Saturday, July 31
I just wanted to mention that the photo of the man with swimmer's itch is not Eric. I found it by searching Google and it belongs to this website: www.biologie.uni-erlangen.de.
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# posted by julee @ 10:07 AM
Friday, July 30
It is so nice to be home! We actually cut our trip a day short and came home late last night. It wasn't that we weren't having fun- we had a great time. We were just really tired and ready to come home. We packed a lot of things into 5 days and we couldn't really relax at the cottage because it wasn't baby-proof.
Here is where we stayed. It was comfortable and clean enough. But their claim of 50 feet of beach is not quite the truth. They should have said 50 square feet of a gravel and rock slope that runs from the road to the water. (About 5' from the road to the water and 10' wide) It worked out just fine though; the kids couldn't have gone swimming anyway. It wasn't quite warm enough and because of the prevalence of cercarial dermatitis, also known as swimmer's itch.
Here are some the great things we did and saw:
Herrmann's Royal Lipizzan Stallions of Austria
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC
Day Camping at Knight Point State Park
The Vermont Expos
Old Montreal
Centre des Sciences de Montreal
Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, VT
Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, Shelburne, VT
Ben and Jerry's Factory, Waterbury, VTOverall it was a great vacation. We just hung around the house all day. Eric and the kids slept a lot while I started to attack the mountain of laundry we brought home with us. Here are some pictures from the trip:
The boys on the boat
Iris looking out of the tent
Theo climbing on a structure in Montreal
The boys at Ben & Jerry's
Iris liked Ben & Jerry's too
Friday, July 23
Today is Eric's last day of his 3rd year! He had his last academic final yesterday in Biostats. There will be no classes during 4th year, only clinic work. Yay!! Even better: his afternoons will be free for all of August and September. I think we are going to spend a lot of time at the beach.
Once he comes home today he is on summer vacation. He only gets one week this year. We had been previously spoiled with much longer summer breaks, but we are making the most of our one week. Tomorrow we are heading to Alburg, VT, where we rented a cottage right on the shores of Lake Champlain. We will be gone a week and I don't think we will be wired.
Coincidentally our vacation is the same week as the Democratic National Convention. I would have to say the "Massachusetts Liberal" label fits me fairly well but I am very glad we will out of town. Click Here to read why.
Last night we packed a picnic dinner and went to the Lantern Festival at Forest Hills Cemetery. We watched performances by The New England Gospel Ensemble, The Chu Ling Dance Academy and Tsuji Daiko, a company of Japanese Samurai Drummers. In a Buddhist inspired ceremony, at sundown hundreds of floating lanterns were released onto a small lake. It was very beautiful. Here are some pictures:
Some lanterns
Theo
Iris
Wednesday, July 21
Our friend, Tomoko from our days in Japan had a baby last February. She recently sent me a picture of Yumi. Isn't she cute?
Tuesday, July 20
It's starting to get hot here so we met friends at a small neighborhood spray pool:
Iris
Henry with his friend Alex
Both BoysHave you ever wondered in which level of Dante's Inferno you would end up? Click Here to find out.
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# posted by julee @ 11:26 PM
Sunday, July 18
We went back to the place that David & Sharyn rented in Chatham, NY. Of course, the kids had a blast swimming again:
Iris
Theo
HenryEric's cousin, Chloe, also was there for the weekend. (remember, we saw her in NYC in May when she graduated from college) She is now living in Brooklyn and has an internship with The Kitchen, an arts organization. It was great to see her again. Steve and Andrea and their two girls were there too. So we really had a full house.
The performing arts are one of the main attractions of the Berkshires. With 3 small children, we hadn't really been able to take advantage of the cultural opportunities. But today all 12 of us went to Tanglewood. David bought lawn tickets and we had a picnic. We sat near the back where there was enough open space for the kids to run around. Henry actually spent most of the time playing soccer with a boy from another family. The violinist, Joshua Bell, was the featured performer of the concert.
Here are pictures of the boys from today:
Theo
Henry
Thursday, July 15
All three kids are napping right now so my house is very quiet. The boys usually only nap on Thursdays. This is so they can stay up and watch This Old House with Eric. When playing, they often pretend that they are the guys from the show and carry around tools fixing things. Tom Silva is their favorite with Richard Tretheway a close second.
We went to the zoo today to see the dinosaurs. They were life sized, automated and they made growling noises. It was really too scary for Theo. Since we are members of the zoo we end up going a lot. Usually the boys only really care about the playground and the various climbing structures but today they actually were more interested in the animals.
I'm working on reducing the size of all of the pictures from this page and the archived pages. Here are a couple from today:
Iris
Henry
Wednesday, July 14
News Flash: Iris is starting to walk. She took a few steps yesterday and a few more tonight. This should actually slow her down a little bit since she is a superfast crawler.
Click Here to see the Hello Kitty item of the day.
Click Here for a list of some very interesting blogs by Peace Corps Volunteers. I really like reading about life in foreign countries, especially the 3rd World.
Monday, July 12
I admit it: I have a pair of Nike sneakers, I occasionally shop at BabyGap and I've been known to feed my addiction at Starbucks. But I am really trying harder to be a more conscious consumer. Click Here to read about some of our largest corporations. (At least I can say that we never eat at McDonald's)
On a (much!) lighter note: explore "The Wackier World of Japanese Ice Cream."
Here are some pictures from this morning. They are grainy because of the low level of light.
Iris
Theo
Sunday, July 11
We have been taking it easy lately and not venturing far from home that much. We actually spent a great part of the weekend sifting through the clutter that has managed to pile up on most of the flat surfaces in our home. Eric sorted through six month's worth of papers from school and most of them are going out with the recycling this week. He only has 2 weeks left of 3rd year! I can't believe we've been here for 3 years already. I'm sure this next year is going to fly.
We did go to Quincy Market for dinner tonight and had a nice stroll along the waterfront. Here are some pics:
Iris
Henry
Both BoysClick Here to see some signs that will make you laugh.
Hello Kitty goes camping: Click Here
Tues
day, July 6We are back home now. The place that Eric's parent rented is beautiful, not a summer cottage at all. It is actually the main residence of a couple who spend their summers on a boat. The house has an indoor Endless Pool which is where the kids wanted to spend most of their time. On the 4th we went The Strawberry Shortcake Festival at the Shaker Museum in Old Chatham, NY. It was a nice little festival. The admission price included a bowl of strawberry shortcake and pretty decent coffee. The boys decorated their own flags and marched in a little flag parade. There was also a reading of the Declaration of Independence.
Here are some pics from the weekend:
The cousins on the sofa
Theo decorating his flag
Henry and Ariela in the mud
Thursday, July 1
Wow! It's already July. Did you know that July is National Hot Dog Month? It's estimated that Americans eat 7 billion hot dogs during the summer. That's very disgusting when you think about what really is in a hot dog.
Today is the 83rd Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party in China. And it is also Canada Day today. Go out and celebrate, just don't eat any hot dogs.
Eric had the afternoon off yesterday so we went to the beach. It was a pretty spontaneous decision so I forgot to pack the camera. Too bad! Eric and the boys made a great sandcastle that I'm sure everyone would have wanted to see. We usually go to Nantasket Beach which is only about 20 miles away. It's a big public beach but we go in the late afternoon when the crowd has usually thinned out. It has hard-packed sand and it is right on the Atlantic (as opposed to in the harbor) so it gets some nice waves. There is also a restored vintage carousel that we always have to visit when we go there.
We are taking off for a long holiday weekend. Eric's parents rented a place on the New York side of the Berkshires for the summer. Our 9th anniversary is Saturday and we are planning to go out without kids!
