Friday, June 26: Playing Catch-Up

Playing catch-up with life in general. A lot has happened this month.

Andrew's Birthday

Andrew turned 50 this month, and we celebrated the milestone in multiple ways. Half a century! It deserves all the celebrations. His sister/family and aunt and uncle came for the birthday weekend, and we went out to dinner and to a Pirates game. His aunt joined me and Greta at the Mexican War Streets community yard sale (Lucia missed it because of an SAT practice test). It was so nice having everyone here, especially since the kitchen was (mostly) ready for unveiling. 

Among other things, I made Andrew a book called "50 Years / 50 Things We Love," featuring, yes, fifty things the girls and I love about Andrew. The girls each designed a few pages and I did the rest. It was fun to put together even though there are, of course, many more than 50 we could have included. 

We also got to celebrate with a few friends that weekend, once again at our house, the kitchen easily handling the crowd. Everyone gathered around the island. Just like we'd imagined.

Birthday Weekend in Boston

Continuing the birthday festivities, Andrew, me, Beth, and Nate went to Boston for the weekend to celebrate Andrew in one of his favorite places. We went to a Red Sox game and the Museum of Fine Arts; we walked all around the Boston Public Garden. Our visit coincided with the Scotland/Morocco World Cup match, so we had many chances to see the kilt-wearing Scotland fans--we even watched a few of them scale a George Washington statue in the Public Garden and place a traffic cone on his head. We had some delicious meals. Andrew and I also stayed an extra day to go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and have dinner with some of Andrew's college friends.

That was the conclusion to the birthday celebrations....it has been a busy but fun month.

We celebrated Father's Day when we got back from Boston on Sunday. 

Busy Summer

This month has been pretty hectic for the kids. They had one free week after school let out on June 4, then began their summer activites. Lucia had two weeks of working as a camp counselor from 8:30am - 4:30pm, then a daily in-person SAT class from 6:30-8:30pm. She went for a run some days in between those activites. We have barely seen her. 

Greta has begun her online summer geometry class, which takes up many hours each day. She took both her and Lucia's piano lesson this week. And she also had summer rowing this week from 6:00-8:00am, which required us to drive her out to Verona at 5:30am each morning. We split the week and spent the time waiting for her in the Oakmont Bakery (not a terrible place to wait).

We also had a visit from Molly and Jeremy this week.

It's been pretty nutty around here. But now we are leaving for New Hampshire. It will be a chaotic effort to get there but will ultimately be a chance to finally take a breath.