Summer 2024

It's been a good summer in Boston, with lots of opportunities we don't have time for during the school year. Right after school ended, we did a week of "Mommy camp" for Helen--no scheduled camps, but a fun outing with Christina every day. Meanwhile Marcus was doing training for his Bikes Not Bombs job, and Samantha was doing the teen camp at the MFA. Helen and I went to the Frog Pond seasonal opening ceremony with friends, the Gardner Museum, the big downtown Donna Summer festival/disco party with a roller skating rink, and a local splashpad with other friends, among other places. Library summer reading kick-offs, farmers markets, and more were sprinkled in there, too, and there were friends' birthday parties and a couple big bbqs that we hosted as well. Then Helen did a partial week "taster" camp session at Wind-in-the-Pines, as her first overnights more than a single night away (spoilers: she loved it!), and a week of woodworking (building a full-sized hinged cornhole board) downtown through Community Boat Building, while meanwhile Samantha did a week of DARTS at the Boston Arts Academy high school. Marcus headed off to CTY at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, then, and Samantha and Helen together did two weeks at Cedar Hill (Girl Scout camp), Helen as a "boating Brownie" and Samantha as a program aide (leadership training and then some work with a Brownie unit, supporting them in crafts and songs and, well, everything. The rhythm of the summer kept going--Samantha then did two weeks of the Boston Latin School orientation/intro-to-Latin and the school program, while Helen did a week of KidsArts and a week of the Eliot School (sewing and woodworking). At the very end of the summer, Helen did a week of Tony Williams dance camp, and throughout it all Helen had piano lessons and violin lessons and Marcus kept working at Bikes Not Bombs and playing frisbee. In the middle, of course, there were outdoor movies and plays (Shakespeare on the Common, Aeschylus in Chelsea), picnics and gardening and biking and playing with friends, plus sleepovers, 7-11 free slurpees, open Newbury Street, protests, birthdays, Navy ships to tour, swimming lessons, and more--basically all the fun stuff of summer!

 

 

Even Labor Day weekend was a great end of summer--the last outdoor jazz concert at Goddard House, excellent soup dumplings in Chinatown, the aquarium, rockclimbing, Home Depot trip with cute and scary Halloween decorations, fancy gelato on Newbury Street, the zoo with friends and JP Licks and a bbq, and a re-enactment of the 250th Powder Alarm in Somerville (we booed the governor, Thomas Gage, and cheered for the patriots, and did colonial crafts and dances) plus Japanese food in Cambridge. Now we're ready for fall!

 

A note from Samantha, about her experience working with the Brownies at Cedar Hill: "I think I got more hugs this week than ever before in my life. Little girls would just fling themselves at me wanting hugs. Also, all the small children in my unit decided that camp is absolutely the best place to bring their stuffed animals, and I have to keep track of them. And they all have names, and they get upset with me if I get their names wrong. There are also two identical stuffed seagulls, one named Suinshine and one named Sea, and if I ever mix them up, then they're like 'Nooooo! How could you forget their name?' And yesterday there was a black cat named Night that got the tiniest speck of mashmallow on its tail, and there were tears. The girl was just crying for like five minutes straight, with unintelligible sad noises, even when I came over and was like, 'What's wrong? Are you okay?' So finally we had to give the stuffed cat a bath in the water spigot." So yes--all of that, but Samantha's ready to go back next year, as Program Aide Level II.

 

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Created: 8/31/24. Last Modified: 8/31/24.