Greg Michael’s Birthday Tradition + Other Vacation Highlights

My vacation is over and now it's back to work. Some of the highlights over the past week, or lowlights as much of this time off consisted of work, including shoveling the roof, taking care of the driveway, once or twice and replacing a floodlight on the outside wall of the house. My vacation wasn't all work. I had fun too. Much of my time was taken up by playing with or entertaining Vikki. Whether it be by playing board games, or letting her help in household chores, cooking or whatever we did. It was good to spend one-on-one time with her, because normally I'm distracted with life, to give her complete attention on a regular basis.

The latter days of my vacation were consumed with preparing for a storm that wasn't to be. I'm not upset by the mistake in forecasting. I saw it as, "Bank Error in Your Favor, Collect $200."

One fun part of my vacation was when we, as a family, went to Freeport to look around last weekend. Dylan needed new sneakers and we also needed a new Pyrex mixing bowl, after a minor disaster this past Thanksgiving. It was a trip, more or less, just to get out of the house. It is nice to have Freeport all to yourself during the off season.

Valentine's Day was fairly low key. We did more for the kids, I think, than we did for ourselves. We made it as romantic as possible, having three kids in the house.

Then Sunday, yesterday, February 15th, was my birthday. I think the best present I received was the 1.5 inches of snow instead of the 1.5 feet. That was a nice surprise to wake up and see on my birthday.

As for my birthday, I thank you all for the Happy Birthday wishes on Facebook. After some time of trying to keep up with "Thank yous" and "likes," it got overwhelming. Hhowever, I truly appreciate each and every one.

This brings me to my birthday tradition. No matter what else happens on February 15th, we always have chicken patty sandwiches. Why the tradition? Way back in 1999 when Lynn and I were just starting out, we had a baby on the way and we had little extra money, because we were building life from scratch, on one income. So we shopped a lot at Caswell's on Main St. in Lewiston. One of the things they had a wide selection in, aside from canned and other non perishables, was frozen foods. So, we bought a lot of frozen items as well as garnishes, etc.. The point is, we had chicken patties, and that is what Lynn made for dinner.

The Caswell's in Lewiston has since closed (Waterville location is STILL open) so we can't buy the chicken patties there, as we did for the few years after 1999 that they were around, to keep the tradition as real as possible. Over the years life has gotten easier, so we treat each other on our birthdays a little more, but no matter what else is on the agenda, we always have chicken patty sandwiches.