Halfway Through the Year!

Hello, everyone!

On the very last day of June, we were all out at the bay again!  Moose-san had given Grandma a quart of strawerries for me, and they were giant sized! Grandma bought another quart at Burnap’s on the way to the bay so we could have strawberry shortcake for dessert.  James and Thomas decided they wanted s’mores, instead!  Uncle Steven built the first bonfire of the season after dinner so they could roast marshmallows!

While Thomas was waiting for the fire to be ready for marshmallow roasting, he found a big slug in the grass!  He decided to name it Speedy and put a corral of sticks around it so nobody would step on it.  As Speedy moved, the corral had to move, too!

When the fire was ready, James came out to toast marshmallows, too!  His first marshmallow was perfectly toasted!

In the morning, I made friends with this year’s blossoms on the penstemon.  It survived having the chute for the concrete for the waterfront going right over it two years ago!  This year, Grandpa put sticks around it so nobody would think it was a weed!  Thomas had made an overnight shelter for Speedy on the picnic table, but Speedy was gone when Thomas looked in the morning.

The first day of July was a busy Saturday morning!  Grandpa and Uncle Steven lowered the dock sections to match the lower water level.  James had invited his best friends and their family out to the bay for the afternoon, so we wanted to get all our water toys ready!  First, though, Grandma and Aunt Kara and James and Thomas and I had fresh sweet corn to shuck.  It was the first of the season at Powers Farm Market and came from Maryland.  Uncle Steven bought two dozen ears for ten people, and that’s a lot of corn to shuck!  Thomas put some of the husks in a bag to dry, so they could be used as fire starters.  Grandma and I took the rest into the woods to compost.

The next job was launching the jet skis!  This is always very complicated!  Everybody involved got in the car to go to the launch site, with the jet skis on a trailer behind the car.  At the launch site, Uncle Steven put both jet skis into the water.  He then rode the Waveblaster back to our place and hauled it up on its stand on the dock. (That’s why the dock needed to be lower!)  Meanwhile, Grandpa drove the car and empty trailer back to our place and Aunt Kara and James stayed with the Kawasaki jet ski.  Thomas came back with Grandpa, and they launched the power boat.  They drove Uncle Steven back to the launch site in the boat to ride the Kawasaki back.  Aunt Kara and James came back in the power boat with Grandpa and Thomas.  Grandma took me down to the dock to welcome everybody back!

Once both jet skis were moored, it was time to inflate the new tube!  Grandpa and Uncle Steven did that right after lunch.  Thomas and I made sure it was properly inflated!  Then Uncle Steven’s family took the tube out with the power boat to make sure it floated properly.  They had just finished their test run when James’ friends came!

James and Thomas and Evan and Ayden went out tubing with their dads while Aunt Kara and their mom watched.  Everybody had a really good time!  After they finished tubing, the boys played a game of aviation Monopoly until it was time for dinner.  We had grilled sausages and more corn than anybody could eat!  Evan and Ayden’s mom brought yummy salads.  Then there was strawberry shortcake for dessert!

We all went back into town after dinner on Saturday, but we were back at the bay on Monday to start the Fourth of July holiday.  James and Thomas played video games until Uncle Steven got the boat ready to go tubing again.  This time, I got to go along!  James went tubing first.  He got some good bounces when Uncle Steven drove the boat into its own wake.

When it was Thomas’ turn, he said he only wanted to ride for one minute and thirty-five seconds.  But he forgot to give the “quit” sign, so he got a long ride, instead!  He did a good job!

Sodus Point always has their fireworks display at 10 p.m. on July 3, and we can see it from our dock.  We played Settlers of Catan after dinner until it was time to go down to the dock to watch the fireworks.  In addition to the official fireworks, some of our neighbors shot off fireworks too.  And the fireflies were out!  We lined our lawn chairs up on the dock.  There was enough breeze the bugs weren’t even bothering us!  After the fireworks display was over, we came upstairs again.  It was too late to finish the Settlers game, so we left it “as is” until the next morning.

