Weekend; Harvard Museum of Natural History

On Saturday the weather started off with beautiful sunshine for what seemed like the first time in ages. We spent a lot of time in the yard and then later in the afternoon decided to drive to Nahant for an ice cream and a walk on the beach. As we got closer to the shore, we could see an ominous gray fog rolling in from the water. When we got to to the beach it was shrouded in fog. We ate our ice cream, shivering, and then hopped back in the car and headed to Yia Yia's house without even having touched the sand.

Sunday was cold and gray so we decided to stick to more indoors activities. We finally made it to the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which we've been talking about visiting for a year now. It's free to Massachusetts residents every Sunday morning from 9:00 am to noon. The museum is amazing! It is small but the exhibits are great -- the Blaschka glass flowers, beautiful gemstones, meteorites, dinosaur fossils, and all kinds of specimens. My favorite was the Hall of Mammals way in the back, which looks like it's hardly changed in the past hundred years. I really wish I had brought my camera.

According to weather.com, we've had only 6 days of sun in the month of June, and yet with all those clouds we are still almost an inch below the average monthly rainfall. And it's been cold. The average high temperature for June is supposedly 77 degrees, but it's only gotten that high on 4 days this month, and only half of the days this month have we even broken into the 70s at all. Mom and Dad still haven't even taken the cover off the pool.

Garden photos 6/24/09

It's rained here for the past week. Everything has turned green, the weeds have gone mad, and the flowers have flopped. Tomorrow the sun is predicted to shine!

A cold, wet weekend in Maine

Last weekend we took a couple of vacation days from work and set out for Monhegan Island, Maine. Unfortunately I planned this trip months ago -- work has been busy and getting time off has to be planned far in advance -- and the weather turned out to be terrible. It rained all day on Friday, making our 3-hour drive and ferry trip to the island not exactly what I had in mind. Here's a photo waiting for the ferry at New Harbor, Maine:



Luckily, Morgan's old raincoat (sized 2T) still fit well enough, although the sleeves were 4 inches too short. By the time we got to our hotel room, any part of our persons not covered by a raincoat was drenched to the skin, and then we found out that our hotel had no heat, and it was cold.

Bill and I were determined not to let the rain keep us from having a good time and enjoying the beauty of the island, so when the rain let up we donned our raincoats and set off on a hike to the cliffs overlooking the ocean on the east side of the island. It was indeed beautiful to see, and the sounds and smells of the ocean and the rain and the woods and meadows were beautiful too. Morgan liked the remains of an old shipwreck, which he said was from pirates. Unfortunately, the heavy rains had left the trails more like little streams, so our shoes filled with water and soon we got to a point where we couldn't go any further because we hit a swampy part where the mud was ankle deep, which is pretty hard for a five-year old and not so pleasant for a 40-year old either, so we turned back.

The next day was less rainy so we donned our wet shoes (saving our dry shoes for when we returned) and went on another walk to explore the island a little more, but Morgan wasn't very happy about having to wear wet shoes. We went out again in the afternoon to hike on a trail in the woods where people built "fairy houses" which were quite sweet and Morgan seemed at least to enjoy that part. Again we hiked until we hit two trails that were unpassable, then turned back.

By this point most of the clothes we had brought were soaked, and without heat nothing dried. Check out the photo of our wet dirty socks. Seeing that the weather report for Sunday and Monday anticipated solid rain, we decided to call it quits and left a day early. No refund, of course. It rained almost all the way home except for the ferry ride back, which was nice.

Here's a photo of Morgan keeping warm on the sofa. I don't have any outdoor photos because I didn't want my camera to get wet.

On Monday we spent a quiet day at home, watching the rain from our nice warm house in our nice dry clothes. Also we bought Morgan some new shoes at Sears.

Garden photos 6/16/09

More photos here.

After a dismal, dreary morning, the day surprised me and turned out to be sunny and beautiful for a change, so I got outside and managed to take some photos before doing my weeding, pruning, and mulching. The weather this spring has been terrible - cool and constantly overcast, but with very little rain. The allergy season seemed to drag on forever. The ground is dry and some of my plants are droopy. I have a ton of aphids, which I don't remember ever having much of a problem with before. The "lawn" (I use that term loosely) is already turning it's midsummer straw color. My arugula was a washout - some of the plants were only 2 inch high with pathetic little leaves when they started to flower (not enough sun?). The constant stream of gray, dreary days has made me less excited about getting out there and gardening, so there are things undone. Ah well, there's always next year.

Morgan's first lost tooth

This morning Morgan noticed that one of his teeth was wiggly. Five hours later, we were in the car on the way home from the comic book store and he said "I accidentally pulled my tooth out!" And he had! He was quite pleased with himself.

Earlier in the day I told him that if he left his tooth under his pillow at night, the Tooth Fairy would take it and leave him some money. Morgan's reaction: "I'm not giving my tooth to some fairy!"

Motorcycle with two sidecars

Morgan: I want to build a motorcycle with a sidecar.
Bill: I want to build a motorcycle too.
Robin: Yeah, and I'd like to go to the moon.
Morgan: I want to build a motorcycle with two sidecars and then we can all fly to the moon.

Morgan's graduation

Morgan's "fives" class at Kindercare had a graduation ceremony yesterday complete with caps and gowns. You can see my photos here.

The theme of the graduation was taking care of the Earth, so they all wore green caps and gowns and decorated green t-shirts to wear underneath. They recited a poem about recycling, and their teacher Miss Donna said a few words and then handed out their diplomas (which said that they had completed the "Kindergarten readiness program") and then they all sang a song. Morgan was so happy and proud of himself!