At the end of January Mom, Amy and I traveled to Sturbridge to help celebrate Chrissy’s bridal shower. We met up with a bunch of our family (Chrissy of course, Maria, Nonnie, Aunt Becki, Tia and Aunt Martha) and many of Chrissy’s family members and friends as well. James and Peter were there too, but went off to a local pub with some of Chrissy’s guy relatives to hang out. Meanwhile the ladies had brunch, chatted and watched Chrissy open a bunch of gifts ranging from the practical to the humorous. It was nice to meet some of Chrissy’s family and it’s clear everyone is looking forward to Chrissy and James getting married. Click on the picture of the happy couple above to see the photos from the shower.

Back in late January we had a little family party at Mom and Dad’s house to celebrate both Mom’s birthday and my birthday. We had dinner at Not Your Average Joe’s and then had ice cream sundaes and presents back at home. Justin was very helpful and did a great job of trying out each present that was opened. He was especially fond of a trowel that I got from James and Chrissy. He proceeded to demonstrate for us how to dig in the sand, on Mom and Dad’s sand colored carpet. I think he might be ready for spring. Above is a photo of him modeling Mom’s new sweater. Click on the photo to see the small collection of pictures.

Recently there was a problem with visitors not being able to comment on posts. We used a captcha-style validation plug-in to prevent bots from spamming our comment forms. It showed a warped image of a random string of numbers and letters and required that the commenter type that string in when submitting a comment. At some point that plug-in stopped functioning, and its creator no longer supports it. So we’re going to try a new method that doesn’t rely on captcha validation. Commenting is back up now.