Have Your Ice Cream and Eat it Too

Friday night took an unexpected turn when two trains collided in Connecticut and derailed. My cousin Jeff, who was on his way back to New York on the train behind the collided trains, was diverted to a station back by us. I met him at the station, picked him up, and we had dinner with Liz who drove down from Rhode Island to pick him up.

Silver lining #1: miraculously no one was killed on the train. Silver lining #2: we got to have a nice impromptu dinner.


Prior to the impromptu dinner Jen had the next phase of her dental surgery to repair the damage done by the large, unwieldy melons of her two sons, the fatal blow delivered by Elliott some months ago. This left Jen in a fair deal of pain. Luckily the ice pack acted as a source of great amusement to the nasty little critters who separated her from her tooth.

Those guys have a sick sense of humor.


The next morning we headed out to the latest round of swim class.


Class went well, particularly for Elliott who chose to take an extra ball so he had one to hold and one to chew on. All the other babies in the class were far more restrained.


It was Elliott's turn to join me in the locker room this week. We stagger it by weeks so that both guys have equal opportunity to look at nude old men shamelessly combing their hair in the mirror.


After I went to work Jen took the guys up to hang out with their uncles Joe and Ryan.


Apparently it was a great day for the guys. They got to pat on a horse and they got to watch their mother score some shrimp cocktail serving pieces at an estate sale.

Overall it was an important day of firsts in the life of any growing children.


Yesterday, while I was at work, Jen painstakingly repaired the sheep mobiles that the guys had done their best to rip to pieces. Was this a much-needed chore or a fruitless attempt to stop the unending wave of damage they are doing to our living quarters?


Elliott's crawling attempts have been getting better and more frequent. He's got the part nailed where he gets onto all fours.


Then he kind of flops onto his belly.


Then, after not knowing what to do he gets really angry.

Almost there, Buddy.


For dinner we thawed out two burgers from the freezer and Jen made them with onion gravy and mashed potatoes. I made corn with olive oil, butter, garlic, onion, and chopped bell peppers. We had hoped to grill but what may have been the last bit of cold drizzle cancelled those plans. The rest of the week looks like it will usher out the chilly spring weather for good.


After dinner I settled back with this 2011 bottle of Twelve from Victory Brewing Company. The year-and-a-half it aged certainly didn't mellow it much. At 12% ABV one glass was more than I needed. It is supposed to be a Belgian-style quadrupel but it was much lighter in color and heavier in alcohol than I would have expected. Still, a nice after-dinner beverage.


One of our favorite things to do during hockey playoff season is to go get ice cream. In recent years this has been at our local Longford's. With Jen's dental work and getting the babies to sleep it seemed unlikely. On Friday, after picking up her prescription, I decided to stop by Longford's and pick up some ice cream to bring home to her since bringing the sleeping babies in a stroller seemed like a fool's game.


This never materialized so, instead, I made up some ice cream cones last night with salted caramel and coffee chunk ice creams. This went nicely with an exceedingly boring match up between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Ottawa Senators as well as the first sixty minutes of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Normally the movie release date to our viewing lag time is eight years so we were beating the odds with this one.

With the exception of the cones being incredibly stale, and possibly rancid, this was a great Sunday night treat before entering another week of work, Bubs day care, and a pile of laundry that if you laid it out end-to-end it would stretch half way to Saturn.

You can't have it all.