Thursday, August 7, 2014

Thanks a lot Mark Zuckerberg

Looks like Facebook is taking over Pops Weekly Letter.

But the posts on Facebook in the past few weeks, replete with photos have been spectacular.  We're so happy to see progress for Donald, to see photos of mother, father, grandmother and grandfather each holding Donald.  It has to have been an intense period for Tina and Matthew, with little sleep and a lot of worry.  But you look so well and with such big smiles.  As his great grandfather might say - FANTASTIC!

Other pictures come from Illinois and Peter and Janet's trip out there.  Not only did we see a trip on Jen and Bill's boat, but also pictures of Miles and Auden, very actively enjoying life.  Janet has her audio description conference in Chicago and they combined for a road trip and visit to Andrew and Lur's.  Summer is great.

And on Facebook, we also see that Timmy is home, after a short spell in the hospital for an intestinal blockage, a recurrence from an episode a year ago when he had surgery.  Sounds a lot like Johanna's issue, and she also posted on Facebook her anniversary bout with the issue.  We're looking forward to seeing Timmy and all the Boyles up in Pittsfield in a few weeks.

We are writing from Montreal, where Mary is minutes away from her first race in the pool.  She is in a few relays today and then her individual swims are over the next two days. We arrived yesterday and made our way around the city for registration and then the pool, where there were thousands of swimmers from all over the world.  Not sure how we did it, but we did find her teammates, one of whom won his race to be the world champion for his age group.  

We left home just hours after our ffriends from Joe's baby group in Lagos left - the Locherys and Henk and Marja from Holland (never knew them as anything but Henk and Marja.  We had last seen them 15 years ago in Rhode Island when they and their three boys visited us; I believe the Peter Dickson and Dan Boyle families also met them then.  Three cute little Dutch boys?  Ring a bell?

We played host in the Berkshires to them and found some new things to do as well with them:  Mt. Greylock, Hancock Shaker Village, Arrowhead, Clark Institute and Appalachian Trail hiking.  We re-traced the route that Annie and Greg had done a few weeks earlier to a beautiful pond and ran into a number of young, fired up through hikers.  I even got my trail name (after three hours)  Cincinnati.  Can you guess why?  A certain baseball hat.  The crowning event was to have been Tanglewood on Parade, but a fierce storm ended our evening picnic on the lawn and we found shelter in a small, hospitable office and made the best of it.  In a short respite from the rain we went home and listened to the program (1812 overture ending) on the radio.  Still fun.

Speaking of fun, Margaret was having none of it, in her move to a new apartment near Adams Morgan.  On top of all the headaches with the move, she found out the apartment had an infestation of bugs and had to deal with that when the landlords were unreachable.  

Not sure if Joe is having any more fun, in his first month back, looking for a new place and getting settled.  We hope to have more fun this coming weekend at Assateague, camping on the beach.  A first. 

On a sad note, I think I have detected some leaves turning orange and yellow.  First week of August.  No fair.  

So, keep posting on Facebook, and I'll keep stealing from it.

Love from up here. 




 

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