ah, summer

 mr. twinkle eyes

The baseball season wound up with success. The main success in my mind is kind coaches and good spirit of the game, plenty of runs, catches, surprise double-play unassisted (!), even a rainbow. A very dear young fellow who was sometimes kicking flowers and dirt and other times making some awesome plays, best smile on the team! And my very own sweet guy was a team leader, praised by his coaches for his sportsmanship and manners.

We spent the day as a family on Mount Desert Island to celebrate 13 years of marriage. We hit all the high points (ha!): Pirate's Cove mini-golf (I got a hole-in-one!), then lunch at our favorite beach with plenty of rocks to skip and balance, then one of our favorite hikes up Parkman Mountain, catching up with friends, ice cream, dinner, and a surprise chance meeting with a dear, dear friend on the street!

 these two beauties were collected, then lovingly grudgingly tossed back 

when informed of the "remove no rocks policy" of the park

 he listens to the rocks

 kiss sandwich!!!

And now, summer vacation. I made it through my first teaching year! WooHoo! And as it turns out, I have a new adventure coming for the fall... I will be the school librarian at a school for 8th/9th graders in the same district as last year. This is thrilling on a couple of counts. 

 red leather chairs for reading: 

yes please.

First, middle school (early high school) students are my favorite age group. They are prickly and interesting and hilarious and it's sort of a precious time in their lives, one that can be awkward and awful sometimes. (And I love reading YA literature.) There is so much that is possible in middle-ish school that becomes harder with older high schoolers.

Second: ONE SCHOOL instead of five! One learning community that I can be part of on a day-to-day basis! Hoorah! This is quite exciting, to think of the possibilities for spur of the moment exchanges and developing relationships with teachers and students that I will see every day. I feel so lucky. And am devouring a lot of YA books this summer, which is awesome.

I visited a very venerable library in Boston this past weekend and I wasn't supposed to take pictures, but I took some before I knew... It was a librarian's geek-out holiday.

And finally, because we've had a lot of rain and gray already this summer, I wanted to show you something blue and summery. Rafter's delight and lots of silliness and the water was warm enough so I could even stay in and play and be part of the shenanigans. This was a rare moment of calm...

one fine day

Thanks for your kind words about the last post. I kind of jinxed myself with it. We were all horrible and stressed the whole rest of that day. It was the little things that turned into big things, like who got to watch a movie, who was kept in the dark about it, who wanted ice cream, who felt like too many people were making demands and didn't deserve things if they were going to make such a big deal of it. Those kinds of days make you glad to get into bed early to try again tomorrow.

This day was a lovely, fine day of celebration with friends, however. And everyone was nice.

 baby strawberries

Some people have little daughters who are camera-magnets for me. (She takes the same two fingers as her sister does.) I love how you can see the smile starting in her eyes.

 the shadow of my big boy Jonas against that gorgeous knit blanket makes me swoon

And now for a gallery of feet pictures, with a side order of sweet dresses and skirts:

You know I fall for the tiny floppy-floppies every time. Perhaps I need a blog dedicated to hands and feet. If you can think of a good name that wouldn't attract the wrong sort of people, please do post it.

Delicious wood-fired pizza was served up by the nice folks at Harvest Moon. I fell off the dairy-less wagon and ate some and it was perfection in the mouth. Crispy crunchy melty savory bites of awesome. Then later came the unhappy side-effects: sneezy and stuffy.

 the tiny dancer stole our hearts

Thanks to our gracious hosts who asked that I bring my camera. There was a lot of wonderful happening all over the place.