July 5th through July 10th

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July 5^th (PM) through July 10^th

July 5^th (PM)

The kids and I dropped Mitchel off at work and made it back to the hotel. I said in my last blog I’d take it easy for the next couple of days but that didn’t start until later. Wednesday was spent unpacking the car into our new room back at the Hampton (which is way better than the Holiday Inn in Newton, MA!) We now have a “studio” which is a king sized bed and a sofa that folds out into a double bed. We figured the kids can sleep on a sofa bed for a month without any harm coming to them. It is much better, much more room, the kids can eat at the coffee table (although they rarely do because it is not directly in front of the TV). Wednesday was also spent washing almost a week’s worth of laundry. We may or may not have gone swimming. Not a very exciting day.

July 6^th and July 7^th, ²⁰⁰⁶

These weren’t exciting days either. Well, I should say they weren’t very exciting during the day. There were some interesting aspects and one EXTREMELY EXCITING event that occurred Friday evening. These days were spent at wal-mart, the hotel, the library. Well the library was pretty cool. In the parking lot there were hundreds of caterpillars and some were in cocoons and some had just hatched into moths. They were all attached to a line of trees. Anna found a dead moth so I told her she could keep it to show daddy… we still have it, 4 days later.

The EXTREMELY EXCITING event that happened is that Anna lost her first tooth! It was loose but not quite ready to come out until, somehow… and I’m still unclear how this happened, she rammed it on a juice box. There was a lot of blood but she was fine… after the hysterics. I kept asking her if it hurt and she said no, I think she was afraid of the blood. Well, after we got things calmed down and rinsed out I checked out the tooth and it was barely hanging in there. I told her not to tell daddy because he always gives Stephen fits about pulling his tooth. Well, traitor that I am, told him after making him promise not to pull it. Well off to dinner we went and Mitchel asked her to let him wiggle it. Then he began bribing her to let him pull it. First it was $2, then, somehow, it went down to $1, then back up to $2 and order dessert. Then there was a discussion on how it would be done. Would there be a quick yank or a slow pull. Anna opted for the slow pull with a stop clause. If it began to hurt she could say stop and Mitchel would stop. He got a napkin and reached for the tooth, which immediately fell out in his hand. Anna was still trying to explain to him that she wanted him to pull it slowly. He said, “You want me to pull it slowly?” All the while the tooth has fallen out into Mitchel’s hand. I told Stephen what happened and we’re laughing and Anna figures out what happened by putting her tongue in the hole. She starts laughing and I think there were a few tears… from Anna and from her mama. Not because of the pain (for Anna) but because of the excitement. Well, we went back to the hotel and got a small envelope from the front desk and the tooth fairy left a $10 bill and a gold dollar – that’s the first tooth amount. The tooth fairy always leaves a gold dollar. You know, it’s kind of interesting that at one of the subway stops in Boston if you put in a $10 bill you got back several gold dollar coins and quarters and tokens. I hadn’t seen a gold dollar since the last time Stephen lost a tooth, and then I see several in the span of a week.

July 8^th, 2006

Saturday we all woke up, ate and headed to Newport to the Cliff walk. We had to pay $10 to park at a public beach but other than that the cliff walk is free. www.cliffwalk.com

Basically, the cliff walk is a sidewalk etched on out the side of a cliff. You have the bay (I’m trying to figure out which one) on one side and beautiful houses and mansions on the other. You can go in a few of the mansions because they’re museums but we were just there for the walk and the view. The walk started out very leisurely. We had lunches in our back packs and our camelback type bladders full of water. We came to a spot called the forty steps (Yes, there were forty, I counted). You can walk down to some rocks and crawl around on the rocks. We continued on for a while and the sidewalk ended. We were either walking on a well-worn path in the grass or trying to make our way over the rocks. I think it got more interesting for Mitchel at this point. The kids played on the rocks, threw rocks in the water jumped from little rock islands to little rock islands and had a good time. There were two tunnels along the walk way, one was long enough and curved a little so in the middle of it you couldn’t see either end. Anna wasn’t too particularly thrilled with that but we made it through and it was a neat experience. At the end of the cliff walk (which is 3.5 miles long) we hopped on a trolley. We only had a $10 bill and the driver didn’t have change so he let us ride for free, thank goodness! Of course had it been an issue I would have told him to keep the change. Well he only took us back to the forty steps I mentioned earlier which was about 2/3 mile from the beginning of the walk and probably another 1/3 back to the car so we probably walked around 4 or 5 miles that day.

