It seems like the entire family was in this past weekend. Rachel, Badre and the girls were in from Morocco, Mercelena was in from Miami, Dan and Serena were coming in on the train from Brooklyn, and Matthew and Alex were in from LA. We were all gettting together for a party for Lily on Sunday.

The weather was predicted to be bad, which turned out to be true. It rained almost all day Saturday, and it rained most of Sunday too. But Friday was nice.

I had heard that Badre really wanted to go sailing. So Friday afternoon it was. Badre, Rachel, Safia, Sahaar, Matthew and Alex met me at the boat on Friday afternoon. Badre was definitely in; Alex decided to come along too. Matthew stayed with the girls (they went to the Lobster Shack).

The three of us went out with sunny skies, temp about 80, and winds about 10 knots. The engine started right up, but I noticed it wasn't peeing strongly. No warning lights and no problems, but I'm going to have to get that looked at. Arrrrrrrrrrgh!

We raised sail in the harbor and sailed out with Alex steering most of the way. Both Alex and Badre got sailing lessons. Badre seemed to think that this would be more like windsurfing; he was wearing a bathing suit and thought we would be "manually" handling the sails and getting very wet. He steered on the way back in; or at least he tried. He couldn't seem to get the way the tiller worked. No big deal. I think he enjoyed it anyway. I certainly did. The sailing was marvelous.

Matthew, Rachel and the girls were at the head of the dock to welcome us back! Docking was uneventful. Matthew had bought me a lobster roll that I was able to take a bite from before leaving.

We left the dock at about 3:15, and were back by 5:20. I needed to pick up Dan and Serena at the train station at 5:30, and was going to be a bit late. However, when I called Dan to find out where he was (while I was on my way to the station), he told me that Lily had come down to pick him up. Sigh....