Kimballs in Westford (of course). It was getting a little late by the time we left Kimballs, but we found ourselves very close to my sister's house so we paid a brief surprise visit. We got to play with the soon-to-be-three year old nephew, and Jen and I both got to hold the four month old nephew. It was a nice visit.

Sunday was Fathers Day so the kids were picked up by their step mother at around 10:30 or so. Right after that Jen and I motored back to Westford to meet my family for Fathers Day brunch at the Westford Regency Hotel. We go to their Sunday brunch on special occasions when they aren't booked solid. The bacon is out of this world, and there are literally mountains of it. We got to see my parents (Happy Fathers Day, Dad), my sister's family (Happy Father's Day, Ken) including my two nephews, and my brother's family (Happy Father's Day, John) including my niece and nephew. It was fun, but we had to cut it short because we needed to be home for when the kids came back. They, and their step mother, surprised their Dad by taking him out to lunch.

Almost as soon as they got home from lunch with their Dad, we all piled into the new car and drove up to the mountains. It was a little late in the day to get started, but we had a couple of ideas of things to do in the White Mountains in day trip fashion. We didn't do either of them. Instead we took the tram to the top of Cannon Mountain and wandered around one of the trails. The kids were a little nervous about the tram at first, but once it started moving they loved it. They had a great time on the trail too. The mountain wasn't high enough for a bare rock summit, but it was high enough for the trees to be stunted and weird looking. It's a little like being in another world, and when you hit a clear spot the views were unbelievable. It was beautiful.

I have a big pile of pictures on my camera that need to be sorted and posted. There are pictures from my birthday dinner, my step daughter's chorus concert, both of Saturday's softball/baseball games, and Cannon Mountain. I'll get to them soon.

On the way home we stopped at a turkey restaurant in Meredith, NH that Jen used to go to with her mother when she was a kid. Meredith is also the scene of a famous Murphy clan family vacation when my sister and I were kids. I think my brother was still a baby then. I don't know how clear my memory of that vacation is, but I believe there were about 30,000 Murphy cousins there. My mother's side of the family is so damn big we may never get an accurate count of just how many cousins I have.

It was a great weekend. A+ all around.