After napping in the car we went to Point Judith where we had visited before. This is the place Stephen found the starfish. There were no starfish to be seen as the tide was up. We did watch a surfer surf for a little while. Then it was bathroom time. We stopped at a restaurant and inn type place. There was a sign pointing up for the restaurant so I assumed the inn was downstairs… I think inn is a euphemism that means bar or lounge. So Anna and I went to the bathroom in the lounge. Then we found a neat little walkway through the brush onto a beach. The beaches up here are very rocky, no laying out, except in Newport where there were a few beaches with sand. But the rocks are very interesting. We have acquired several for our collection… and to be honest, I’ve kept one or two myself.

After leaving there we ate at New England Creamery… or some kind of creamery. This was pretty good, and then of course the kids got ice cream and shared.

July 9^th 2006

Sunday we drove back to Mystic, CT. This is where the aquarium is that the kids and I visited. Today we visited Mystic Seaport. It is a recreated maritime seaport with and old village, old ships, a planetarium, a children’s area, and much more. We bought a membership so we have to go back one more time with the whole family to get money’s worth. We didn’t see everything the first time and are planning on going back this weekend. It was really interesting. There were lots of old ships, pirate presentations, and the children’s favorite was the children’s museum. There was a small boat they could play in, dress-up clothes, bunk area. They would have stayed all day. We went into an old store that sold things to sailors and captains for their voyage. Here the kids learned how to pound lengths of rope into the cracks between boards to keep it water proof. They also “tied” lengths of rope around two strands of twine or rope (I guess you would call these lines instead of ropes since they’re for a boat). I don’t remember exactly what this was for. Then Mitchel spied a whale harpooner way in the back, barely visible. So the man brought it out for us to look at. It was so heavy the kids couldn’t hold it and Mitchel could barely bring it to his shoulder. We went to the planetarium which was free for us since we had just bought our membership that day. That was interesting. They also gave us a booklet on how to identify things in the summer, fall, winter and spring skies. We ate lunch at the galley and then headed home since it was getting late and we knew we could return. I don’t think we saw half of the seaport. I am definitely looking forward to going back.

July 10^th, 2006

On Monday the kids and I went to the library to pick up a pass to the children’s museum. On our way there I got a call from the other lady who is here with her husband and I convinced the kids we should go to the park with Max in the morning and go to the children’s museum in the afternoon. They had a ball at the park and it didn’t take much to convince Anna, Stephen was a harder sell but he found some boys he could play with and had a great time. We ate lunch with Mitchel in Wickford and went back to the park to play soccer and Frisbee for a while. Max left soon for nap time and we stayed and played and decided to go to the Children’s museum on Tuesday. We headed back to the hotel and swam for a good 2 or 3 hours. Mitchel had a business dinner; I got the kids ready for bed. The kids were in bed around 8:30 and Mitchel and I went up the hall to the lobby and had a cup of coffee. It was nice. Today (Tuesday the 11^th) we have to go to the children’s museum. Although when I picked up the ticket yesterday the librarian said something about having Monday’s ticket so I don’t know if we can get in today. They are begging me to go back and I promise we’ll make it back before we leave! J

I hope all is well with all of you. We will be leaving here in about 2 weeks, actually less than that. So there will only be two or three more blogs. I am sad and excited at the same time. There was a chance Mitchel was going to be up here until June and we thought about putting the kids in school up here. That would have been fun and exciting, but a pain in the bottom, too. Anyway, until next time…