by Judy Handley | Feb 5, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 108, Year 9: More Snow
Date: Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Weather: Snow Overnight with Icy Rain and Snow Mix All Day
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
It seems that ‘more snow’ is the mantra for this winter here on the Cape. We got another 3 inches or so overnight last night and a mix of icy rain and snow showers all day today. The forecast says that the chance of precipitation will end just after midnight, but the wind started blowing about 7 pm and I figure that means this system is blowing its way out of here. We’ll get a bit of a respite until Saturday and then the chance of snow returns. We are watching the forecast very carefully, hoping that the snow is going to end early on Monday so that our flight out of Boston at 7 am on Tuesday will go off without a delay. Right now that looks hopeful, but you certainly can’t depend on a weather forecast this winter. The weather gods seem to be doing whatever they please.
School was cancelled today, so Heather was home with all three boys. Since Jed is out of town, we went over to help out a bit. Heather has been trying to find a time to take Sam and Jonah clothes shopping. Both of them have worn holes in the knees of all of their winter pants and they both needed sandals or Crocs for the trip to Puerto Rico. So once the roads were cleared, we took off on a shopping spree. We left Granddad at home with a sleeping Ollie and Ollie cooperated by napping until 3 pm. We didn’t get home until 4 pm, but Granddad and Ollie had no trouble having fun together until we returned. Granddad got an A+ for his babysitting skills. Ollie had not eaten lunch when he went down for a nap, but Granddad fed him after the nap, changed his diaper, and then entertained him by cuddling on the sofa and reading books to him until we returned.
Tomorrow is another one of our marathon days. Heather goes to Boston and won’t return until bedtime for the boys. Jed will probably not return from his out-of-town trip until even later, so Mark and I will be holding down the fort all day and evening.
by Judy Handley | Feb 4, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 107, Year 9: Glittery Cotton Trees
Date: Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Weather: Snow Overnight, but Mostly Sunny Day; High Temp in the 30’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
It snowed all day yesterday and through most of the night and by morning our world was encrusted with icy snow. The trees were beautiful today with their decorations of frozen snow. They really looked like trees with glittery cotton balls attached to all of their branches. It was a sunny day and the sky was deep blue which made everything look especially beautiful.
It was a busy day for us. We arrived at Heather and Jed’s early and I launched into a frenzy of activity. I canned chicken mineral broth and did laundry while playing with Oliver. After I put him down for a nap, I took off to pick up Sam and his friend Sebastian. It was an Early Release Day at school, so I picked them up at 12:40pm and took them to an art class for the afternoon. Since I didn’t need to stay with them, I headed back home to can more mineral broth before going to a doctor’s appointment. I finally decided that this sinus issue that has stayed with me all winter needed some attention. The doctor agreed that I have a sinus infection, but whether it is viral or bacterial is undetermined. But since it has gone on for over two months now, he prescribed an antibiotic. He’s hoping it will clear some before we fly to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, but I promised him that if it doesn’t that I hope snorkeling in warm salt water will do the trick.
Mark is handling this last chemo treatment in stride. He naps with Ollie but seems to have enough energy to function normally otherwise. Jed is out of town for the next two days, so we will try and fill the gap. That will mean early mornings and late evenings. We are supposed to have a mix of snow and ice pellets throughout the day tomorrow, so I guess there is the possibility that school will be cancelled. So we could have a full house and plenty of activity!
by Judy Handley | Feb 3, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 106, Year 9: Snow and More Snow
Date: Monday, February 3, 2014
Weather: Overcast with Snow All Day, Temp Hovering at 32 degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Mark had a chemo treatment today and I cooked, did some planning for our trip to Puerto Rico, and worked on a project. And all of a sudden it is midnight and way past time to go to bed. The winter weather continues to dominate our world and it appears that we are going to continue to have snow off and on all week. The trip to Puerto Rico is looking more and more inviting. The snow is beautiful, but I’ll trade white now for white sand any day.
by Judy Handley | Feb 2, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 105, Year 9: Super Sunday
Date: Sunday, February 2, 2014
Weather: Mostly Cloudy with Fog Near the Water, High in the Upper 30’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Except that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, it was a Super Sunday. It is no surprise that we will have six more weeks of winter, but it still would have been encouraging to not have this reinforced by this little groundhog. Our Super Sunday ‘game day’ started by playing checkers and Old Maid cards with Sam and Jonah and ended with all of us watching the first half of the Super Bowl. This is the first time Groundhog Day and the Super Bowl have been on the same day, so maybe that was the problem for the Denver Broncos. Sam and Jonah were cheering for them and Sam even made signs declaring that only Bronco fans could come into the den to watch the game. So we all pledged our support to the Broncos and proceeded to watch them get walloped. But since we had no real allegiance to this team, we enjoyed the food and endured the game. Heather served parsnip and beet chips, roast chicken over salad greens, followed by brie and fruit. It was all delicious, but the highlight of the evening was the grilled oysters supplied, as usual, by our friend Sue at West Marine. Yummy!
We spent Super Sunday afternoon on the bicycle path along the Cape Cod Canal. The boys both love driving over the Bourne Bridge that connects Cape Cod to the rest of Massachusetts and when I mentioned going to bike on the bike path under the bridge, they were quite excited. We took along the new GoPro camera and let each of them have a turn wearing the camera while biking. This gave us more practice in using the camera and prepared them for wearing the camera while snorkeling in Puerto Rico next week. Since Ziggy loves to free dive on the reef, we’re hoping he can entice Sam and Jonah to join him and we can attach the camera to one of them at a time to come up with some interesting video.
