Brisket, Charades and Catan

This last afternoon was perhaps the sunniest of the days I was up in the Adirondacks, which was ideal for the preparation of that night's dinner: smoked brisket.

A number of us sat around as the fire was built (helped along with the aid of grease) and the brisket was positioned for a good number of gentle smoking hours.

At some point I roused M. and we went to Lampson Falls. This is something we've done in previous years, and which I planned on properly documenting. Unfortunately I forgot the camera in the car. This is basically what it was like. The big excitement of the excursion was when I accidentally allowed one of my flip flops to float away from me. I accepted it would never be seen again. Then, maybe ten minutes later, a strange swirl of a current boomeranged the flip flop back to our general pool area and M. was the heroine of the day....jumping into the water and swimming further out than either of us usually do to retrieve the dang thing. Seriously. I was very impressed and grateful. It made walking back to the car far more pleasant than it otherwise would have been. On the drive back we saw this bird.

We arrived just in time for dinner. That brisket and its accompanying sauce, salads and stuffed peppers wrapped in bacon were just the way to end a lovely day.

Then it was time for charades. A game that I do not consider myself particularly good at, but which I played nonetheless. In fact I managed to successfully get my team to guess a Japanese film name. I wish I could remember exactly what it was so you could then consider whether you would have found an effective way of acting it out. Alas. In any case, here is W. getting her team to guess something. Maybe a bird?

In between turns the two youngest kids would dance for the crowd.

T. taking his turn.

M. being intense and expressive.

I forget exactly what the circumstance of this was. V. may have disagreed with some word guessed or decision made. Whatever the cause, it was decided that she needed to be sat upon by M. to calm her down. It had the opposite effect.

V. and I had a nice separate chat about finances, which I'm grateful to her for having with me...even if at this point I still couldn't really tell you what a mutual fund is...a fund made up with bits of stock shares?

Father and son. A. was very displeased with all the photographing going on, so I didn't take any photos of him.

Three of the G. bros in various versions of profile.

Dessert.

And once charades was concluded, with my team winning, A., C. and I played Catan while a larger group played Trivial Pursuit.

Then there was the thing with the canoe.