summer

Last Saturday we went to the beach. Because we only go to the beach in April or September. It would be too obvious otherwise. We went with Grammy and Poppy. It was Grammy's idea, and it was a good one! It's been so crazy and intense here that it was just what we needed. And, of course, it was not crowded, because Memorial Day switches the shore on, and Labor Day switches it off. I found a state park on one of the barrier islands of New Jersey, and it took us just under two hours to get there. It was such a perfect day. Cool breeze, warm sun. The dunes were beautiful. We took a little bike ride and played in the sand until the shadows were long.

The day we left New Orleans, and the most fabulous place we've ever lived, in 2005, our dearest friends left, too. Like, we pulled out three hours after they did. They moved to Maine, we moved to Philly. When we first visited them in 2007, I began to wonder if we got the short end of the stick. We've gone back every year, and every year, we have to pry ourselves away from Maine, scheming of ways to never have to leave. This year was like every other year, crawling through amazing amounts of traffic all the way up to Maine, wearing ourselves out with activity and fun with friends while there, and crawling back home, cursing the Massachusetts Turnpike in the summer.

This year we kicked things off by spending our first night camping in Salisbury, Mass. Right on the coast. At a state park where the Merrimack River meets the Atlantic Ocean. Due to aforementioned crazy amounts of traffic, we didn't get there in time enough to enjoy as much as we had hoped. But we did have a good time riding bikes at dusk, roasting hotdogs and marshmallows, curling up in our cozy tent (only I'm not sharing my sleeping bag with Marlowe any more, because I was freezing), and playing at the beachside playground.

Because of our camping plans, not only did we pack our Honda Civic with all that a family of four needs for a week's vacation, but also a tent, extra food, three sleeping bags, and three camp chairs. In addition, to the equipment for our new family hobby, biking. Read: four helmets, a baby bikeseat, three bikes. Yes, we're that good. We got it all in, with a little room to spare.

We had hoped to have some beach time in the morning, but it took us awhile to pack up again and get all the bikes situated, and then we were hungry, so we found a great place in Salisbury for breakfast. And then we decided that it was getting late, and we didn't really want to deal with so much sand with so much travels yet ahead of us. So we didn't have a lot of beach time there. I did walk around the night before, and enjoyed the magical effect of the full moon over the water. It was so beautiful.

We decided to amble up the bit of the New Hampshire coast. And encountered a tremendous amount of beach traffic, because I had no idea the extent of the sandy beach there. But once we got past that, we had a beautiful drive along the coast, including a pit stop at the state park where my friend got married two weeks ago. We popped back up to I-95 at Portsmouth and went a little while 'til we got to Portland, ME, which I love.

Last year we stopped at Deering Oaks Park and had such a great time, that we planned to stop there again, though this time we missed the farmer's market. They have a great water play area for the kids, and we ended up staying for almost three hours. It was just a perfect day.

From Portland, it was just a couple hours more, and the kids slept after all their fun. We had a great reunion with our friends, the Curlyheads. Enjoyed a wonderful Sunday with them. And Monday began our week o' crazy vacation madness.

Monday morning: bike ride through woods. about 4miles. Chris, me with Marlowe in baby seat, and Russell and oldest Curlyhead.
Monday afternoon: trip up to lake. After we waited for a band of rain to pass we enjoyed swimming, canoeing, mud digging, and coffee sipping.
It was Marlowe's first ride in a boat. He did not enjoy it. I think he enjoyed the lifevest about as much as he enjoys the bike helmet, except the boat doesn't go fun and fast to distract him from it.

Tuesday. Same biking crew plus Ellis headed out to Acadia National Park. We rented a tagalong bike attachment (and bike, since it didn't fit on C's) in Bar Harbor, and biked around Lake Eagle on the old carriage trails in Acadia. Probably about 10mi. There were a couple crazy uphill moments, and a couple of awesome downhill moments. Chris and I wonder how it would be without the accompanying weight. I'm beginning to think that I'm going to need to train for next year's vacation.

Marlowe does pretty well in the babyseat, though he begins to fuss if we're going too slowly for too long (like for a long uphill), and cheers for fun, fast downhills. In other words, Marlowe likes to go fast.

And then since we were in Acadia anyway, we had to drive around at soak in the scenery. We stopped for awhile to throw rocks in the water, poke around tidal pools, and look for sea glass.

Wednesday. I declared a Day Off. Even though I ended up taking a little hike on the trail behind our friend's house. But that was mostly to hang out with C and get M to fall asleep on my back. Our friends have four kids, the youngest of whom--and the only boy--is just a couple months older than Ellis, so there was plenty of playing and fun.

Thursday. Chris and I took all 6 kids (their four, our two) up to the top of a mountain and down again. There's a great mountain, Great Pond Mountain, that I climbed two years ago. It's about 1100ft, and is manageable for the young kids, though they did put forth a valiant effort to manage. (Marlowe was on my back.) About two-thirds the way up, the vegetation dwindles to mostly conifers and shrubs, including the Maine wild blueberry. So we had to keep stopping to pick blueberries. Marlowe thought this kind of hiking suited him just fine. The view from the top is incredible. We can see over towards Acadia, the Penobscot Bay and river, various mountains and hills and islands dotting the landscape. And, our favorite swimming hole just at the foot of the mountain which received our hot, sweaty bodies, just as soon as we could hike back down the mountain. This was Ellis's first mountain summit!

