Cookie of the month: Month 2

For the month two, Elizabeth made blueberry-thumbprint cookies!

First, Elizabeth picked the blueberries.

 Then, she made the jam.

 Finally, she made the cookies.

Our laughing little lad

From our trip to Cape Cod....Henry's first giggle

Videos from Cape Cod

Here are a few videos from our trip that I forgot to post....

Conversations with Henry

Elizabeth's first smores

A fun game for all

Our opportune breakdown

After we left Cape Cod, our goal was to go berry picking for a few hours, have dinner, and then head back in the car around bed time for one last push home. That didn't happen.

We DID go berry picking:

 

But then we stopped for pee-pee and doughnuts on the way back. Elizabeth must have either been very thirsty or, more likely, defiant, because she kept drinking her water even after we told her she had enough. So, we took her water away and drove off. Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth yelled "Me pee-pee!" and we pulled over as soon as we could ... at some random park-and-ride off some random exit outside some random town in central Connecticut.

I turned off the car and let Elizabeth and Kate out. But Kate suggested that I continue to drive around for a minute since Henry was sleeping. So I turned the key and ... nothing.

Thirty minutes later, after Kate had pulled out the picnic blanket and had a fresh blueberry feast with the kids on a green patch of nearby grass, I finally accepted that I had no idea what I was reading in the owner's manual nor any idea what I was looking at under the hood. So I called AAA and became a member.

Kate and I worked out logistics and ended up spending the night in Groton, which we figured out was only two exits away from Mystic, Conn., a touristy town with huge casinos, a huge aquarium, and a delightful 'old port town' complete with old buildings, actors, and an easy, breezy, beautiful little harbor with a few old sailboats and a lot of kayakers, canoers, and yachters.

In the morning, after AAA replaced the car battery, we were off to the aquarium, which we thought Elizabeth would like the most. We then learned that the aquarium was $30 per adult, so we opted for the seaport (which was still expensive, but offered a children's museum, a planetarium (we didn't go, but I would assume they teach you about how sailors of olde used stars to navigate at night), and a few kitchy, old-towny attractions like horse-and-buggy rides, and old apothocary, schoolhouse, tavern, and a boathouse where you can help put boats together).

What a great place to breakdown!

No one is asleep here. These are 'sailor beds' in the children's museum

It was then naptime, so we got back in the car, drove a few more hours until the kids woke up outside Stamford, Conn., and then found a mall where Kate could buy all the things we never knew we needed. 

We then made it home, 34 hours after leaving Cape Cod. The car is fine. And Kate and the kids are off again enjoying another beachy adventure in North Carolina. Pics to come soon. 

Cape Cod

We're back from beautiful Brewster, Mass., where we spent the better part of a temperate week enjoying the sand, water, and free babysitting help of family.

For those unfamiliar with Cape Cod, there are three distinct sand+water combinations:

1) Lakes. Small, large, sandy bottom or mud bottom, Cape Cod has freshwater lakes for every taste. We liked the big sandy ones that replicated ... to me at least ... a warmer version of Lake Michigan.

OK, not THAT warm. 

Henry DID eventually like them

Not as much as this goofy girl

In this picture, I imagine Henry grilling burgers and not being able to properly flip a stubborn one

2) Ocean. Cold isn't a strong enough word. We only went here once and only for about a 1.5 hours. We stayed on the sand.

3) Tide pools. On the Bay side of Cape Cod, the land is almost completely flat, meaning the difference between high and low tide (usually only a few feet) can reveal as much as two miles of small and large puddles, most of which have some sort of neat marine life in it.

We don't know these people, but I liked the shot.

Also during the week, Henry had his first food - sweet potato.

Elizabeth had her first smores and played her first game of mini golf:

And here are a few other random images evidencing a happy week....

We have a new photographer ... Elizabeth!

In the past few weeks, we've been training Elizabeth to take photos with our dated Sony camera ... and I think she's getting the hang of it. Here's some evidence of her photog prowess.

Whadaya think? Should we start exploiting her already?