Buffalo, New York October 2008

We went to Buffalo last week and had a lot of fun seeing my family and some family who I have not seen in 30 years. Yes, 30 years. The last time I saw some of my cousins, we were playing together as young kids and 3o years later, our kids were playing together.

While in Buffalo, we ate lots of wings and Nick loved them. We visited my old stomping grounds, including my maternal grandparents old house on Lombardy in Lancaster and let the kids walk in Como park like I had done many, many years ago. Only for them, it was 47 degrees and blustery. Not a nice walk in the park kind of day. We found that Vargos Pizza & Wings was now Picasso's, but the wings and pizza were still great.

We went to Lockport on the Erie Canal and watched a small ship go through the two locks there.


We visited my old home on Steele Circle in Niagara Falls

and no trip to Buffalo would be complete without a trip to Niagara Falls.


So, we visited the falls and took a trip on the Maid of the Mist.


More coming soon.

Some More Sarah Action

Here are some Sarah shots from the last few days.





Sarah played in a softball tournament. The promised three games turned into 4 when they made the finals and played for the championship. Sarah's team won. I'll say she played a small role in the team's success. She was playing on a semi-quasi-all-star team. She played with some girls who know how to play.

Nick- The Recovery

Nick is almost completely healed. I've had some requests to see how he is doing, so here is an image of him shot the other night as he was playing water boy to his teammates. At the time of the picture (09-25), his shoulder was still not healed, so he could not play. His shoulder scab came off this weekend and the shoulder looks to be healed, so he should be back in pads tonight and ready for action.

Some Sarah Sporting Action

As promised, here are some shots of Sarah in action over the last week or so.



I am not really sure why, but her and her teammate battled all game long like this. Sarah and I talked about it while going through the pictures. She told me she was faster than this girl and she kept getting in her way. I told Sarah to spread out and use the rest of the field.


Here is the rest of the gallery from her game this Saturday:

Soccer Gallery

On to some softball. I am no expert, but I think it is easier to catch with your eyes open.


Again, I am no expert, but I think this is the harder way to catch a ball.


When you are wearing the orange hat, life is good.


And here is the rest of that gallery on my hatpix.com site.

Softball Gallery

The Skateboard Incident

On the bright side, Nick was wearing his helmet when he crashed today. It was a bad crash that landed us in the emergency room today for ab0ut 3 hours. He is now the first in the family to get a CAT scan, but all is OK with his brain. His face has a bit of healing to do, as do his shoulder and elbow.

He does not remember it all, but here is what we do know. He went up to a friends house to see if he could come down and play for a while. His friend was not home so Nick skateboarded back down the hill to our house. He got to much speed and his board started to wobble violently, so he jumped off to avoid crashing. Unfortunately, he could not run as fast as his board had been traveling and he wiped out. He does not remember the wipe out.

I was cleaning in the garage and looked out up the street to see if he was coming back. I saw him sitting in the street 25 feet from his skateboard. Something did not look right, and when he got up, he kind of stumbled around a bit and I went out to meet him. He was kind of out of it and did not know what happened to him. I put him in the shower to get the road debris off his face and started to realize that he was having some memory issues. Yvonne called at about same time and I told her I was taking him to the hospital to get him checked out.

We got to the hospital fairly fast and we checked in promptly. Well, suffice to say that 3 hours later, he has a grade 2 concussion and some good scrapes on his face, shoulder and elbow, but will be perfectly fine.

He'll miss at least one week of football though with the concussion. On to the images.

More Football Action

Nick had a game this morning and they won. Unfortunately this was a non-league game and won't help them in their league standings. In league play they are 0-2, but in the extra games, they are 3-0. Maybe they can start winning some league games.



Nick played pretty well on defense today and broke up some passes. He had a chance to make a great interception, but just could not hold onto the ball.

Immediately following Nick's game, he and I, both sweating profusely in the 90 degree heat jogged to the car and drove over to Neyland Stadium and got their just in time to watch the Vols take the field. We had gotten some great, free seats, seven rows up in the end zone. It was a scorcher today, but the Vols put the University of Alabama, Birmingham Blazers out 35-3. Okay, pretty bad pun.

So, since Nick and I were at the Vols game, we missed Sarah's soccer game. I hear she took quite a shot to the face, played goalie and even scored a goal. Last night her softball team got stomped, but Nick and I missed that one as we were at the high school football game. Nick and I both had a blast. I put a bunch of my images on my Hatpix site (Gibbs vs Halls High School)

So Nick asks me for a dollar to get his face painted. This is how he comes back. I think he got my money's worth.


I'll try to get some images from of Sarah's sporting events this week.

Sarah's new team

Sarah is playing for Synergy this year. It is a departure from the last few years when she was a "Lightning Bug." She has a new uniform to go with the new team. I did not pick out the color scheme.