Category Archives: Friends

Geeky Party

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Partygoers

Today we hosted a small gathering of Gordon College Math/CompSci alumni at our house. My friend Lesley and I have been doing these get-togethers for a while now, and we keep trying to spread the word and get more people to attend. This being the summer, many people are busy on weekends or out of town, but nonetheless we had a fun time getting to see some of our old friends, catch up on their recent events, etc. The plan was to have a cookout and to hold most of the party outside, since the inside of our house is rather cramped right now. However, towards dinner time we started to get some light rain and decided to move things inside. It was definitely cramped, or cozy as one might say, but we still managed to have a good time. There was plenty of food and fun with a number of kids pulling in a lot of attention. We even got in a few rounds of karaoke revolution. 🙂

You can visit the gallery for [more pics from the party](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/math_compsci_party/).

NJ Weekend

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Last weekend, Rebecca, Catherine and I drove down to New Jersey to visit with some of our friends from the days of [Gordon](http://www.gordon.edu/). Our base of operations was an excellent Comfort Inn in Paramus, NJ. It had a flat screen HDTV, free wireless and wired internet, huge king sized bed, sofa with pull out bed, and a free hot breakfast. It was a very nice place to come back to at the end of the day.

On Saturday, Rebecca went to visit [Jenn](http://www.misspresident.net/), one her good friends and roommates from Gordon. Her primary goal was to help Jenn clean her room. Well, it was more than that, really. It was really more of a full-fledged purging, cleaning and reorganizing in the style of TV’s Clean Sweep. From all reports, the day was a success, and Jenn’s room is a much more serene, organized place.

Catherine and Lucas
Catherine and Lucas

While J and R worked away on the room, I took Catherine a few towns over to visit with our friends Bob and Leah, and their boys Lucas and Andrew. Bob was one of my roommates during my senior year at Gordon. This was my first time visiting Bob and Leah’s house, and my first time meeting Andrew, having met Lucas a few years back. We had a great time hanging out at their house, playing, watching TV, eating sausages and hot dogs, walking to the park, taking pictures. I even managed to take a few headshots and portraits for Bob and Leah for business/personal purposes. Hopefully they find them useful. It was great to catch up with Bob and Leah, and while we were there, we also took some time for a teleconference with [Mr. Biggs](http://thebiggspicture.org/), another friend and roommate from college.

Spending the day with Catherine turned out remarkably well. She is rarely away from her momma, and even less rarely does she spend so much time with just me. We were together for about seven hours, and I am really impressed with how well she managed. She played with the boys really well, didn’t fuss too much, and was generally cute and fun for everyone. I definitely think it helped to have two other adults around the whole time, as well as plenty of toys and other kids to distract her.

The Ladies
The Ladies

On Saturday evening, we had dinner with Jenn and Matt at Ruby Tuesday’s at the Garden State Plaza mall. This was probably one of the largest, busiest malls I’ve ever been to, and Matt said that it wasn’t even at its busiest! By that time of day, Catherine was reaching the end of her rope, having taken only a 20 minute nap, but we still managed to have a nice dinner in between Rebecca and I taking turns taking her out for walks.

You can see more photos from our weekend in [the gallery](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/njweekend/).

Next week’s forecast: relaxing!

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I’m liking this forecast for next week:

We’ll be heading down to Florida on Saturday for a week with my parents, sister and brother-in-law. Sun, sand, warm weather, a house on the beach, nothing to do but relax. 🙂 (Kudos to Tripit for the extremely usable, well-designed, and feature-packed website which produced the above forecast, among other things. Just forward an email confirmation to plans@tripit.com for airline tickets, car rental, hotel reservation, etc, and Tripit will automatically build an itinerary with all sorts of useful info.)

In the meantime, I just have a few days of work to wrap up, some packing to do for the trip, and an Apple Store opening to attend tomorrow night. 🙂

Finally, if you haven’t already, please stop by Peter R. Wood Photography for some new photos, journal entries, and general photography information. I’d appreciate any comments or suggestions you have for things you’d like to see on that site!

Heading Home

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Friday morning saw Catherine and I packing up, eating breakfast and saying our goodbyes to Kirsten and Mark. We hopped in the car and proceeded to shuffle off to Buffalo. The rain stayed with us the whole trip, but we enjoyed the tap, tap, tap that it played on the roof.

Catherine especially liked playing with the Lyttles, our hosts for the night:

noise

Making noise with the windchimes

bouncy ball

Bouncing a ball

Corn Field

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I had the opportunity to visit my lovely friend Heather today while Catherine had some quality time with Grandma.

Heather and I had a little knitting lesson, became engrossed in some philosophical discussions about life, drank some tea, ate lunch at Biddie’s and visited some giant ears of corn. Not necessarily in that order.

Heather and Corn

Heather and the Corn

Jeremy and Angela

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Yesterday, we drove up to Claremont, NH to visit our friends Jeremy and Angela. We got to see the renovations they’ve made to their house so far, and also talked about the upcoming house projects they have (which you can read about at their website). We got to check out the HTPC that Jeremy built, played some Wii, and enjoyed some cooking and baking from Angela (awesome “everything” cookies and lime chicken).

