Aug 2024

 

August brought back to school. Look at these thrilled faces. Kiernan is a Sophomore in HS and Megan is in 7th grade of Middle School.

They were not ready for summer to end.

I got some cool colorful hair thanks to Megan and our August Cosplay attempts.

We went to the very fine Hagerstown Fine Arts Museum.

I started collecting shirts to improve my wardrobe.

I am finding that here in my 50's that I am falling back into myself quite a bit. I am celebrating things I love and to some extent letting go of things that I don't.

I love the Dark Crystal and this is a shirt of that film.

Judy went to Cuba and brought us coffee and art therefrom. Her pictures and stories were great and I hope someday to make that trip as well.

Megan borrowed Kiernan's bike and took me off to bike from Brunswick to Harpers Ferry again.

Its a beautiful ride with good ice cream at both ends.

She is getting pretty fit and knocked out a 10 mile ride much more quickly and happily than I did.

Go Meg!

Also she has fully entered her goth phase.

David's dad had a stroke.

This was actually right after our last family soccer game watching day.

He was in the hospital for quite a while and lost a lot of speech and and some function.

No one was really sure how far he would recover as it was not his first stroke but was clearly his most sever.

We watched Olympics at every available minute. We loved all the events but particularly the semi obscure ones like breakdancing and all the horse stuff.

This is B-girl Ami. I loved her dancing so much. Its the first time I had seen women break-dancers and found them to be great on their own and not weaker copies of the make dancers. She was by far my favorite.

I decide at the moment i took this picture that I should get those pants.

I have gotten them.

Boy are they comfy.

We drove to Canada and got poutine.

This is a breakfast poutine that looks like a dogs breakfast but it very tasty.

When we crossed into Canada the Canadian boarder agent asked what out business in the country was and i told him we were going to get poutine. I think he thought I was joking. I was only a little joking.

I wanted to take the kids to Canada because we had been talking about it for a few years and we had canceled a big beach trip that we'd been planning to take with their Opa as he was in the hospital.

It was very spur of the moment and it took way longer than it should have as i redirected us towards Krishnas house for a bagel that added about 6 hours to our trip.

David couldn't even go with us into Canada so we ditched him at Niagara falls and did a real quick out and back to see Toronto and eat in Hamilton.

Kiernan decided on this trip that he has a very firm 1/5th driving time to staying time limit for trips now.

On the other hand we saw some cool stuff and had a quick but real vacation before school started and the kids got to visit anther country.

Also Holy Moley Niagara Falls in beautiful.

I was blown away by it. I expected some sort of post card pretty but that river is powerful and majestic and I loved the falls.

Plus I got some great pictures with my family.

I even got one of Kiernan giggling at one of his own jokes which is one of my favorite things ever.

Here are our Otakon Cosplay side by sides.

Kiernan was The Spy from TF2

He went to the thrift store for the suit and designed and printed the revolver himself. Of special note here is that in the game the spy often wears a paper mask appropriate to his environment so Kiernan printed a paper mask of an anime character for the convention completing the theme.

Megan was Shinobu from Daemon Slayer

Meg is very into this series and last year also dressed as a character from it.

She loved dressing up as much as I do and is particular happy when she gets a sword.

I was Judy from Cyberpunk 2077

I did a fair amount of 3D printing and cosmetics for this one.

David and Megan painted temporary tattoos on me.

Megan did fancy hair for me.

I am hoping to dedicate more time to cosplaying. I had such a blast.

 In between adventures we spent time in the hospital to be with Aunt Lore and Opa.

Some days were great like this one and some days were very hard. By the end of the month it was pretty clear that regular speech was not coming back but he did gain some motor function and started looking forward to getting out of there and back home.

Out other big adventure was a day trip up to Philadelphia to see the liberty bell and Constitution Hall.

Our tour guide picked Kiernan to portray Thomas Jefferson. That was an excellent choice and he has the height and the hair and just got out of AP us History last year and was up on his Jefferson.

Also we got a philly cheesesteak in Philly.