The End is the Beginning

 
 

This year the kids had school longer than I did, which meant I was able to meet them in their Cafeteria for lunch during their last week.  It as great, I was already at Merrick's table when his class came in and to watch his smile grow and the excitement build as he jumped and hopped was really wonderful.  I was even invited to play at recess with him, although it was only about 4 minutes before I was asked to move our game of monkey in the middle, back on to the playground.  Lunch ladies and playground supervisors still give me a little scare.  Sophia was happy I was at lunch as well, but said I was not invited to recess, because she and her friends had to talk and I would "ruin the mood."
With the final days of school over we changed gears to summer. We headed back to EC for the weekend to see the whole gang, with grandpa setting up tents and hiding gorillas in the woods, it was a pretty typical weekend.  Back in GB we headed out to the sanctuary to feed the geese and ducks, only to come home and find a mallard had nested in our front flowers, right under the window.  At this time she is sitting on a clutch of 11 eggs.  Ducklings will abound very shortly and we are excited for the hatch.  We also hit the thrift sales on an early Friday morning and made some great finds including a tag-along bike for Merrick to follow behind me on longer rides, a globe and even a karaoke amp for Sophia. With her birthday coming up Merrick and I already grabbed a new microphone for her to complete the set up.  Sophia started summer school, albeit a day late.  We were camping along Lake Michigan and woke up Monday morning and only then remembered that she had school that day.  She did come out of class just beaming after her first day.  Merrick and I however decided to go fishing as well as score him a sweet new mountain bike from a curb for only 10 bucks.  We cleaned it up while Sophia was at school and he is now set on bikes for the next several years.  Camping was fun with some great hikes and kickball games, there seemed to be a dozen sugar and dirt coated kids running around so it looked like N. Rockwell meets T. Redlin images all weekend long.  Some of the time was spent catching alewives at the beach as well.  Merrick lost his peddle about 6 times, his chain twice, loosened the goose-neck and blew out a reflector.  Making the new bike find particularly timely.