July 19-July 26

Here it is Sunday night and as I look over the past few posts to my blog I'm horrified to see exactly when the last "Cape Activities" type post was. Last Saturday's activities! Unbelievable, and I had such hopes for keeping up with this. I suppose instead of Detailed Travelogue-ing I'm just going to have to do Summing Up, or Brief Overviewing. Or maybe even List Writing.

Sigh.

It's not what you're used to, nor is it what I am used to. The standards have dropped, the rain around here has made me rusty, the habit is not yet set in, or the laziness factor had yet to be calculated, it's uncertain what's going on. Or maybe it's just business as usual.

With no further procrastinating here's a brief update on the last week.....

On Sunday July 19th the girls, Aunt Cheryl, Torin and I went to a kettle pond in Yarmouth. It was very much like a lake. I was in the middle of the woods, sort of, and the water was nice and very lake like. Jordan said the kettle pond she, Sadie, Metie, and Cheryl went to in 2007 was crystal clear, cold, and out in the middle of nowhere. This one was very populated by families, and was (like I said) lake like.

I've been interested in exactly what a kettle pond is. I live in Florida an I'm aware of how our natural springs are formed, but how was a kettle pond formed? Here's what I found out. The Cape (and surrounding areas) was once covered by a glacier. Kettle ponds mark the site of ice blocks that were left behind by the retreating glacier and buried by the outwash deposits. The buried ice was well insulated from the warmer post-glacial temperatures and may have persisted for several thousand years Kettle holes that are deep enough to expose the water table contain ponds or lakes. In many kettle ponds certain processes have smoothed the shoreline so that the ponds are almost circular. I read about this here at the U.S. Geological Survey site.

After we all got home from the kettle pond, I went out and cleared out the whole van of all of our travel stuff so we could make a large living room/bed for our night at the Wellfleet Drive-In. Makenna and I put down her sleeping bag, a rag rug, the wool blanket and my sleeping bag over all of that. I got the big down body pillow, the bolster from my bed and two throw pillows for leaning against. We also had the girls microfiber blankets. It was like a big nest back there! We popped 3 bags of microwave popcorn and hit the road. I wanted to be there when they opened, by 7, because I remember getting some outside parking the last time we went. We ended up being there by about 7:30 and it was early and we had good parking spot picking. Because of the height of the van we had to be in the front 2 rows or the back rows. The girls and I were worried about being too close in the front 2 rows, but Torin insisted we try it and that's where we stayed. It was a big screen up there, but it was good. I thought I'd do well letting the kids be in the van and I would have the camp chair at the tailgate, but I just couldn't hear very well so I ended up squishing in with them. It was tight and snuggly but FUN! We watched the new Harry Potter and listened on our radio. I was worried about the van's battery dying, but it wasn't even a problem. I still think we could have used more padding in the van, believe it or not there were lots of numb butts. Maybe next time we'll try an air mattress!

Monday was Torin Fly Home day. He was with us for 3 weeks and it was very nice having him be part of our family for that time. No one could believe it was time for him to go. Aunt Cheryl said "I don't want my boy-man to leave!!"

Jordan, Torin and I drove into Boston, parked at the Charles St. Parking Garage-which was great by the way, connected to a little center of town type terminal (check out the bathroom token meters-and worked off of our list of Cheap things to do in Boston.

Jordan did all the research for us and she did a great job. We walked everywhere. We went to the Boston Public Library - incredibly fabulous ; checked out Trinity Church-an amazingly beautiful and impressive church; walked around Boston talking pictures of everything-it's a cool town; ate lunch at The Pour House-cheapest lunch we could find and not a chain; shopped a little-Anthropology and a cool, inspiring paper store; spent tons of time in the Public Gardens-lots of great flowers, swan boats, sculpture, and peaceful land in the heart of the city; and last but not least enjoyed Torin playing the $93,000 Steinway grand piano at M. Steinert and Sons. He practically ran across traffic when he saw the sign for the shop.

It was a beautiful end to a wonderful day. We all got in the car and drove to the airport. Despite Aunt Cheryl's grim prediction of what driving in Boston might be like, we got very lucky and it was pretty much like navigating any other big city.

Team-work, yeah!

For the rest of the week, the girls and I tried to stay dry out of the rain, watched movies, went thrift store shopping, mall shopping, exchanged tickets for a play in Dennis and ate at Captain Frosty's, worked with Aunt Cheryl on the puzzle we bought at the thrift store (that's been good fun), went to the library, got ice cream and went to the beach. We went to Kalmus Beach at the end of Ocean Avenue this week. I've been wanting to go since Jim and Daphne were here and finally we made it. It was a very nice beach, lots of seaweed and TONS of Lady Slipper shells. There are hills of them at the end of this beach. It literally looks like the tide dumps them there by the front end loader full.

We also went to a BBQ at Midge and Jim's, cleaned the house - more teamwork - and I made a homemade apple pie.

I am sure there were other things we did, but I believe this is a good recap of most of it. Oh, these are flowers from Aunt Cheryl's garden, I love doing her gardening, and this bit of rainy-ness inspired me to bring some sunshine in. The next morning sun was streaming through the glass. Have I mentioned sitting on the porch. It seems that a day is not over until there has been at least some porch sitting done. My preferred way to start my day here is by taking a cup of coffee out to the porch, with my book and reading, sipping, and saying hi to the neighbors. I truly love that. I've had some really good conversations out on that porch. It's a great place to spend time. It's a great place to be.