We're on our second night at the cabin with our friends, Liz and Tom and their three kids. It's super fun.

The only parts that aren't fun are the dishes and bedtime. It's actually bedtime right now. It has been for an hour. Still, right now, three of the five children are still awake. As everyone knows, we're not that skilled at bedtime in general; and we're even worse on the road.

Dan fell asleep with Mac, even though I'm pretty sure he'd rather be up to watch a hit movie with the rest of us. I'll wake him in a bit after I'm sure I can do it without accidentally disturbing his majesty the three year-old.

We're at the cabin with our pals, Liz and Tom and their amazeball kids. After dinner, Shef and Maggie said they planned to jump in the water fully clothed. I was skeptical, but then they really did!

And then Dan and I helped with the swimming.



And then Shef and Maggie helped me with the swimming. Liz took some unfortunate pictures of the pushing in. One of them features my love handles. The other one features me spitting out water upon surfacing. I've chosen not to share either of these photos.

This is a first since Shef was born. I don't know why we didn't do this before since bedtime has never meant much in our family anyway.

We’re back from a fun weekend in Philly with excellent friends Adam and Tracy.

The air temperature in the city of Brotherly Love was almost always between thirty and fifty degrees warmer than Minneapolis, the kids were very cute together, and Team AK-47 once again claimed victory over Team Dumb Tits in our on-going, mixed-doubles Smear competition.

I especially enjoy the banter at the table.

"Adam, you're such a butt wad," Tracy said at one point.

We all considered this for a minute.

"What is a butt wad, exactly?" Adam asked.

"Oh you know," Tracy said, exasperated. "It's like a plug." Here she made some flicking motions with her hand. "An ass... plug."

We all got a lot of mileage out of this comment. It's hard to explain why.

I took a blog break while we were on vacation with our friends Adam, Tracy, and their daughter, Sophie. The trip was way fun. By day we waterskied, kayaked, boated, and swam. Tracy has a small problem with clothes pile-up, so she did laundry. Every day. Mostly at least twice a day. Sometimes she’d ask us to take off the clothes we were wearing in order to wash them.

Look, we all have fun in our own ways.

By night, we played a card game called Smear, which is native to the U.P., from whence Adam’s family hails. This was a re-match between Team AK-47, comprised of Adam and me, and Team Dumb Tits, comprised of Dan and Tracy. AK-47 prevailed on Grand Cayman in 2001. In fact, we dominated. The Tits, as Adam would say, they were a-saggin’ big time back then on our first vacation together.

So, I tell you, I felt confident coming into Grudge Match 2007, an event that spanned six nights. And AK-47 certinaly had our ups, for sure. But in the end, I’m sorry to say that the Tits, well, they pushed up, if you will.

Still, I want you to know that I when I won, I won graciously; and when I lost, I accepted defeat with maturity and a zen-like disposition.

Really!

I only swore and swatted at Dan a couple of times, I swear. And I apologized sincerely for all of those.