Catherine also had a ball driving the cats crazy and testing the babyproofness of their house. Cats are certainly creatures of habit. Even more so when it comes to food. If you’re fed up with your cat waking you up the small hours of the morning a timed feeder might be just what you need. These dispense food at a pre-programmed time and in a set amount and should keep your cat out of your bedroom until a much more reasonable time. 🙂

You can see the rest of the photos from the day here.

Easter 2008

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This past weekend, we were out visiting the Lowes in Townsend for Easter! We had a great time visiting with Nonni, Grandpa, Corey, and Vicky. We went to church at the TCCUCC and had Easter dinner at the 1761 Old Mill in Westminster (which is incidentally where my parents had dinner when they got engaged!).

Catherine and Grandpa
Catherine and Grandpa

Catherine's dress
Catherine’s dress

I thought you might enjoy some good old fashioned gratuitous Catherine pics! You can see the rest of the pics from this weekend here.

Everyone’s a Wii-ner

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Tonight we had dinner with Corey, Vicky, and Vicky’s roommate Jasmine in Vicky’s apartment in Somerville. After dinner, we played some games on their Nintendo Wii! This was our first time playing a Wii, and we had a lot of fun. We played tennis, boxing, and bowling in Wii Sports, and we also played a few rounds of Smooth Moves. Catherine had fun watching her Momma and Papa gesticulate wildly in front of the TV. 🙂 Good times were had by all, and Catherine was definitely sad when we headed home.

The family that Wiis together...

See some more pictures from the evening.

Big Christmas Wrap-Up!

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December 21-30 was a whirlwind of a Christmas vacation for the Wood family. We had a great time visiting with friends and family. I took lots of photos, so we’ll give you the brief rundown here with links to images from our trip.

* December 20: We had a sort of “Pre-Christmas” at home after I got out of work. We exchanged our gifts so that we didn’t have to bring the stuff for just each other all the way out to Ohio. The rest of our evening was spent packing for our trip!
* December 21: We left after I got out of [work](http://www.christianbook.com/) and drove to a Knight’s Inn in Liverpool, NY. That helped break the trip up a bit.
* December 22: We left Syracuse early in the morning, and, after a stop in Madison, Ohio to visit with Melanie, we drove to Mount Vernon. [Pics from the drive](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/driving_to_ohio/), [Pics from visiting Melanie](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/visiting_melanie/), [Pics from the first evening in Mount Vernon](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/first_evening_in_mount_vernon/)
* December 23: We went to church at [Lakeholm](http://www.lakeholm.org/) in Mount Vernon, then headed down to Columbus to visit with Becky’s friend Heather and her husband Jeff. Then it was back to Mount Vernon for the infamous “Reindeer Hat Party.” [Pics from visiting Heather and Jeff](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/visiting_heather_and_jeff/), [Pics from the Reindeer Hat Party](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/reindeer_hat_party/)
* December 24: We attended the Christmas Eve service at Lakeholm, then had Christmas Eve dinner at home. [Pics from Christmas Eve](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/christmas_eve/)
* December 25: We spent Christmas Day at home with my family! [Pics from Christmas Day](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/christmas_day/)
* December 26: On Wednesday, we went up to Mark and Kirsten’s place in Mansfield for a nice Birthday brunch for Mom! After that, we drove back to Mount Vernon to attend a Game Day that Amy Walton was hosting at her parents’ house. Later in the evening, we had a birthday cake and another little party for Mom. [Pics from Mom’s birthday brunch and that evening](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/moms_birthday/), [Pics from the game day](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/farnham_game_night/)
* December 27: On Thursday, we had some outings sans Catherine. Rebecca and I went out to breakfast at the Southside Diner while Mom and Dad watched Catherine. Then, Rebecca, Dad and I went out to lunch while Mom watched Catherine. Later that evening, Mom and Dad watched Catherine again while we went out to dinner and a movie with Mark and Kirsten. We ended the evening with a family photo shoot. [Pics from the Southside Diner](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/southside_diner/), [Pics from Thursday afternoon](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/thursday_afternoon/), [Pics from dinner with Mark and Kirsten](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/dinner_with_mark_and_kirsten/), [Pics from the photo shoot](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/thursday_evening_photo_shoot/)
* December 28: On Friday morning, we left Mount Vernon and drove back to the Knight’s Inn in Liverpool, NY. The hotel clerk recommended dinner at a delicious local restaurant, Mother’s, and gave us a free voucher to see the local [“Lights on the Lake”](http://lightsonthelake.com/) holiday light display. It was a nice evening with just the three of us! [Pics from the drive](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/mount_vernon_to_liverpool/), [Pics from Friday evening](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/friday_evening_in_liverpool/)
* December 29: On Saturday, we left Liverpool and drove to Townsend to spend the rest of the weekend with Becky’s family.
* December 30: On Sunday, we had lunch in Townsend with Becky’s parents, then they drove back to Danvers with us to help cart back our additional haul of gifts and see our new staircase. [Pics from the “After-Christmas Christmas” in Townsend](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/after_christmas_christmas/)

[See all of the Christmas pics here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2007/christmas/).

Phew! Since then, we’e been unpacking our stuff and trying to get readjusted to a life back at home. 🙂 We hope that you have all had great holidays with your family or friends, and that you have a happy new year!