Weekend Update

I managed to escape rainy Massachusetts for a few days and headed to Maine for the holiday. Saturday morning found G. (my 5-year old niece) and I picking strawberries. She LOVED it, which kind of surprised me - she doesn't have the longest attention span, but on the other hand: she's the sort of kid that doesn't mind getting dirty, particularly if there is food involved. We picked 2 quarts, and then she took me up on my offer for another couple of boxes. To say that the berries were delicious is the understatement of the century - there is just nothing like a just-picked strawberry, warm from the sun and slightly damp from the dew. G. was pretty good about not eating them until we got into the car, and then she plowed in with a vengeance. She informed me that they did NOT need to be washed first because they already had been rained on.

Later on, we went to see Wall-E, which bored me silly; honestly, I spent the whole time wishing I'd brought my knitting. I can't really put my foot on what was wrong with the movie, though. The kids loved it, but my favorite part was the little short cartoon before the movie about a magician and his rabbit.

And then, after that, we took the kids to the beach. This particular beach is where my sister and I repeatedly flunked swimming lessons, year after year, partly because we both refused to put our faces in the water and partly because I hated being thrown into a freezing cold lake every day at 8 am, and I wasn't shy about grumbling about it. The beach now seems about half the size it was when we were little, but that's how these things go. The weirdest thing was running into one of our old neighbors, who used to take us to Sunday School with his kids. We didn't know that for years he dated my mother's cousin/best friend, and he regaled us with stories about our family members including our great-grandfather, who died before my sister and I were born.  It's always interesting to hear stories about your family...