A two-part summary of my long weekend:

Part 1: On Thursday morning, Stephanie and I had all intentions of dropping the boys off at day-care and spending Thursday and Friday frolicking about Portland, ME, one of our favorite little New England cities. Oh, we made it up there, but not before the following:

a) I accidentally left the sunroof open in Steph’s car Wednesday night, and of course, it poured like mad and the interior of the car was soaked. Like, you know, really wet. Here’s the thing: when I turn off MY car, the sunroof automatically closes, so I’ve just gotten so used to not even thinking about it. Bad move, Copetas. Bad. Baaahhhhhhd. Towels, blankets and whatever else we could throw in there went over everything.

b) I forgot to bring the boys lunch when I dropped them off at day care (only the 2nd time I’ve done that since January – not bad) so Steph had to make an extra trip and bring it over while I went and filled up the car with gas and bought two new trash barrels because…….

c) Our trash barrel filled up with water from rain on Tuesday night and let me tell you something, if you had smelled it, you might have just died.  I, for one, gagged. I can’t remember the last time I’ve gagged from a smell, but I was about as close to puking as you can get. Anyway, because of this, we couldn’t put trash bags in the barrel and we didn’t have time to figure out what to do with the water, so I did what any red-blooded American needed to do: I threw money at the problem and just bought two new barrels. Why was it so important to do this at that time, you ask? Well, because we had to put the trash in our garage on Wednesday night and something got in there (Steph thinks it was a raccoon) and there was trash EVERYWHERE in our garage on Thursday morning.

So, we were off to a great start. But we rallied and got up to Portland about 11am and spent the day walking around that great little town. We bought some yummy stuff at the Stonewall Kitchen retail store, we had a great lunch and then in the afternoon Steph had a facial and a 30-minute massage while I rewarded myself with a 60-minute hot stone massage! Heaven.

That evening, we had one of the best meals we’ve had in recent memory at Fore Street, which is apparently a nationally renowned eating establishment. I had chilled watermelon soup for an app, wood-grilled halibut and marifax beans and then we topped it off with blueberry shortcake, corn ice cream and some chocolate cake/vanilla ice cream. Delicious. I mean……obnoxiously delicious. We topped off the day by……sleeping. You see, this was the first night away from the babies…..ever. So we slept and slept. Hell yeah!

The next day we shuffled off to Marblehead, MA for a quick lunch at another one of our favorite haunts, Foodie’s Feast, where I had a killer tomato/fresh mozz/pesto sandwich. We topped off the afternoon with a visit to the estates de Simplebits, where we got to hold a new, lovely little infant and visit with our good friends.

Upon Steph and I getting to the day care to pick up the babies, who hadn’t seen us in two days, we had a tender little moment with Nathan, who let out a cry when he saw us that initially sounded like a sad cry, but appeared to be one of happiness. At least we like to think so. Seeing them even after one night away was a beautiful thing.

Part 2 will be shorter than Part 1, I promise. Today (Sunday) I spent the day in transit, leaving my house at 8:40am to the heartbreaking sight and sound of my children looking at me leave, crying hysterically. I almost turned tail and went right back into the house, but duty calls. After arriving in Manchester, NH, I proceeded to have a long, long day, as I laid over in Las Vegas on my way to Reno. When I landed in Reno at 7pm eastern time, I had another one hour drive to Squaw Valley, California, where I sit tonight. This is a beautiful part of the country, nestled 6,000+ feet up in the mountains and on Lake Tahoe. I had a feeling it would be purdy, so I brought the good camera. Twice I had to get out of the car on the side of the road to take a picture. Here’s a pic of the area I’m staying, taken by someone from the gondola at the top of the mountain. I am here for work and we will work, but it’s a nice place to do it.

I already miss my family.