41

I turned 41 this week. I feel like I can remember a time when that would have seemed old. But now I just shrug and think “that sounds about right”.

Karen really rocked the whole birthday thing this year and made me saltenas and a tres leches cake. I married well.

The girls were both very sweet to me too. Diane painted a hedgehog statue for our garden, and Melina got me some bow-ties (which I’ve never owned before). She thought I’d look nice in them. Very sweet on both counts.

Formal-wear aside, poor Melina is having a challenging week. She’s got hormones flooding her adolescent brain and forcing a nasty Jekyll/Hyde effect. You know, if Jekyll constantly sang showtunes and gave hugs from behind, and if Hyde left mean (but hilarious) notes everywhere:

We love her very much.  But this had better be early onset teen angst and not a build-up to the real thing <shudder>.

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Blackberries are everywhere all of a sudden, and we’ve been picking/eating them while we walk. Diane got a particularly big batch this week, and wanted to make ice cream. So she and Karen made blackberry sorbet, garnished with lemon balm. Pretty swanky.

Note: this bird and Diane are competing to see who can eat more berries. Diane is winning.

Every time I think we are going to run out of fun things to do, someone (usually Karen) comes up with something new. This weekend she decided it would be fun for us to try geocaching. Basically, you use GPS to try to find containers that other people have hidden and left hints to find. Sometimes they have a log to write your name in, sometimes there are little goodies. It’s a low-stakes global treasure hunt. I think we are about 5-10 years behind on this one, but WOW there are a lot of things hidden, even just around our neighborhood.

Note: here we are after discovering our first cache!

One more thing I have to mention this week. Diane is so insightful. She comes up with really smart ideas/explanations/concepts that other people (including me) just don’t.

We watched Independence Day last week and had this exchange:

Movie (Jeff Goldblum): the aliens are using our own satellites against us!
Diane: <turns to us> they (the US Army) are going to have to destroy the satellites!
Karen and Zach: <dumbfounded> Ummm…yeah, that’s a really good idea.

Note: none of the screenwriters thought of this. I’ve probably seen the movie a dozen times and never thought of that. But…duh. We can’t destroy the aliens, but if the aliens need our satellites to coordinate a global attack, we can certainly take out our own satellites.

Here’s another gem from tonight:

Diane: I caught a firefly in my hand!
Zach: Awesome, is it lighting up?
Diane: No.
Zach: I wonder why that is?
Diane: It’s probably so his friends won’t fall into the same trap.

I mean…probably not, but if fireflies were smart and cared about their friends, that’s exactly what they would do.

 

Back at it

Somehow it’s been a month since our last blog post. I’m going to attempt to get caught up all in one post. Here we go…

We went to Ocean City!

We took two wonderful weeks away to hang out in Ocean City. We even got to bring Zellie! Thank you Georgia and Jerry for saving summer 🙂 If you are interested, our Ocean City pictures are all here.

Melina and Diane are still cooking!

Melina is a really good cook when she puts her mind to it. And Diane is a top-notch sous chef and cookie/cupcake/cheeseboard decorator.

Note: these outfits weren’t for anything in particular. The girls are just funny.

We spent a night making this!

 

We found lots of cool fungus!

Note: yes, that squirrel is eating a mushroom.

Melina and Diane made a carnival!

Note: they had games, tokens, prizes, everything. And they thought it up completely on their own. Super cool.

We went blueberry picking!

Note: and even more importantly, we made blueberry pie.

The girls created a new hero – “Super Dad”!

Note: there was also a comic book. What an awesome Father’s day present!

We found all sort of cool critters!

Note: the deer and bunnies seem to be losing some of their fear of people. Not sure why. Diane got close enough to almost touch a bunny this week. This deer was really close too, and we had Zellie with us. Weird. Also, one of those critter pictures is actually a pineapple. We found it floating in the lake, in what I can only assume was a pina colada experiment gone horribly wrong.

We watched (tiny) fireworks!

 

Diane built a blanket fort!

Construction was preceded by this conversation:

Diane: can I build a fort in the basement today?
Zach: yes, but you need to keep it in the playroom.
Diane: why?
Zach: well, when I have meetings people can see what’s behind me, and I don’t think it would be professional to have a blanket fort.
Diane: you can just tell them I built it.

Because you know, I could just say at the start of all my meetings “don’t worry about the blanket fort guys, it’s not mine.”

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So there you have it, our month in review. All in all, a pretty good time. I’ll try to get back to more regular posts now!