Eastern Comma Butterfly

Where’s Waldo the Eastern Comma butterfly? As Steve was out perusing a vineyard this past week he came upon the fairly common eastern butterfly.

Here’s a close-up. Nice comma and camouflage Waldo.

Weekend Activities

We have been having a lot of fun the past few weekends. They have been wonderful occasions to unwind after busy school weeks. One day trip that we went on was to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

The boys were all smiles.

Don’t let the photo of the boys above fool you. Stephanie might be the biggest baseball fan in the family.

Grandma and Grandpa met us there too. Somehow, we neglected to get a picture of Susan and Dave who also joined us at the hall.

One could spend days at the Hall of Fame just going through the displays containing memories and stories of great yankee legends. There was some memorabilia from other teams as well. It was a great day.

Steve and the boys have also taken the opportunity to do a little fishing around the region in recent weeks.

Here is Sean on the shore of Cayuga Lake. The most recent header for our blog shows Nate on the pier of Seneca Lake.

Nate landed this nice largemouth bass.

At Cayuga Lake Sean landed this beauty!

Sean was gracious enough to let Steve hold his bass so that he would know what it is like to hold such a big fish.

You can take the boy out of the country…

… but you can’t take the country out of the boy.

You may or may not remember seeing Sean in a previous post when he prepared the soil for his pototoes in the spring. As it turns out this was the fruits of one of his three potato plants that he started. It’s not surprising that he has a green thumb when it comes to growing potatoes. He has the Irish genes, the Irish name, and an insatiable appetite for potatoes.

 

Back To School

“It’s the most…wonderful time…of the year….”

Syracuse Nature Trail

Well, to wrap up our Labor Day weekend with one more day of family fun, we decided to make it to one more nature trail that we heard about in the Syracuse vicinity. When we started getting closer to the trail, we could not believe the amount of traffic on the roads and the number of people who were out and about. They seemed to be expecting a crowd though, as getting parked seemed to go really smoothly. There seemed to be some sort of festival going on around the park.

 We were really glad to see the trail head sign once we got there.

Sean and Nathan lead the way.

“Hey! Lavender!”

After the short but vigorous walk around the trail we decided to forego the trail mix and took advantage of the Doug’s Fish Fry booth that happened to be sitting at the trails end.

As we made our way back to the car, we stumbled across some sort of opening ceremony for an establishment called the Shamrock Bar.  We had the feeling as if we might be related to half the people standing around there but we didn’t stand around long enough to find out. We wanted to beat the rush as it looked as if they were all about to storm the bar.

At this point we just decided that we might just as well enjoy the festival since we were here. “If you can’t beat ‘um, join ‘um.” Above we got an eagle-eye view of the nature trail from a ferris wheel that had been conveniently assembled for the festivities.

As we continued to make our way back to our car we came upon some sort of presentation that had drawn quite a crowd. Asking around, a performance by an artist named Drake Bell was just about to begin. As it turns out he is a character from a popular TV show called Drake and Josh on the Disney Channel that Sean and Nathan just love.

Judging by the piercing screams of all of the teenaged girls surrounding the stage, he put on a good show.

It ened up being a great day…The End.

Lamoka Lake

We had the chance to take the canoe out for the afternoon this past Sunday. You may recognize the canoe in the banner as being the family canoe that use to reside at the camp in Old Forge. The canoe now belongs to Dale, but we are canoe sitting until they can get it to Tennessee. Until then, we thought we would take advantage of having it in our possession. We found a little lake in the Southern Finger Lakes in a paddle guide that sounded like a perfect outing. It was called Lamoka Lake.

 

Once we got out on the water there was an Island calling to be explored.

 

A quick internet search indicated that there were suppose to be some pretty big bass in the lake but we didn’t have much luck finding any of them.

Sean had taken the opportunity to throw out a line while we were beached on the island.

Nathan took the opportunity to go for a little swim and to skip some rocks.

It was a wonderful day to be out on the water. We also felt more confident about putting a canoe on our car a setting out for a day trip from home such as this. We can see ourselves doing this more often in the years to come.

Go (or should we say, Ohhhh…) Syracuse!

We were very excited when Stephanie found out at the last minute that she could get four free tickets for the Syracuse vs. Minnestota football game this past Saturday.

As you can see we had great seats. We weren’t sure what to expect with “free” seats, but were pleasantly surprised. It was the first football game at the Dome for all of us and it was really cool to experience the roar of over 48,000 people in a confined space.

The boys were already big Cuse basketball fans, but I think this experience opened their eyes to the world of football. Hopefully Syracuse is able to turn their program around this year.

One of the highlights was the opportunity to see the debute of the gritty new quarter back Greg Paulus. He made some very tough and exciting plays throughout the game.

Look for Lindsay!

The game could not have been more exciting. At the end of regulation the score was all tied up.

It’s never good when the visiting team does this at the end of overtime. It was an unfortunate ending to a great game, but was a wonderful experience none the less.

Light of Christ

Today was a very special day for Nathan. Today’s Sunday Mass was the culmination of the many hours of work that he and two of his fellow scouts completed independently over the past few months. Two boys worked toward the Parvuli Dei Emblem and Nathan fulfilled requirements for the Light of Christ Emblem. It is a very special award in scouting as it is one of the few honors that move along with them as they make the transitions from Cub Scouts, to Boy Scouts, and into their adult scouting life.

Above the boys received their pins as part of the Sunday liturgy.  Thank you, big brother Sean for being our photographer and for being supportive of Nathan.

After Mass the boys had a photo-op with Fr. Paul and their Scout Master.

We took a few moments around the grounds of the school and church to get a few more pictures. Here Nathan takes pause in the archway between the church and the rectory.

We are very proud of him.

“…don’t worry, my Dad is an electrician…”

 

On  the front porch looking up.

Adirondack Vacation 2009

Well, we just returned from a week-long family vacation in the Adirondacks. We camped for the week at Rollins Pond, located in between Tupper and Saranac Lake. This is the third year that we have camped for a week there. It is one of our favorite Adirondack destinations.

Here is the campsite we called home for most of the week.

When we pulled into the site, Steve couldn’t believe his eyes. Hoping to leave his life as an entomologist at home for the week, he was slightly amused to see an insect trap hanging in the tree across from our site.

Sitting around the campfire is always a central activity over the week of camping. This year the weather was pretty cooperative for campfires all week.

One of our traditions when camping is using a wood burner and inscribing our campfire poking stick with the year and location of our camping trip.

We had a pair of friendly chipmunks that seemed to like to see what we were up to when we would have meals. We named this one Rascal. He seemed the most mischievous of the two. The other was named Bob at first. But we thought that maybe the second one was Rascal’s love interest so Bob became Bobette.

One of the reasons that we love Rollins pond is that most of the sites are right along the water. Above Stephanie and Nathan enjoy a dip at our site.

There is also a public beach at the campground. Here Sean and Nathan are mixing it up a little bit while the life guards were flirting.

All in all, it was a wonderful week and we are already dreaming again about our week or two there again next year, or even considering an autumn weekend to the area. Enjoy the rest of our posts from our week.