Craig Pond has got to be one of the best swimming spots. The water is always perfectly refreshing, not too cold. It's so clear. It's called a pond, but really it's more like a small lake. There are many canoeing and kayaking and fishing on it. The kids catch frogs. It's absolutely delightful. We go every year. I think Ellis remembered it this year, because as soon as he got there he asked where the frogs were. He promptly caught his first frog and lovingly befriended it for the rest of the afternoon.

On Friday we knew we had to go home. Though it took a tremendous amount of willpower not to stay another day. I think the drive home was a little less hectic for not being on a Saturday, though the traffic was still thick.

We had such a good time visiting with our friends, who took such good care of us. It was a refreshing time, even though we wore ourselves out a bit. (After all, one really isn't going to rest on vacation with little kids anyway.) We are already dreaming of next year.

p.s. It's a good thing I uploaded every last stinkin' picture onto Flickr through iPhoto, because my hard drive crashed yesterday.
You can view the whole set here.

We're outtie, folks!

July included two weddings. Both made possible by the internet.
I did music for the first. A friend from church.
The second was for Sarah, my old college buddy. I drove to New Hampshire with Marlowe and Elmo DVDs in the back on Saturday. It took me 7 hours. I drove back after the wedding on Sunday. It took me 10 hours. The bulk of which was spent between New Haven, CT and my house outside Philly (a total of 170mi). Thankfully, there was a handy IKEA to stop at for dinner.

My sister came for a week. She taught me how to knit. I am freakishly excited to add this skill to my crafty skill set. especially since it means that the cool yarn store is now open to me.

I can't keep track of all we do. I do know that in a week, I went to IKEA so many times, Ellis can now read the word IKEA. Seriously. If he sees it printed on some random piece of paper, he knows what it is. He can also read the word "zoo". His class went to the zoo, and now he recognizes the word in a book. Coincidence that these words are also fingerspelled. *grin*

I sewed. Adorable vacation pants for the boys. Can't wait to show you.

We have deaf friends in town. I love hanging out with people that can talk to my son.

I'm losing my mind. But vacation begins on Friday. And we will go to Maine. Vacationland. I will travel the same road I did two weeks ago. We will bring our bikes and little bags for sea glass.

I'm sorry if you've written me and I didn't write back. Perhaps when I find my mind, I can write to you something cogent.

So much to do today, but I just had to say that we had a good time. It was crazy. It was July 4th weekend at a packed out campground in the Poconos. But we had fun. And learned a lot about future family camping. More later....

(And yes, I found matching orange hoodies on clearance.)

We're off to enjoy nature for the weekend!

This is our first official family camping trip. I'm really excited. (And a little stressed out--hopefully the drive will soothe me.)

We are having lots of fun!
Keeping up with my blog is becoming more and more difficult as our days go careening by. I think I'll focus on pictures this summer. Give you glimpses here and there of what we're up to.

Here are the boys splashing happily in the little stream at the arboretum.

Late April in Philadelphia. Typically on a nice day it's mid-70s or so. Cool, but warm. Rains some, sunshine some. Well, the past four or five days it's been basically summer, the last few days hitting highs in the 90s. Really hot. It's totally thrown me for a loop, because it's so out of context. It's felt like normal late April in Louisiana. So I've been hot and crabby. Yesterday C and I were driving around in the car, and I was muttering, "it's so hot. I wish I could go to the beach."

I'm always wishing to go to the beach when it's hot, yet in the almost four years of living here, I had actually yet to go to the beach (that's not Maine or vacation-related). The thought of going to New Jersey usually terrifies me, because I will get lost. And the thought of going to the shore in the summer is overwhelming, because that's where EVERYbody goes. Bumper to bumper across the state of NJ? No, thank you. There is also Delaware, Virginia, even Maryland. But they are further away, so introduce problems such as spending the night somewhere. But in late April? I thought I might just be able to handle the Jersey shore. So I called a new friend from church, whose little girl is just a few months younger than Marlowe. We squeezed the three carseats in the backseat (yes, Ellis played hookie, but I suppose you can if you're three years old), and off we went. In just under two hours we arrived in Ocean City, NJ. Yes, we did have to stop to ask for directions at one point. What is it with that state!?

The sun was warm, but the water is, of course, very cold. It is in June, why not in April? The breeze coming off the water was cool, but we were comfortable. I expected Ellis to have a lot of fun digging in the sand and driving his dump truck all over, carting sand. I didn't know how Marlowe would do, though, I thought sand ingestion would be involved. M totally surprised me by only trying to eat sand a few times. He LOVED the beach. He had to have a shovel in each hand, and kept trying to dig (more patting the sand). And they he decided to go swimming and toddled off to the waves crashing into the land. He got his toes wet and plopped down in the water a couple of times. But it was very cold. He loved the sand and the water and basically stormed the beach with his mad toddling skillz.

When the babies started getting tired, we took a little walk on the boardwalk, grabbed some ice cream, and headed home. Marlowe had zonked out before we got to other end of the causeway. And home again. I totally did it! I drove to the end of the continent and back. Hmm, maybe the middle of the week in the summer won't be too bad. Maybe we could do this...

anyway, the cool breeze come in through the window is promising that Faux Summer is going to be over soon. I'm relieved. I wasn't ready for it yet. I want my cozy days still. But come back in a month or so, and we'll be ready.