August 8, 9, & 10

Wednesday. . . hot, humid, and rainy. A good day to go to the movies!! The kids and I went to see Underdog. It was cute. Afterward, we went shopping for some more "big boy underwear" for our little potty trainer. He selected Thomas undies. We spent the rest of the day and evening at home. We ate sandwiches for dinner because the kitchen was too hot for cooking in!!

Thursday was a georgeous day here! The highs were in the mid 70s, humidity was low, and the sun was shining. We went to the grocery store in the morning and then to play at the park after lunch. We went to the playground at Rachel's school with a friend of hers we met at First Methodist. The kids really loved this playground. It has lots of interesting things to climb on. There is a tire bridge, a suspension bridge, and a "web" made of chain and wood. There was also sand!! David, of course, spent most of his time playing in the sand. He brought his Larrymobile with him and had a great time burying it. We hung out for about an hour, and then had to come home to get cleaned up to go to MIT. There was a cookout for the Sloan students and a couple of other graduate programs. Jamie got to play with his friend, John. Rachel and the girls tried to get in on the game that they were playing, but Jamie shooed them away. I think he's had way more than his fill of girls this summer! He just needed a little GUY time. He's growing up so much! His chin has started breaking out, so we bought Sea Breeze and cotton squares for him at the store. It's time to start cleaning his face like a teen. Youch!!!
Rachel had a good time at the cook out playing with all the little girls from our group. And, they were ALL wearing pink. I guess pink is the girl color across all nationalities. I spent a good bit of the time visiting with Alp, the husband of one of the Sloan students. He and his wife and daughters are from Turkey. We talked about schooling and the differenced between here and there. He feels that we start teaching our kids much earlier than they do. He said that their kindergarden is like ours used to be: no one was expected to begin with knowing letters, numbers, etc. He also says that here the children are much more outgoing, and he likes that. He said that one thing they do there is that they don't have a cut off date for entering school, but the children are grouped according to their birthdays. So his older daughter, who has a birthday in December, is in a class with other kids who also have birthdays late in the year. She will actually lose a year by being in the states because of missing the cut-off date.

Friday
Susan and I thought we'd take the kids to the Franklin Zoo just south of Boston. The weather had a 50/50 chance of rain, but we decided to risk it. Well, it started raining when Susan got to my house, and continued to rain through lunch. We drove on out to the zoo on the chance that it wouldn't be raining there, but it was. So we decided to head to the mall at Natic, which is supposed to be huge. Well, we ended up taking the long, long way around and got lost less than a mile from the mall, so it took 1 1/2 hours to get there. Fortunately, Susan has a DVD player in her van, so the kids were fine. We also had snacks from our planned zoo visit. We arrived at the mall in time to eat lunch in the food court and head home. Oh, well. It was an adventure, and we weren't just sitting around at home on a rainy day. Since the kids were such troopers, and didn't fuss or complain about our thwarted plans, we rode our bikes to the ice cream shop this afternoon. It was a short ride, but very enjoyable. We ate at Bugaboo Creek for dinner tonight. It's actually chilly here tonight. Right now the temperature is 59 degrees!!! We've had the air off and the windows open today. Tim talked to Laurie today and heard that the temp was 108 in Auburn!! Makes me glad to be in Mass today!