Summer Begins...

The official start of summer may have been the 20th of June, but for me it starts on the last day of school, which was last Friday. It's currently raining like the sky got it on sale, and has no place to store it (like the case of TP that we got at Sam's Club that one time), but the whole weekend was gorgeous...blue sky from one end to the other, temps in the 70s and not much humidity.

Ben's Aunt (pronounced "Ont") La-La came for the weekend, and we picked her up Saturday at the Adirondack Regional Airport...which is conveniently located about a mile from our house. We went for lunch at the airport diner, and watched La-La's plane land.



After greeting her at the "baggage claim area" (which also serves as the car rental area, the security area, the passenger lounge, and a sweet travellers' lending library), we returned to the diner to finish up our lunches and then headed home for some running around, and showing La-La all of Ben's toys (she hadn't visited our house since 2003).



Ben and La-La hung out a lot, reading and playing and watching Ben's favorite movies...


{La-La and Ben reading on his bed in the super-cool "Tropical Mango" colored bedroom}


{Ben watching one of the hidden gems on the Mulan DVD, a video of Jackie Chan performing Ben's favorite song from the movie, "I'll make a man out of you."...in Mandarin}

Sunday was beautiful, so we headed out, 2nd or 3rd thing, to do some geocaching with La-La. In a move that will live in infamy, I grabbed the Burt's Bees Bug Bane (the last bit of alliteration is mine) to be applied in the woods once we arrived at the parking for the geocache I had selected. It was a good thing that we brought the bug dope, because the mosquitoes were out, and came ready to play. The herbal bug stuff smelled great, but didn't seem to work very well, which seemed contrary to my recollection of past applications until La-La noticed that I had indeed grabbed Burt's deodorant...ulp!



Ben found a cool toad hopping across our path on the way to the geocache, and we all stopped to appreciate him (her???) for a minute before continuing.



La-La had a great bug-proof shirt and hat that she wore on our geocaching adventure...Ben thought that it made her look (and sound) a bit like, "Darth Vader White". Once we got to the general area of the cache, we all appreciated the woods and waters around Sunday Pond, found the cache, signed the log, and made our trades...the theme of this cache was rocks, which Ben absolutely loves, he traded for a cool fossilized shark tooth.



Using my phenomenally cool gorillapod, we took a group photo, with my camera attached to a tree at the right height without my having to worry about the camera falling over or even moving while I make the silly "Father/Photographer Dash" to join the rest of the group. We emerged victorious, if a bit bug-bitten (see deodorant issue above...), from the woods, and decided to continue on to the playground in Saranac Lake.



Ben had a great time showing his playground to La-La, and a good time was had by all, especially Ben...



Ben was feeling adventurous enough to try some new stuff at the playground, including the firepole (with a little help from Daddy).



He also played on the teeter-totter with La-La, slid on slides, played on balance and strength elements, and ran around in small circles until he got dizzy.



Towards the end of our visit to the playground, everyone went over to have some group fun on the swings...we then went home for a lunch of PB&J and grilled cheese sandwiches (2 options, not one...although it doesn't sound horrible).



This morning, on the way to drop Ben at childcare and La-La at the airport, we passed a large snapping turtle laying her eggs in a shallow nest by the side of the road...We stopped for a minute to watch, and Ben and I will return to look at the spot this afternoon.

It was obviously a fun weekend, and a great way to start off the summer!