Happy Birthday, Daddy

Today was Chuck's birthday. Anna made him a terrific card, which includes this acrostic poem (read the first letters vertically and it spells Daddy's name!):

Checking on everyone

His heart is as big as a monster

Always being kind

Really, really nice

Loving and caring for everyone

I love Daddy

Everyone loves him!

Best Dad on earth

Understanding everyone's problem

Really funny

Kind as Snow White

Everyone agrees that he is the nicest person on the block!

The Scottish play

Anna spent last week at drama camp -- rehearsing and performing MacBeth the Musical. Here's a pic of her with a friend in their jester costumes. And here's an excerpt from the opening song:

"You'd better get back, Jack

He'll attack you to the death.

Because that cat is whack,

that's Mac-Beth!"

Rollover, Shakespeare.

Poppies

I went to the farmers' market yesterday and bought these beautiful poppies. I'm glad I took some pictures because as soon as I put them in water, the poppies drooped and the petals dropped.

Paddle to the sea

Anna and I recently read a book that we loved: Paddle to the Sea by Holling Clancy Holling. In the story, a boy in Canada carves a wooden man and a canoe and then sets them on their course through the Great Lakes and on to the sea. With her paddle in hand, Anna set her own course around Silver Lake...

Lakeshore

Two views

Headed to Silver Lake for the weekend. Here are two views -- from land across lake, from lake to land.

Strawberry fields

We went strawberry picking this morning. Faye plopped down and ate every berry in her radius -- like the little girl in 'Blueberries for Sal.' Anna proved to be a champion picker!

Dormi bambina

A morning spent in the sun and now it's off to sleep...

School's out!

Anna B celebrated her last day of 2nd grade today. No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks... *

*no offense to any teachers who are reading this. Or pencils.

Summer memory

This mobile stands outside the Porter Square T-stop in Cambridge When we were kids, my mother would take my brother and me to a beach in Rhode Island that was swarming with horseshoe crabs (sounds nice, doesn't it?). My fearless brother would pick the crabs up by their spikes/tails -- exposing the 10,000 pinching claws underneath their shells -- and chase me down the beach with one in each hand. Every time I pass this mobile, I think of horseshoe crabs. What does it remind you of?

My heart wanders...

Inspired by Pia's blog, Anna and I have been trying to
capture photos of hearts that we find around us. Here's one I took of her little heart-shaped face as she discovers a heart on her shirt. We're hoping to have enough heart photos to make a little book some day.

Lovely ladies

The Lovely Ladies of Colby College came to Boston from far and wide (New York, South Carolina, Maine and, um, Needham) for Ladies Weekend '08. We stayed at Nine Zero...Had drinks at Clink (among other places)...Strolled the beautiful, albeit scorching, streets of Back Bay and Beacon Hill...Saw the ultimate chick flick...Visited a favorite haunt in the North End...Giggled like the school girls we once were... And retold all the stories that never get old ("Let me show you the Statue of Liberty, girls...")
Thanks to all for a wonderful weekend!

Heat wave

Our down coats are still on the hooks and, all of a sudden, it's 96 degrees. So begins our annual ritual of dragging the air conditioners out of the basement, hauling them up three or four flights of stairs, and installing them in the sweltering heat as quickly as we can. Next year, we'll be proactive. We'll bring them out well in advance and install them at our leisure, one at a time, over a series of late-spring evenings. We won't need to mop up the brown water that dribbles from their little back-spouts because we'll have drained them thoroughly before they were put away. Eager to be helpful, the children will keep themselves quietly amused for the duration of the process. We'll place the ACs in the windows carefully and fuss with them until they fit properly. And we won't need a mountain of rags and face cloths to stuff into the gaps between the units and the window mouldings because, next year, when we pull out the sidefins they'll flutter perfectly into place, forming hermetic seals that won't be broken until the cool of October.

Baby boy

Our neighbors' baby was born today. A blue balloon heralds his arrival. Faye says, "They put up a balloon because the baby popped out." It happens thousands (millions?) of times a day, all over the world, and it never stops being magical.

Breathing new life

This watering
can/planter lives in a communal garden we pass on our walk home. I took the top photo yesterday. Anna took the bottom photo last February.

June bloom

We planted a bunch of trees and plants last fall, including this clemetis. Then it shriveled and sat in the cold and snow all winter long. When spring came we wondered, will it grow? Will it flower? And now, in June, voila...!