Summer Road Trip, 2009-- Skokie Sculpture Park

Our first day in the Windy City, we visited the Skokie Sculpture Park, which we all loved. It's a great collection of public art. The girls loved the 'hands on' nature of it, and enjoyed speculating on the more abstract pieces. Ahh, but the rain moved in heavy so we only saw about one third of the art, but loved what we saw and added the rest of the park to our list of "things we want to go see".

Miss Petunia, 1999- 2009

Our sweet chinchilla friend, Petunia passed away this week. She was a dear friend to our family, and a super sweet critter. Miss P, 'Bitunia', our little grey friend--- She will be missed.

Squam Lake Science Center

We visited Squam Lake to get close up looks at some of the wild critters that live in New England. Yes, a snake jumped out of a tree and landed on Thom's foot. Yikes! But we loved the owls, and the otters and all the animals in a setting where you could see them all close up.

Skateboarding!

Avery recently received her skate helmet from the Ian Tilmann Foundation (www.theiantilmannfoundation.org) , a Florida-based group that provides helmets to skaters who promise to wear them always. She's been wanting to skateboard for some time. So now-- look out!

Monsoon season is over, finally.

Summer has been slow to arrive here, it rained almost every day in June.  But now, the sun is out, and summer fun can get underway in earnest.  Avery headed out for some natural light and vitamin D.

Head for the hills

We got a nifty new backpack carrier from Phil&Teds, a funky company from New Zealand.  It is super comfortable, and Jack seems to like it.  He has a great view of what's going on.  So now it will be easier for us to navigate the mountain trails, as well as city streets. 

Girls in glasses

Avery tried on Thom's new glasses.  And rocks them, of course.