June Part 2 of 2 (wildlife & Fathers Day)

In June, Madeline lost her other front tooth!

And at the garden, she made a friend named Shelly.

Shelly ended up coming home with us.

One weekend, after celebrating Geoff's engagement in Worcester, we visited a Massachusetts Audubon preserve nearby.  Oliver found what is probably a turkey feather!

Soon it was Fathers Day.  When I got up, Summer and the kids were gone.  I settled down in the back yard with a book.

The kids came home with donuts and found me!

Madeline even dressed up for the occasion.

Shelly adjusted well to domestic life.

(Madeline even saved her money in the intervening weeks and bought her a special snail habitat.)

Ah, summer.

One evening, we let the kids stay up late and visited the Pawtuxet River to look for fireflies as darkness fell.

We found some!

Madeline was very impressed by the light show, but Oliver got scared so we headed home before things got too dark.

And of course we paid one of our summer visits to Pulaski Park.

Finally, in June Summer and I saw lots of turkeys on our morning runs -- good times!

June Part 1 of 2 (summer fun)

June started off auspiciously.

We went to PVDFest and drank coconut water ...

... and ate delicious food truck food.

We walked back along the river in the dusk.

Also in June, we visited Lauren and Dan and Emily ...

... and we got to meet Max!  Here's a photo of two Maxes.

June meant the end of school.

It also meant hanging out in the back yard eating popsicles after dinner.

The kids enjoyed noodling around on an old computer that came up from Delaware.  Their favorite game?  Typing into Notepad.

One weekend we relived our east side life and visited the farmers' market, where we met up with Benji ...

... and had a delicious lunch from Chez Pascal's wurst window.

Another day we went to Roger Williams Park to hunt for Pokemon and otherwise play around.

It was hot, but once Oliver got over his disappointment that Pokemon gyms aren't real physical structures where real Pokemon battle, we had a good time anyway.

Ah, summer.

May Part 6 of 6 (hard work & Ipswich River)

At the end of the school year, we were treated to Madeline's kindergarten concert.

Oliver decided to begin working on writing his name.

He felt very proud of his progress.

For her part, Madeline decided to work on her animal drawings.

And we finally planted our garden!

We had more nice times in the back yard.

And we decided that yet another excursion was in order ...

... this one to MassAudubon's Ipswich River preserve ...

... where the birds will eat right out of your hand!

There are lots of friendly turtles to see too.

And on this visit we were treated to a stalking great blue heron.

Check out this fun picture, where a nuthatch is deciding whether to eat from my hand while a heron stalks in the lower right corner.

The visit was capped off by a raptor of some sort consuming its prey up in a tree near the visitor center.  An exciting way to end May!

May Part 5 of 6 (Dinosaur State Park)

Before Grandma Mandy and Grandpa Paul headed back to Oregon, we met up again with Seth and Indika, this time at Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut.

Madeline fit into a T. rex footprint.

After visiting the museum we went for a scamper in the woods.

We saw a frog.

At the trailhead was an outdoor theater ...

... so we took turns putting on shows.

The visit ended with a dramatic lunch at Panera!

And then Grandma Mandy and Grandpa Paul's visit ended with a sweet posed picture.