April 12th was J's birthday. He turned 9yo. It was a "Constellation Party" complete with hand drawn constellations on a black tablecloth. My sister commented that J's party themes generally involve a lot of black and white. She's right! One year it was a zebra theme, another year a Cars theme (with black tires, white cake, etc.), and now the night sky. Here's the party boy opening some presents:
The morning of April 14th came with a call from my BIL. He and my sister were on their way to the hospital. Their baby had decided (3 weeks early) that it was time for him to make his appearance. Baby M had heard all the partying going on two days before and didn't want to be left out. Here is J with his new cousin:
A couple of weeks later we thought spring had finally arrived. It did, but it brought nearly a month of rain. We ended up with a once-in-100-years flooding situation. Amazingly, our "dry" basement wanted to become an indoor swimming pool. No pictures of that, though. This house gives you an idea of what others were facing. We're grateful that the water stayed in the basement at our house!
It finally dried out enough by the first part of June to start hitting the parks!
Reading is a constant activity, no matter what the weather:
We actually put in a garden this year and J got a taste of some good old fashioned manual labor. He was underwhelmed with the joy of weeding, but he did a great job:
About mid-June we decided to do what everyone who starts a garden does--leave for two weeks! (Yes, we did!) A customer of my husband's has a house on Cape Cod that they wanted painted. We did sort of a "working vacation" and enjoyed a car show:
A museum about the Pilgrims (J is being the "Town Crier" with the hat and bell of a real Town Crier in the case.):
We visited the Pilgrim Monument as well. The Pilgrims landed at the tip of Cape Cod (Provincetown) first, before moving on to Plymouth. Though J makes the monument seem like nothing, that baby had 1,116 steps and 60 ramps to the top. J and L all but sprinted to the top. I did not. After we got back down, J wanted to go up again. Silly boy.
Of course you know we went to the beach. We went every day that we were there. It was glorious!
July and August was a blur of our Summer Program (a future post), parks, parties, and the backyard pool. After the flooding in May, we have had one of the most beautiful summers since we moved here. Just the right amount of hot days to many, many days in the mid-70s. Lots of sunshine. Not too much rain, but enough to keep the garden happy.
THEN, Irene thought she'd reach an arm up this way. At our house there was a lot of wind and a lot of heavy rain for about 10 hours. (The basement stayed dry, though!) Just a few miles from us there was more flooding and lots of power outages. Whole towns were affected and a lot of roads are closed.
While we waited to see what damage would result, J decided to watch through the front door. Here's J in what we're entitling "The Storm Before the Calm."
That is a quick glimpse of the last four months at our household. I've got more new posts coming up, so please check back. I promise it won't be another four months!
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