Patience.org

We had a great time in Maine at the end of August/start of September. It was our first time there, but definitely not the last. We stayed in a house on Newbury Neck, looking out on Morgan Bay. We visited Bangor, Blue Hill peninsula, Ellsworth (the nearest town), Bar Harbor, Brooklin and Acadia National Park, include an afternoon cycling round Eagle Lake there and two trips up Cadillac Mountain, one in the mist and one in the sunshine.

Took far too many pictures, but I’ve picked a bunch that sum up the time we had and this lot mostly involved the kids. Later, I’ll put some up of the scenery around there, because a lot of it is stunning. This one sort of gives you an idea:

Anyway the first lot are in the kids’ August 2006 album, usual password etc required.

Big boy has all England’s 2006 World Cup games saved on the DVR and he watched them regularly. So regularly in fact, that he knows the precise minute Wayne Rooney comes on for the first time as a substitute – 58th minute in the second game, against Trinidad & Tobago, of course! – he must have watched that game 20 times since it happened in June.

Anyway, each game is preceded by the two team’s national anthems and he as memorized the tunes of all of England’s opponents (he was humming what he assured me was the Portugese national anthem in a cab the other day, and who am I to argue?) and has figured out quite a few of the word’s of the English dirge/ditty.

So this morning he says to me, “Dad, why is the English national anthem all about the Queen?” And before I could mumble something about a monarchy being an anachronism in a representative democracy, he piped up, “I know, I’ll look on the Queen’s website to see what it says.”

And thus, being Web-savvy before you’re five, having an obession with football, together with an acute awareness of his dual nationality – he regularly says things in two accents – converged in one little boy’s innocent but curious inquiry.

Well, from here anywhere, a picture taken by a fellow Fulham fan of the Johnny Haynes stand at Craven Cottage today, where we were beaten by the best – most expensive – team in European football. One penalty, one legit goal.

A bit different to last season’s home encounter.

Still at least the weather was nice.

Mum’s at top right, in a bright pink top and Dad’s on her right.

Like many other lads, he’ll be very happy to hear the news tonight.
Those pictures were from his first ever Mets game, Tusday July 4, 2006, against Pittsburgh Pirates.

We left after 7 innnings, when they were losing 6-4 but thankfully the Mets came back to win 7-6.

On to the playoffs…..

I’ll be trawling back through our lives over the last few months over the next few days, updating pictures that I should have done, well a few months ago. So here’s a load from May from London (including his first football match at Fulham), Paris & Boston. It was a busy month.

And below is a couple of my favorites of his first attempts at cricket in the back garden in London. An ‘A’ for enthusiasm is warranted, I think. Usual username/pwd combo required.