It was a lovely summer!

Ethan has transferred to a year-round school this year: he starts school about August 1 and ends school approximately June 30, with 3 3-week vacations during the year. (The 1st is coming up next week and he and I are taking a road trip touring California Missions and ending up at Disneyland!) Next year he will only have about 4 weeks off for summer. That seems too short! It’s impossible to do all the wonderful things summer allows in 4 weeks!

But this past year his last day of school was on the traditional school schedule, so he was done by mid-June. I now believe that 6 weeks off is the perfect amount of summer vacation!

A couple weeks of nothing, a week of camp and some family trips. Enough time for a diverse experience but not enough time to get bored.

Some of our adventures:

- we went camping in the redwoods with the preschool again. Beautiful June weather, days creek-walking, skipping stones, hiking, San Gregorio beach and then oops! some wasps built a nest 4 feet from the entrance of our tent on the last day! 7 stings for mom!

- E & J went to Berkeley Chess School camp (their choice) and spent the week with Grandma & Grandpa

- we spent 9 days in the northeast with Bapu, Susu and Abigail plus a side trip to see Peter, Oliver, Aunt Susie and Uncle Doug and Cousins Andy & Zoe. Parks, hikes, the flu, a family reunion (my husband’s family without my husband…. ), Westport beach, subway rides, seeing Twin Tower re-build from underneath, losing Matthew at the Penn Station PATH platform, eating Manhattan pizza, Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Yonkers kosher deli with Nana & Shana – clearly this is a blog of is own

- a week or two OFF with friends, trips to Coyote Point and hanging around the house

- visits from Claire Bear, Henry & Darcie and The Kent Family

- Peters/Adragna Family Reunion in Tahoe North Shore with 30 people in a cabin, lots of love and not too much complaining, tubing down the Truckee (picking fights with water-gun yielding teens and Matthew getting the best of them, Glen falling out of the raft!), me finding a musical to rehearse with across the street, beach, art fair, motor boat and water skiing, no talent show! Clearly, another separate blog.

Anyway, I meant to blog it as we went along. It was a lovely lovely summer.