it was a very busy week last week. it started off with painting the new office in the garage, which took a little longer than half a day from cleaning the walls to painting the walls and ceiling. Thursday was spent clipping hedges, cleaning off the front porch, mowing the lawn, and beginning to install mosquito curtains around the front porch. The weather for Memorial Day weekend in Jersey was suppose to be beautiful, so we were keeping our fingers crossed. Friday we had a Dr.'s appointment to check on baby Raynor, and everything is looking good and on schedule for July 20. Saturday, I played in a golf tournament with my brother and a couple friends - which we won! When i got home, Kim, Charlie, and I went to a local Strawberry festival, where Charlie got to ride a pony and a firetruck. Sunday, we spent the morning at a park on the boardwalk with Charlie and in the afternoon, we went to Asbury Park to check out some street performers that were roaming the downtown street (we were not impressed). After, we took Charlie for some ice cream and headed home to enjoy some much needed sleep. As we were getting ready for bed, I was locking the front door and turning out the lights when I heard a noise on the stairs. I turned to see what I thought was one of Charlie's toys tumbling down the stairs. To my surprise and shock, when the "toy" landed, it was actually Charlie. We're not sure how many steps he tumbled down, but based on the noise, it sounded like it could have been the entire staircase (13 stairs). Luckily we have carpet on our stairs, which I'm sure cushioned his tumble because he wasn't hurt, just a little scared. He came out of it with just a small bruise on his left hip. Monday, we went to the annual Memorial Day Parade in town, and then finished the weekend off with a terrific dinner at the Flanigan's.

The weather was gorgeous all weekend! If you're keeping score at home, this was the first weekend of 2008 that the weather people were correct with their forecast. Let's hope they stay on this "streak" for the rest of the summer. Enjoy the pics from the weekend.

Baby Raynor

Mosquito Curtains installed!

This dragonfly defied the odds and was resting inside the mosquito curtains

Ice Cream Night

Parade Day

Charlie waiting for the firetrucks at the parade

Video Crash

Hello all. There seems to be a large problem with the video portion of this and many, many other blogs. Hopefully, the blogger team is working on the issue and the videos will be back up asap.

So I took a long weekend off from blogging - you didn't really think i was going to blog every day, did you? (believe it or not, i did) :)

All good things must come to an end, so it is with heavy heart that we say goodbye, Auf Wiedersehen, Arrivederci, Au Revoir, Do svidan’ya, Sayonara, and any other way you can say goodbye to a dear old friend of ours - our 2001 Honda Civic. It was for sale for quite some time because we purchased a new minivan back in December, getting ready for the 2nd Raynor child to arrive. We put it on Craigs List, in the local paper for a week, placed for sale ads in my work newsletter and on the Unilever bulletin board, and even parked it at the local train station for a week, hoping for a bite. While we did receive phone calls for the car, none of them panned out. This past Saturday, we held a garage sale at our home and someone suggested we park the car in front of the house to generate interest (doing this, of course, would take up a valuable garage sale parking spot, but it was worth a shot). Sure enough, by the end of the day, the car was sold! The new owner came by Monday to pay the balance due and take her away. I said my goodbyes to the car and sent her on her way to a new home. We're going to miss her - especially since she was getting around 36 mpg on the highway.

just so i can keep up, here's the 4th blog post on the 4th day of the blog's life. it's another picture story - this one of our niece Ryan.

The Diesel

i know you're all out there, sitting on the edge of your seats, continually clicking the Raynor Shine icon on your favorites list, anxiously awaiting the next blog post. day 4 of the blog, post #3 - can this be considered an addiction?

while reading a fellow blogger's post about a week ago, i was turned on to a pretty cool piece of free software called microsoft photo story (thanks, Bri). after playing with it for a little while, this is one of the results (i'll post the 2nd result later, just so i can make it 4 posts in 4 days.)

The Name Game

as you can tell, i'm a little excited about the blog (posting a blog 2 days in a row). and as you probably know, Kim and I are expecting our 2nd child in July, and we are not going to find out the sex. we have a girl's name already set in stone, but we're having some difficulty with the boy's name. we thought we solidified one a couple months ago, but have since wavered on that and are now back to square 1. because of the miracle of technology, you're voice can now be heard. i've posted a vote on the sidebar of some of the boys names that have been the topic of discussion lately. please vote on the one that you like most. we aren't promising that the name with the most votes will be the name, but you never know.

ok, well here's my attempt at keeping up with the times. i've finally started a blog to share our experiences, photos, and videos with friends and family. you'll probably see some favorite recipes popping up, restaurant reviews, wine reviews, maybe a cocktail pick of the month, child rearing advice (like "don't change your baby's explosive diarrhea diaper without having the wipes and new diaper ready" stuff), and anything else that may come to mind.

the blog will start off with a milestone - Pat Flanigan's graduation from St. Joe's University May 10, 2008. Yep, he made it in 4 years, and already has a job with A&P (and it's not as a grocery bagger). the graduation ceremony was under a tent at the school, with a formal dinner dance following that at the Sheraton Center City in Philadelphia. a few of the pics of the day are posted below. as you can imagine, we're all very proud of him, and are even more excited because now he can buy beer with his own money! :)

and of course we can't forget - Happy Mother's Day!

i hope everyone enjoys the blog. check back every so often as i will try to post at least a couple times a week.

Cheers!

the famous st. joe's tower




campus map



proud parents and grad



telling the university president goodbye