Summer has arrived!

(I wrote this up on June 22^nd, but wasn’t able to get it posted before we left for our trip. So here it is!)

It’s so nice to have the warmer weather back. We’ve spent endless hours at the playground already! It’s such a treat.

Our farm where we have a share is open again for the season. We’re thrilled about that! Lewis is now an expert strawberry picker, choosing the mostly red ones, with a few exceptions. He also is great at pulling off the snap peas. But, his favorite is just playing on all the toys they have for kids at the farm pick-up stand. And, we’re enjoying all our fresh, summer produce again!

Other joys of the summer have included lots of late afternoon play dates with Carter. Our friends Jaime and Jeff, who live across the street, and their son Carter are moving at the end of June. We’re so, so sad. We’ve been trying to soak in the time with them. Lewis has loved playing in their back yard or having barbeques at their house. And, we’ve loved having them drop by for adventures in the baby pool in our back yard or playing with the cars and trucks in the driveway. It will be very sad to see them go!

For Mother’s Day, my love made a wonderful picnic, and we went to Washington Crossing State Park, which is a bit of a tradition. Lewis absolutely loved it because it’s overlooking the river, and he’s obsessed with seeing water. So, he loved seeing the water and the boats. We even saw some see-doos, which he calls skee-doos, and he really liked those. His favorite was seeing the ducks. We taught him how to feed them with bread, and he thought that was really cool. He was really into it, except that he couldn’t throw it close enough to them so they could actually get it. Instead, he would just hold it and sort of lob it at them while furiously running after them yelling, “DUCKS, DUCKS” at the top of his lungs. Of course, they didn’t think that was so great, so they ran away from him. But, he wasn’t deterred! He also ran after some geese and threw rocks in the water. It was a great picnic!

We also had Pennington Day in May, which is our favorite town event! The whole family ran the 5K this year...well, Lewis and Beau in the stroller. We did let Lewis out to run across the finish line at the end, and he loved that!

Mike was able to go out to Utah for a long weekend to attend our friend Jason Boyd’s wedding. We wish we all could have gone! But, Mike had a great weekend at the wedding festivities, and also especially visiting with family there.

We were so lucky over Memorial Day Weekend to have Baba here! He had meetings in Boston leading up to the weekend, so he snuck in a trip to see us too. The weekend was lots of fun! We went on a little, local hike through the woods. We saw two turtles and three frogs, threw lots of rocks in the stream, were bitten by many, many mosquitoes, tromped through a mud-pit when we lost the trail, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Lewis was a champ! That kid has tons of stamina. He walked the whole two hours. Beau, on the other hand, slept through most of it!

Besides that, we went to the local pizza shop together, visited the playground, picked strawberries at the farm, and had lots of time to read books, build train tracks, and play at home. Lewis’s favorite new toy was Baba’s ipod! He and Baba are two peas in a pod, and they spent lots of time watching “Wheels on the Bus” together or “I’ve been working on the railroad”, or whatever other fun apps or videos Baba could find for Lewis! We also went to Pennington’s Memorial Day Parade, which was a hit! I think we must have seen 20 fire trucks!!! Lewis was in heaven! We had fun at our church Memorial Day Picnic, which is always a great tradition.

We even fit in a surprise early birthday party for Mike over the holiday weekend! I had ordered him a bike trailer for the kids, and a hitch for the car. Since I didn’t want to miss a whole month of the summer while waiting for his birthday, and since I was pretty sure I’d never keep them hidden from Mike for that long, we threw a party. Jake, Mish, and the girls came over, and we had a “biker dude” themed party, complete with “biker dude” trivia, pin-the-motorcycle-on-the-road, and a decorated helmet as a party hat! It was fun to all be together. I also have to say that Mommy made a killer key lime pie for dessert. Mmmmmmm!!!!!

At the beginning of June, Mommy took Beau down to the...HOOHAH!!! This year’s Hoohah was in Richmond, where we all attended our 10^th college reunion. Yay Spiders! It was really fun to be back on campus and remember how beautiful it all is and how much fun we had. I saw lots of friends and familiar faces. And, of course, the Hoohah was a delight as always. I love my girls! Beau did wonderfully, surviving the long car trip, and smiling away at everyone he saw!

June has flow by all too quickly. We’ve had gorgeous weather, and we’ve just loved every outdoor minute! Lewis has a new skill – spraying the hose! He’s thrilled with it, and constantly wants to play with the water. He loves filling up the baby pool and jumping in it too. If I let him out of my site when we’re chatting with a neighbor or something, you can be sure that he’ll run back completely soaked having had a lovely jump in the pool! He has learned to water the garden for me, which is very useful. And, he’s only sprayed me and Beau a couple times when he wasn’t supposed to. I’m sure there are many more to come!

A week ago, we spent a lovely Saturday in New York City. Mommy had to go in for a youth temple trip with the kids from church. So, we made a day of it! We spent the morning at the Museum of Natural History with Lewis. He loved the dinosaurs and the huge whale and other sea life. Then, we picnicked in Central Park by the lake. After that, Daddy explored the Lincoln Center with the kids while Mommy went to the temple. And, we all met up at Central Park where Lewis had discovered the water fountains at a great playground area. He was stripped down to his diaper and was having a grand old time! The other treat was that our friend Colleen happened to be in the city as well that day, so she met us at Central Park and spent the afternoon also chasing after wet and sandy Lewis with us. It was so fun to catch up with her. It was just pure sunshine!

Otherwise, Mommy’s been happy to have Lewis play with babysitters for a few mornings so she could get some work done. I still keep up with a bit of work for ETS, and it’s become increasingly more difficult to try and do it with 2 little boys who sometimes give me a good, long, quiet nap time, but sometimes don’t necessarily agree on nap time. So, that’s been really fun for Lewis, and nice for me too!

The last thing that I’ll include is just a note that on Sunday, I will officially be released from my calling serving in the Young Women’s program. It will be an emotional change since I loved working with those girls so much, and just loved working with all the other leaders too. It really was a treat and a blessing. I learned so much about myself and found the work and time to be so fulfilling. So, it feels like the end of an era! It was almost 3 years! But, change is such a good thing, and I’m thrilled for the women who will be stepping in now. They are definitely memories I will treasure.

The month is now drawing to a close, and we’re getting ready to go out of town for a while. We’ll be headed to Utah first to visit Papa John, Didi, Uncle Thurl, and Aunt Cat. While we’re there, we will also get to spend time with the DC family as we celebrate Jenn Lloyd’s wedding! It will be such a treat to be with everyone there!

We fly back from that, will have one day to do laundry and re-pack, and then we drive up to Maine. We’ll stay with Mike’s Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Earl for a few days up there. And then we’ll head to Bar Harbour for Timmy and Katie’s wedding (Norah’s good HS friend). We can’t wait! Not so much for the 12 hour drive with 2 kids part, but we’re very excited for the rest of it!

Happy summer to you all! Happy 4^th of July!