What a busy but fun couple of weeks it's been. :) Kevin and Dawn got married on Saturday, and the inlaws came up from Florida and stayed here until yesterday morning. The weekend before that, Donna and David came to camp out on our front lawn in their mobile home and we spent most of the holiday weekend visiting ponds and lakes around Cape Cod, watching fireworks, and grilling up chicken and linguica. David made this cool boat that he designed himself and the boys had a blast seeing turtles out on the ponds and lakes and taking boating adventures. Everyone is so tanned! I usually burn, but this year I just got a golden brown, even though I pretty much cover myself with sunscreen.

This morning I woke up at two-forty-five a.m. after hitting bed at ten, so I think a few weeks of little sleep needed is here. Other bloggers probably get this, a few times a year, usually once a season, a block of a week or two where you just don't sleep your usual six or eight hours (for me it's around six or seven hours a night) but wake up after getting roughly half your normal sleep, but feel wide awake and energetic throughout the day? I used to think it was odd, but I've talked with other people online who report the same thing happens to them, so I know it's not that odd at all. It's not insomnia, because throughout the day I function at the same rate I always do, and it definitely doesn't have a negative impact on my awake hours. I'm actually even more energetic during this phase. In the summer time, I look forward to this little-sleep-needed pattern, because I get so much done before anybody in the house is even up for their day. Leaves the day wide open for other stuff, and in the summer time there's just so many options for other stuff to do.

We're still not done with the deck, but we did figure out a way to move things along a bit better. We basically are taking off each slat of wood and sanding what paint is on it right off, with an electric sander. It's tedious work, but at least there's visual progress at the end of a day. The past few weeks, though, we've not tackled the deck much, with family visiting us here on Cape and all. Most likely this weekend we will wrap up that project. There's probably another ten hours of sanding to do left, and that can be divided up between two days, and then one whole day for staining/waterproofing it. After that, I probably will start the indoor painting again, and the section of the house I'm doing this year should only take 4 days total. I might wait until September to start it, actually, because the deck project feels like it was enough home improvement for one summer. Will basically just see how inspired and ready I feel up to doing it after the deck is done.

Got a great new board game called The Cape Cod Challenge. We played it with the inlaws and the kids the other day, and normally this type of game goes for thirty or forty bucks, but I found it for under fifteen bucks at a Christmas Tree Shop. It's set up somewhat like a cross between Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. The boys and a neighborhood friend of theirs as well as my inlaws and I all sat down at the table for an afternoon game when it was raining outside, and we learned so much about Cape Cod in that hour plus that we played. There were a few places in the question cards that we now want to go visit, because we'd never heard about them and they are right on Cape, short drives away in some cases. Massachusetts is so historical all over the place, but here on Cape Cod even moreso. It's amazing the things that have stood the test of time here, or that have been restored to their original form.

Getting ready to hit the shower to get ready for work today, and plan to spend most of tomorrow doing as much of the deck as I can while Kenny is at work. Hopefully the rain of today will clear out by tomorrow. If not, I'll just bring the sander right inside the house and take off some of the slats before they get too wet and just do them indoors. I really, really want that deck done this weekend! :D

I most likely will have some geocaching adventures to blog about at some point next week. Absolutely this weekend, after the deck work is done for the day, KC and I plan to do a few geocaches. If tomorrow is sunny or even just not raining heavily, we are going to find the microcache on Main Street in Hyannis. We still haven't made our first cache yet, and that is the plan for this summer, to start one of our own. We have the container we plan to use, and the place picked out for where we'd like to put it, just have to get it ready and also find out exactly what we have to do to start an official one that can be put on the www.geocaching.com website. Shouldn't be that hard or complicated to do.

Will link to our first cache as soon as we get it situated. :)