Nice purse!

Laura got a surprise gift from Cousin Steve and Jodie! This gorgeous elephant purse. She loves it and took it to school today.

Ok. She's been picking out her own outfits. Maybe I should get her eyes checked.

Visit to Leila's house

Today, we started our day quite late. I stayed up too late watching "Entourage" on Netflix. Anyway, I took Laura swimming at the indoor pool at the gym in the early afternoon. Then her dad took her for a bike ride to the park.

We then got a call to come over to Leila's house to hang out. We got to their house just about 6pm so it was getting rather late and the day was cooling down. The pool was cold but both Leila and Laura plunged in. After about 15 minutes, their teeth were chattering and their lips were blue!

Chef Laura

TV and a giant tub of cheese puffs.

Plum Island

We took a short trip to Plum Island for a weekend getaway.

We left on Friday in the afternoon and arrived at our little cottage at Blue Inn just across from the beach.

We immediately went to the beach. It was quite windy, overcast and chilly but that did not stop Laura from dipping into the ocean.


We drove around Plum Island and came across this small light house at the must northern part of the island.

We went into Newburyport to look around and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Agave which was great. The food was good and we stuffed ourselves.

Here's Laura on a buoy at the Maritime museum.

The next morning, we got a basket for breakfast which included fruits, juices, muffins, croissants and yogurt with granola! So cute.
We did a little more exploring. It was still somewhat overcast in the morning but warmer. We took a very brief trip to Salisbury beach.
Then back to Newburyport. The sun started peeking through and it got a lot warmer. We walked around some more.



We ate a late lunch at Angie's restaurant in Newburyport and then went back to the beach.

It was warmer but the wind would not die down. Laura had a great time in the water.

Sunday was a gorgeous sunny summer day but we had to say goodbye.
I took a lot of pictures of our little place. This is the balcony of our cottage.




Then just before leaving, we stopped at Bob Lobster and got some yummy fried clams before heading back home. We had a really good time and it was nice getting away for a little while.

Packed Saturday

It was a gorgeous sunny day on Saturday.

This morning, Laura helped me harvest some Perilla leaves to make a spicy marinated Korean side dish.

Then we took a trip to BJ's and came home for some lunch. Laura wanted to make macaroni and cheese and put on all her chef garb to make it.

Then we went to the Summer Club. Laura ran into Ava, a friend from school! Laura could not get enough of this place. She was so excited to be here that she ran around like a wild child. She wouldn't even take a minute break so at one point, she was shivering because the water was so cold so I had to hold her down and cover her with a towel for all of 5 minutes before she ran off again.

Finally, we invited ourselves over to Kai, Noah and Maya's neighborhood cookout (yes, we crashed their party) where there were tons of kids and food. Laura played nonstop and we all had a great time.

Not much of a summer

The weather has been so terrible that we have not done much fun stuff lately. I took Laura to this local activity thing in Roslindale after work. The weather was finally sunny and nice. This event was pretty lame. There were singers from a local theatre group performing and 1 tent with kids activities. Laura was not enthused even with a lot of encouragement, she was really not having a good time. After about 20 minutes, we called it a day and went to The Real Deal for some pizza and then ice cream afterwards.

I guess ice cream does make everything better. It's July and only in the 60s. This is the worst summer I have ever had. Actually, summer hasn't actually started up here. Very sad.