More Morehouse

Elena Michelle Morehouse

Here's the happy new Morehouse family! Meet Elena Michelle, born at 5:38 this morning. Mom and baby are doing terrific!

New Pond Denizen

A gift from the Wilsons.

Memorial Day 2008

I know Memorial Day was two months ago. I have some catching up to do. There's some pictures coming even older than this.

It had become somewhat of a tradition for the Morehouse Clan to convene in Biscuit Hollow on Memorial Day weekend. But with us all spread out across the continent, it has been awhile since anything organized has been attempted. This year was no different. More by happenstance or even Divine guidance, most of us ended up there this year. Bonnie was in from Michigan to be with Tom and his wife Sandy who was tragically taken from us during this time following a heart attack.


Lynn, Gail, McKenna, and Gail's parents were here. Oh, and Lucky, their new dog.


Tim and Bessie were there as well, and Pat and Butch dropped in for awhile.

Despite the very sad experience of losing a member of our family that weekend, it was good to be with family.

Grandmahood

There are two very nice young men that live around the corner from us. We'll call them Sam and Noah, because that's their real names. Jann stopped by last week when they were having a yard sale and noticed they had a cane for sale. I'm not sure how it all came about, but the topic of us becoming grandparents soon apparently came up and the boys thought that was hillarious. Obviously because Jann just looks way to young and beautiful to be a grandma. Several days later, we found this wonderful gift on our front door.

Not to be outdone, Jann put on her best grandma outfit, baked up a batch of cookies, and delivered them warm from the oven to those young whipper snappers.

Re-Lax

A few days after the regular lacrosse (lax) season ended, outdoor box season began. No rest for the weary! Excellence takes work. And in this case, the lacrosse season never ends. It just amends its format.

This year we have a new box lacrosse venue in town. A converted tennis court, but now with fan bleachers, scorers stand, and even an electronic scoreboard.

Box lacrosse is a faster version of it's field counterpart, often played indoors, such as the National Lacrosse League. Smaller goals, smaller fields, smaller teams, lead to the speed and help develop stick skills and maintain fitness, while still letting the kids have fun.

The month long season ends this week with Jeff's (14) team in first place going into the playoffs.

Guests

Our good friends the Kinsmans and Wilsons had never been to Biscuit Hollow. So last weekend, we invited them over to see where we hide and to enjoy the traditional Biscuit Hollow campfire and not so traditional hotdog roast. No sirree. Jann does it up right. Complete with white linen table cloth and candles!

New York, New York

Hello all you baseball fans! Did you watch the all star game last night? We were there!

Well, not quite. But we were in Yankee Stadium on July 6th for a Red Sox game. It was our chance to see and experience Yankee Stadium one last time (before they tear it down).



We arrived early afternoon and with time to kill and ready to experience city driving, we took the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan and drove right down 34th St, past Madison Square Garden, Macy's, and the Empire State Building.
Then the Midtown Tunnel to Flushing, past the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the Arthur Ashe Stadium, and the Unisphere from the old World's Fair.

Our destination, Shea Stadium of course for this baseball trip. Especially since this is also the last year for old Shea. We just looked around for a few minutes and headed back for the main event.

We took this ferry, known as the Yankee Clipper for this ride, from Port Imperial, New Jersey, and headed down the Hudson,

past Midtown,

the financial district,

around the tip of Manhattan, looking out at the harbor and Lady Liberty and

up the East River under all the famous bridges.

Finally, and not soon enough for Jeff, we arrived at Yankee Stadium.

We found our seats and hooked up with Uncle Mark Sienkiewicz who was able to find the tickets for us. He drove down from Northampton for the game.

The stadium may be tired, the seats VERY tight, but you have to be impressed with the history.

We were able to see Jaba Chamberlain pitch against the Red Sox' Wakefield, closers Rivera and Papelbon, a home run by A-Rod, an extra innings game, and a walk-off hit by a rookie.

The Yankee crowd went wild, and as Red Sox fans, we were disappointed. But as Jeff says, it somehow made the Yankee Stadium experience complete.

Then it was a short walk back to the ferry for a beautiful midnight ride back to Port Imperial with beautiful night time views of NYC.

Spring Bucks

These photos were taken on July 5, 2008.

Twins

I have seen quite a few fawns this spring, mostly singles. But this is the first picture of the year. Blurry, but beautiful. I just feel fortunate to have gotten so close. That's half the game with wildlife photography. Now, if I can just remember to set the camera focus on infinity in low light situations....

Snapping Turtle

This ugly old "one-eyed" common snapping turtle has set up home in our pond. I really am not fond of critters like this that eat my fish. And from the looks of it's back, it has adopted the typical technique of burying itself in the mud and waiting for a juicy morsel to come swimming along. Maybe a large mouth bass, or even an american toad, or a leaopard frog, well, you get the picture.

This one is apparently quite old by it's size. I saw it in the pond a week ago, but this time it was headed off on a jaunt away from the pond. My guess: to lay her eggs.

Lacrosse Season Wrap-Up

One of the reasons you haven't heard much from us the past several months is lacrosse season. Two or three games a week, home and away, and practices, have kept us kind of busy.

A group of Jeff and his friends celebrate their season at the lacrosse banquet. The varsity team played a tough schedule, ended up ~ .500, and went to the Sectional Championship during the post season.

Mr. Excitement is on the far left of the team lineup.

Jann and the banquet committee serve up a wonderful meal.

And finally, my favorite cafeteria lady!