Skip to main content

A quick rundown on a summer gone too quick

Can you believe it's September? How did this happen? Astounding! I'm sure you were off enjoying your summer and hardly noticed that I haven't been here since June (yipes!), but we have some catching up to do. I'll try to bring you up to speed on the summer that was 2011, the high points, at least.

A good snuggle after camp
June-August: Happy goes to YMCA summer camp and loves it. Well, all except for Color Wars week...which Happy really hates but Mommy really loves. (Have you ever run as far as you can while screaming, like a human javelin? It's fun. Try it.) Every day he comes home exhausted and ready for a snuggle.

Hometown 4th of July parade
Birthday bash #2
July: We spend the 4th of July with our Besties -- then Mommy, Happy, and Zippy have a week off, which includes a trip to Ocean City, a trip to the Delaware Museum of Natural History, a day at the pool, and a birthday party weekend extravaganza (four parties in three days, two of which are in New Jersey).


July: Mommy, Happy, and our friends Miss B and Princess D go camping! In tents! Under a full moon! At the beach! And cook all our meals over a fire! Perfect weather, perfect company, and a perfect beach spot to play, splash, and hunt horseshoe crabs and critters. By far one of the best weekends ever, one I will cherish always.
Crikey!

Camping at Cape Henlopen



Watching for the moon over the ocean
Girlfriends in the Big Apple

August: Mommy spends a fabulous grown-up girls' day in New York City with long-time girlfriends. Sweeeet!

Bros on the beach
August: Penny the Beloved Murano goes into the shop for a spankin' new transmission (and we luck out with full warranty coverage!) so we pile into the teeny rental car and head to the beach!

Happy takes on the Capitol
August: Big Daddy takes Happy to Washington, DC, for the first time. He gets to ride a Metro train AND a taxi! And Happy wears a big ol' grin all the way through the Smithsonian "dinosaur and space-plane museums."
 
Snail hunting at Bellevue State Park
Swimming in the Brandywine
Philly Zoo
August: Mommy takes the last week of summer off to have some Mommy-Happy time -- and a happy mommy time it is! We go snail hunting in Bellevue State Park, wild animal watching at the Philadelphia Zoo, noodle-tubing and swinging on the Brandywine River, and relaxing in the movies (with a teeny bit of last-minute back-to-school shopping thrown in).

The boys and Ben
September: We spend the final weekend of summer in Philly, scooting around the Franklin Institute with friends, then stomping around the city on our own...and it all ends with us witnessing a naked bicycle event down the Ben Franklin Parkway!


Philly Naked Bike Ride 2011!


And in between all this fun stuff, we did a lot of playing at the park (where Zippy perfected his sliding technique), ate a lot of corn on the cob, had some blazing backyard campfires, saw a couple of concerts, weathered our first earthquake and hurricane, watched a lot of baseball, and just generally had a good time. It's hard to say goodbye to summer, but a little easier when you've made such happy memories.

My little firecrackers

(No toddlers were injured in the taking of this photograph.)
Add caption
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  Brené  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha...
16 comments
Read more

Grown-up words and what to do about them

We know our children are little sponges who soak up all our words, actions, mannerisms. They are often parrots, but even more often they are fun house mirrors, amplifying and exaggerating our own idiosyncratic behaviors until we cringe, laugh, or hang our heads in shame. Yesterday while cleaning up his toys, Sweet Boy got frustrated trying to put one of his train pieces together. Instead of crying or raging like he would have a few weeks ago, he threw the toy down and yelled, "Oh, fuck it!" Oh. My. Lord. The air was sucked out of the room. We were suspended in time and space, frozen as our eyes met. I took a split second to consider my options: (1) Freak out and yell at him---scare him into never saying it again; (2) Ask him to repeat what he said, because maybe I heard it wrong and I don't want to overreact; (3) Ask where he heard that word, stuff his mouth full of soap, then call the offending child's parent immediately (a la The Christmas Story ); (4) Ignore it so ...
4 comments
Read more

Why I Occupy

I marched in the Occupy Philly protest last Saturday, and I've been trying to find the words to describe it all week. People who know me look puzzled when I tell them, and I've been trying to explain why this movement has taken root in my heart. Last Saturday, for a few brief hours, I stood up to the anxiety, anger, frustration, and fear that has gripped me for the last few years. For a few brief hours, I marched with people who want better for me and you and this entire country, people who may be ideologically different but stand together because they believe there’s still hope for this democracy, that there’s still a chance that our government will take action for the people and not for the corporations that fund their campaigns. There’s a perception that the Occupy Wall Street movement is simply a mob of young, disenfranchised 20-somethings who have nothing better to do than sleep on city sidewalks to disrupt the lives of those of us with jobs. Revolutions are ...
8 comments
Read more