it's (mostly) all a blur

Wednesday the weather was lousy again, and I thought we'd go up to Boston, but nobody was up for it. At 11:30AM it was as dark as 8PM, and the rain poured down. It's just as well we stayed home. We did go out for Chinese food for lunch, though, to my Mom's favorite buffet, so it's not as if we didn't do anything all day.

Thursday was another one of those days that starts dreary and ends up surprisingly OK. Unfortunately, by the time the weather broke it was about 3 in the afternoon, and the kids didn't want to do anything. I chased them out of the house for a walk on their own, and they delighted in exploring the path to the marsh. I haven't let them go down there on their own before, and they were surprised by the freedom, I think. They're growing up, and I have to learn to let them go.

For me, Thursday was a cooking day -- blueberry cake and pizza. Normally pizza would be for Friday, but since Friday was the day off for the July 4 holiday, we pushed it back to Thursday. Since I was cooking in the late afternoon, it limited what I could do with the kids, which was another reason I pushed them to go out on their own.

The annual blueberry cake

Friday? One of those beautiful days where it's much too cool to swim, but you really should be outside. Still, no one wanted to go to Beebe Woods or any other kind of hike; my brother and his wife brought down their Wii Fit game and the kids enjoyed getting back into it. (Our disc at home has been missing for some time now.) I swept up a bit outside, but nothing to strenuous. I sat and chatted with my sister-in-law in the backyard while my brother power-washed the patio and the outdoor furniture.

In the evening, my oldest brother came down with his wife and youngest son, who will be a senior in high school this year and is way, way taller than I am. We had a great dinner and sang an early Happy Birthday to my brother. Here's how you do a birthday cake when you have neither cake nor frosting:

A pan of brownies, a few candles, and birthday greetings from a color printer

Today, finally, was a beach day! It was a bit cool, only in the 70s, and that proved to be too cold to counteract the wind that was whipping. I draw the line at blowing sand, and we were almost there -- if no one was walking nearby, you'd be OK, but any movement at all and you'd be attacked by hundreds of sand pellets. The waves were awesome, though, and we all enjoyed jumping in them. The two younger kids got chilled quickly, and we ended up coming home after only a couple of hours because it just wasn't warm enough to stay, at least for me and the younger kids. DS1 could have stayed for hours, he was having so much fun.

My brother and his wife treated us to a lobster feast for dinner, and then we played Apples to Apples and hung out and I finally got the kids to bed after 10. All in all, a Happy 4th of July.

A whole lotta lobsters