Tomorrow Mark has the extra chemo infusion to hold him over until we return from Puerto Rico and the radiation treatments begin. Hopefully we will bounce back by next Monday and be ready for the flight on Tuesday. We’re watching the weather hoping that the snow predicted for next weekend and on into Monday will not affect our flight.
by Judy Handley | Feb 1, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 104, Year 9: Another Sam and Jonah Overnight
Date: Saturday, February 1, 2014
Weather: Mostly Sunny, High 41 degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
It has been the perfect winter weekend for Sam and Jonah to stay with us on Windbird. Today was sunny and it was 80 degrees in the cockpit. It was only half that outside, but it was warm enough to be a delightful day. The boys started their day by going up to the clubhouse to take showers right after breakfast. We worked on birthday present projects that Sam got last weekend—built a soda bottle weather station and played with a magnet kit and then we went outside and spent most of the rest of the just enjoying the relatively warm weather. Sam brought a scooter with him and Jonah brought his push bike, so we had races around the clubhouse, went for walks along the water, played with ducks, and watched seagulls fly—nothing exciting, but we all had fun. One male duck insisted on walking right up to the boys a number of times today and when I went for a walk with Sam and Jonah, a whole mallard family flew in to join us. After lunch, I took the boys to the nearby bike path so they could ride their respective vehicles and then we drove into town to buy a game of checkers and pick-up Ollie. After a bit of pushing, we got Heather and Jed to agree to go to a movie and out to dinner, and that is why we were picking up Ollie. After dinner we watched an episode of The Blue Planet and then Sam and Jonah literally crashed. They were exhausted. But Ollie was still going strong. Heather and Jed were going to come to pick him up, but we sent them a text message saying I would take him home and meet them there. I thought for sure Ollie would go to sleep on the way home, but no. He was totally wired from having a late afternoon nap, but as soon as we got home and he realized that momma and daddy were not there, he asked me to rock him (actually, he commanded by saying “Rock”) and he finally fell asleep.
The temperature will be the same tomorrow, but it is supposed to be overcast. If it feels warm enough, Sam and Jonah want to go biking on the bike path along the Cape Cod Canal. If we go, we’ll probably go pick up Ollie and take him along. He is as fast as lightening on his little push bike and it was obvious tonight that he misses his big brothers. Sam and Jonah are excited about watching a bit of the SuperBowl, so I suspect we will end our day doing that.
by Judy Handley | Jan 31, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 103, Year 9: Ollie by Day, Sam and Jonah by Night
Date: Friday, January 31, 2014
Weather: Overcast, High in the 30’s F—Felt Cold Without the Sun
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Yesterday Sam and Jonah declared that they were moving to Windbird for the weekend, so they are tucked in their berths for the night. We headed to Windbird as soon as Heather and Jed got home from work and had what I call a ‘working dinner.’ If the boys work hard at eating dinner we let them watch a video while they eat. We all cuddle together on one settee and eat and watch and discuss. I guess this is the advantage of being the grandparents—doing something you would never have approved of with your own children. But we call it ‘educational’ and enjoy! The video they chose tonight was about the Galapagos. They have watched it a couple of times before, but it is still a favorite. It is a documentary about a scientist visiting the Galapagos to learn about the wildlife on land and in the sea. Her guide is the same guide that we had when we toured the Sierra Negra volcano while in the Galapagos and it is always fun for us to see Mathias Espinosa. And both boys cleaned their plates, so I’ll call that a success. After dinner, we showed the boys some of our photos and video from the Galapagos (Heather and Jed were there with us) and other high interest wildlife stops along the way. We then read books and tucked them in. We had a bit of drama when Sam crawled into his sleeping bag to find that one end of it was damp. It has been in the v-berth and evidently got pushed against the wall. That causes condensation, therefore the dampness. But Jonah had brought a blanket with him that he wanted to sleep under anyway, so we switched things around and all was well.
We had another fun day with Ollie and combined the fun with running a couple of errands. This was the last day to get the old Ford Taurus inspected before the sticker runs out tomorrow on February 1. Since I seem to have better luck at successfully getting cars inspected, we decided to switch roles. Granddad took Ollie to the library for storytime and I took the car to the garage. Both forays were successful! Mark really enjoyed the storytime with Ollie and it gave him a chance to see the wooden doll house that Ollie loves. This doll house comes with little multi-cultural stuffed dolls that stand and sit that Ollie really enjoys. I, on the other hand, did what Mark was sure could not happen. I got the new inspection sticker for the Taurus even with the ‘check engine light’ on (no matter what we do) and a rusty panel below one of the back doors exposed. Last summer I took Heather and Jed’s van in to be inspected with their ‘check engine light’ on and got the sticker for it when they were sure it wouldn’t pass. And a few years ago I took in Heather’s old Honda Civic which was riddled with rust and got it passed as well. Mark is convinced that for some reason they let the vehicles pass for me but wouldn’t for him, so I’ll continue in this once a year role.
When we got home from the library, Ollie took a nap and after nap launched into a Lego Duplo building project. He can now snap the Duplo blocks together with no help and it was fun to watch him build a ‘train’ complete with a palm tree top. When Sam got home from school, he and Ollie mopped the kitchen floor for me. Ollie was very good at putting lots of water on the floor with the mop and Sam was even better at cleaning up the water while cleaning the floor at the same time. Then they disappeared into a ‘fort’ in the living room and spent at least 30 totally quiet minutes ‘reading’ adult books off the shelf behind their curtained fort. Ollie was too funny sitting there quietly reading novels. But he would do anything to be accepted as a play partner with either of his older brothers.
I’m really not sure what Sam and Jonah have planned for us tomorrow, but I’m sure they’ll keep us busy. Can’t believe it is going to be the first of February.
