Summer!

From reading some of my favorite blogs, it seems like a lot of people are having a great summer - and so are we!

We've been really busy. For the last week, A's sister and her fiance have been visiting from CA. We get along great with them and have been having a lot of fun. Tonight, on our way to drop them at the airport, we took a few minutes to check out some of the Tall Ships that are in Boston for the next few days. We watched tug boats maneuvering one ship from Chad in, and another one from Russia. As we stood on the pier, one of the tugs came right up to us, and the captain yelled out and asked us if we were from one of the fishing towns on the North Shore of Massachusetts (which was weird because we had just visited one of the towns over the weekend). Then, a big, burly sailor came out on deck and said to R, "Someone told me that you like popsicles" and tossed up two popsicles to us. It was so nice! Then the captain came out and said that if security wasn't so strict because of the Tall Ships, he would let R come on board.





The skies opened up at that point, along with a lot of scary lightning, so we high-tailed it back to our car. We found out that A's sister's flight was delayed significantly, so we decided to have dinner at the nice restaurant right on the pier so we could keep watching the ships come in.

Over the weekend, we went to our friends' house for a huge 4th of July BBQ that was also the birthday party for their one-year-old twins. It was a gorgeous day - after weeks of rain and gloom. We saw so many friends that we haven't seen in ages. It was really nice. Then we headed into Cambridge to meet up with A's sister and her fiance. They were staying in a hotel very close to the Charles River, so we grabbed them and walked down to the river to listen to the Boston Pops concert and to watch the Boston fireworks. It was AMAZING. This was R's first Boston fireworks experience, and he was blown away. It was a little rough because the fireworks didn't start until 10:30, so he was up WAY past his bedtime, but he held out for the whole thing and didn't fall asleep until 12:30 am in the car on the way home.

It was so incredible being there with hundreds of thousands of people, singing patriotic songs (and Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" - a tradition at Red Sox games), dancing, and then clapping and screaming and sighing over the fireworks. A and I had been to the "show" before, but we had always watched from the Boston side of the river. We discovered that the Cambridge side is the place to be -- not only did we get a perfect, clear view of the fireworks, but they were against the beautiful Boston skyline. I don't think I can ever watch them on TV again. It's just not the same.

On Sunday, we had no plans, so we headed up to Gloucester and spent the afternoon exploring the beach. R and I were in heaven - we found tons of little, tiny crabs and snails in all the tidepools. We looked for shells and sea glass. When we finally pried R away from the beach, we found a seaside shack that sold ice cream. We each got a cone and sat on the beach wall and watched the waves while the ice cream dripped all over us (well, mostly all over R). I've decided to add Gloucester to the list of towns we'd like to live in someday when we win the lottery. :-)

So far, despite the long stretches of wet, chilly weather, we've had a wonderful summer. I know it's going to go by fast, but at least we'll have made the best of it!