So spring is really here. I know that in some parts of the country spring has been abundantly present for MONTHS. Not in Boston. Ok, weeks, maybe.

In any case, we’ve had some warm weather which has sparked some enthusiasm for getting the hell out of the house and doing something outside. Preferably “active”.

Last week I had a strong urge to get the GPS and go geocaching up in Rockport, MA. Then I remembered my kids and thought it might be fun to get everyone on a bicycle and see how we do on the dirt roads of the state forests while we geocache. I haven’t done it yet, but the kids will love it! Grace needs some more work, though. She’s still a little new to the whole two-wheel-thing. So maybe she and I can go alone sometime when I can focus just on her without worrying about the others.

I also went camping with Gabe a few weeks ago and that whetted my appetite for a GOOD camping trip – because that one was almost washed out.

I’m also interested in finishing an electronics project to make a model rocket launch-control unit. I have all the parts, of which there aren’t many. I just need to slap them all together.

Dogs – I need to get back to training them so they behave a little better in public. Every time they see another dog they go (pardon me) absolutely ape-shit barking and helping. Its embarrassing. So I need to take them out one at a time and spend some quality time with them.

But I can’t do any of this tonight. Tonight I agreed to take the family out to dinner.

So all that will have to wait.

The weekend was super busy. We spent most of Saturday getting ready for our evening-party. It rained all night on Friday so we let the yard dry out most of the day and did some associated errands. We wound up with about 40 people coming over for hot dogs and hamburgers. As planned, I turned on the video of the Bon Jovi concert around 7:45pm. All of our younger guests completely ignored it and chased each other all over the yard in some kind of miniature capture-the-flag event. The adults continued to talk and enjoyed themselves. We handed out Glow-pops with LED’s in them which I have to admit looked pretty awesome in the dark. We had also bought 100 glow-necklaces at ebay for a good price. $0.25 each. So when it got dark we had all kinds of kids rampaging across the backyard. There were maybe four kindergartners, a dozen 9 or 10 year olds and probably another seven kids who were 12 years or older. I was amazed at how well they all got along. The younger kids LOVED staying up late and playing with the older kids. The older kids didn’t knock any (or very few) younger kids over.

All in all, the party was an unmitigated success.

Sunday was spent cleaning up and recovering from all the work that went in to the party. I had forgotten how much work a backyard party was. Whew! The dogs still aren’t over it. I think Peterman ate two hamburgers while Bucky seemed to focus more on the hotdogs that kids left behind.

So, now everything is back to normal. I should really start cleaning out the store room – it’s a mess in there. I also need to get a new lawn mower – my old one bit the dust mere moments after finishing the backyard.

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