happenings

Our Puerto Rican friends crashed our place last week, right around the same time a heatwave rolled in.

And so we fled to the river!

And then my brother’s family came to stay with my parents for a week, and our friends’ friends (who just moved to Maryland from Puerto Rico) came down for the day and we all ended up at my parents’ house for my brother’s birthday party — roughly six households under one roof.

The next morning, my older son and I took the train up to New York (along with the three Fresh Air kids we were escorting) and then played tourist for the next 36 hours or so. Highlights: a nighttime ice cream run in the pouring rain, watching the astoundingly bizarre Frances and Friends in bed while drinking decaf coffee and laughing uproariously (it was like watching a fever dream!), a morning run in Central Park, a visit to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, front row seats to Fiddler on the Roof, people watching, riding the subway, giant pizza, more ice cream, and way too much pasta.

Then we escorted a Fresh Air Fund bus back home, kicking off a week of hosting (we are having so much fun with our Fresh Air boy!), sweet pickle making, bread baking, the start of tomato canning, and theater shows: tonight’s my younger son’s theater debut as Slightly, leader of the Lost Boys, in the Valley Playhouse production of Peter Pan.

This same time, years previous: the best one yet, lemony cream cheese frosting, all practicality, vegetarian groundnut stew, curry potato salad, rellenitos, cucumber lemon water.