Beach and Bake

Over the weekend, we hit the beautiful shores of Jersey for a lovely weekend with our Hoboken friends. And I'm not being sarcastic when I say beautiful--this particular section of the shore (Seaside Park) is quite picturesque and far away from any Situations. :-)

The girls we went with are super-planners and super-ambitious, so I wasn't suprised when they decided we'd do a seafood bake for our big dinner on Saturday night. I went along for the ride and helped where I could, but felt it best for them to take the helm and plan the feast, which entailed scallops, shrimp, clams, snow crab legs and lobster. We picked up the shellfish at a local fish market and grilled it all but the crab and lobster, which was steamed. Seasoned with a little lime, lemon, salt and pepper, paired with corn, potatoes and onions, and that was it. Simple and delicious--and so fun to eat.

I made my first trifle for desert. I opted to be a bit more ambitious myself, and went with a recipe calling for pastry creme. As my mom said, it's quite easy to mess up any kind of custard, and I learned that the hard way, with my corn startch separating from the egg yolk. I wound up blending it, and, considering I did this late on Friday night, I also wound up splattering a quarter of the mix allover our kitchen. Right after Mark had cleaned the counters and the stove top. Nice.

All ended well and the trifle (complete with buttery pound cake, fresh strawberries, and yes, the ill-fated pastry creme which actually turned out quite good) was a hit. As was the beach and ocean with Eamon--he loved swimming with us and playing in the sand with his two BFFs. The boys are SO cute together and really got along so well the entire time we were there.

On the phone

Eamon had a few very important business calls to attend to the other day. As you can see, he wastes no time to idle chatter and cuts right to the point: "Hello? OK. BYE."

Eamon dancing!

Yesterday, we took a field trip to Alstede Farm in Chester, NJ, with our good friends to welcome summer with a very fun tradition: Berry picking! The farm had strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries ripe for the taking and the kids (and the moms!) had such a great time. Eamon took this task very seriously and plucked berries off the bushes for as long as we were out there. He didn't have much discretion between the ripe or not-yet-ripe fruits, but he got the job done.

We had a nice little picnic after then let the little ones check out all of the animals--horses, cows, donkeys, sheep, goats, bunnies, chickens and a peacock. They were all so cute together and happy to be out in the country. We'll be back in the fall for apples!

Our Little Gymnast

Eamon "graduated" from another session of Little Gym last week...since his class if for 1-3 year olds, he won't jump up to another group for a while, but it was still cute to see how far he's come since his earlier days! He now walks across the high balance beam by himself, and is usually one of the first to volunteer for a trick with th teacher. Of course, he's still more interested in doing his own thing (like flop on the mats over and over) than participating in every group activity, but he's getting better at listening. Here are some shots of him having fun in the gym--he received a ribbon for doing an assisted back roll and would NOT let it go. He was very proud!

Yes sir, that's our baby!

Apologies in advance to those of you who get freaked out by 3D images of babies in utero. I actually do a bit myself, though I think that it's pretty cool that #2 already has such defined features at a mere 16 weeks along. He or she (we're keeping that a surprise!) looks nothing like Eamon so far, and has a completely different nose--it's a little button! Not seeing any resemblance to anyone, actually, but obviously we still have a ways to go in that department.

After the anatomy scan on Monday, we learned that the baby is healthy and very active. Go figure.

Dig It.

One of the things Eamon just finds HILARIOUS is sticking his finger in his nose. Gross, I know. But a little (OK, a LOT) cute at the same time. He's not digging for gold in there, he just sticks his little index up his nostril to get a little laugh out of us. Like when I was trying to take his picture the other day, I kept saying, "Say Cheese!" and every time I did, he'd just shoot his finger right up his nose. Then laugh. I should get these things on video.

Anyway, Eamon now has a picture that is likely to end up in his high school year book or in his wedding slideshow. That and all of those pictures of him running around naked! Hee hee.

An addition...

Probably all of you who read this know this by now, but in case there are any lurkers out there that our email didn't hit, thought I'd pass this along: We are expecting Baby #2 in November! We're all very excited. Eamon has no clue what's going to hit him this fall; he is our little Prince and gets nothing but our undivided attention (and why wouldn't he? Just look at that face and tell me you wouldn't drop everything to play cars/sing/run around with him!). But at least now he knows and (sometimes) uses the word "share", let's hope he gets pretty good at that when it's time to pass along his toys to his new little brother or sister.

Some more shots of Eamon below...I think it might be time for a hair cut!