We all went back into town before dinner time on the Fourth of July after we FINALLY finished the Settlers game!  Then Uncle Steven brought James and Thomas back to the bay on Thursday to stay over.  Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Kara and I came back out on Friday after Aunt Kara got home from work.   It was time for another bonfire and marshmallow roasting, and some of the corn husks were dry enough to burn!

On Saturday morning, Uncle Steven and Grandpa did some major pruning of branches to open up the view to the bay.  James and Grandma kayaked across the bay to Clark Creek, so James could see the breach in the beaver dam.  When they got back, Grandma and I took Thomas to Burnap’s Farm Market to get the last of the local strawberry crop.  Thomas asked to get cherries, too!  Grandma made a new family favorite, nachos, for lunch.  I remembered when we used to make those with Taylor and Katie! We grilled steak for dinner and had more strawberry shortcake.  Then we went back into town, because Uncle Steven and Aunt Kara didn’t want their cat Chip to be alone for more than one night.

Grandma and Grandpa and I went back out to the bay after dinner on Sunday and went to the Point to watch sunset.  We’ve had a bunch of nights with no sunset at all, but we could see the sun until it went into a low bank of clouds at the horizon.  It was pretty!  When we went back into town Monday, I made friends with some day lily blossoms.  Last year, something ate all the day lily blossoms off the plants when they were just buds.  This year, Grandma sprayed them with a nasty-tasting substance, so I got to see them bloom!

Last Tuesday, Grandma and Grandpa put me in the car and we started on a trip!  We went to New Paltz to visit Grandma’s brother, Great Uncle Bill, and his wife, Great Aunt Betsy.  They live in a very nice seniors community called Woodland Pond.  We arrived in time to tour the common areas and see the view from their balcony before dinner.  I made friends with their Catskill Cat!  After dinner, Grandma and Great Uncle Bill played piano duets.  It was fun watching them play!

On Wedneday morning, Grandma showed me how to make waffles at the Hampton Inn where we stayed.  I remember doing that when we visited Uncle Bill’s family in San Francisco!  There were some little bikes around.  I’m glad I didn’t have to ride one all the way from Fairport to get there!

We went across the Hudson River to Hyde Park for a fancy lunch at the Culinary Institute of America.  The CIA is a famous training place for chefs!  The east coast branch is in a former monastery next to the river.  We had visited the the west coast branch in St. Helena California.  That’s also in a former monastery!  We had a chance to look around the classrooms and demonstration kitchens before we had lunch.

We had lunch at Bocuse restaurant.  All of the food preparation and service is done by students.  The menu had a lot of interesting choices!  I especially liked the dessert clafouti with ingredients starting with the letter A!

After lunch, we looked around some more.  The student restaurant is called Egg, and there are funny posters to promote it.  I found a lion cousin to make friends with.  He belonged to a former CIA president.

When we got back to Woodland Pond after lunch, I told Grandma I wanted to see the woodland pond!  She and Grandpa and Great Uncle Bill took me on a hike to find it.  We started in front of the cottages, and there were some very pretty gardens.  Then we found the nature trail behind the cottages.  It turned out, there were TWO ponds!  The first one we found was a retention pond, with a nice, wide mowed path all the way around.  But that wasn’t the real woodland pond .

We didn’t have a map, so we took the mowed path around the retention pond.  Partway around, Great Uncle Bill recalled that there was a shortcut from that path to the other pond.  We decided to follow a trail downhill in the general direction of the other pond.  It turned out to be the long way  around!  We followed paths in the woods and found board walks and stepping stones.  We finally came to the beaver dam after walking almost all the way around the woodland pond.  It’s a good thing Grandma and I know a beaver dam when we see it!

After following some narrow paths uphill, we finally got back to the nicely mowed path we should have stayed on to begin with!  Once we got to the observation platform, it was easy to find our way back!  I think that was more adventure than Great Uncle Bill expected on our hike!

We drove back to Fairport this morning.  On our way to New Paltz, there were traffic backups due to Thruway construction in the westbound lanes, but not in our direction.  Today, going back, all the backups were in the eastbound lanes and we had no delays at all.  There was heavy rain predicted on our route, but we got home before the one heavy shower passed by. Katie’s Lion sat in the front window while we were gone, and I made sure to tell him all about our adventures before he went back to the closet.

Love,

Lion-san