Cesar has been an absentee father for the past month or so. His classes are very demanding and time-consuming. When he gets home in the evening he usually has tons of work to do and stays up late reading or working on papers. He just started teaching and seems to feel pretty confident and prepared. Che, Sabine, and I have been filling our days with sprinkler fun at the park, story time at the COOP, and we just went to Cambridge's main library and it is wonderful! Che got his own library card and he is ecstatic. They made him sign it and gave him a special little case to carry it in. He felt very special. Che and Sabine have definitely started playing together a lot more and Sabine announced recently that she "needs more friends". I think they are both going to be happy to be back at school.

We just got back from a trip to the Berkshires with the Beauchamps and Tej. We all had a great time! The house was gorgeous and very spacious. We didn't even use half of the rooms.

It was also a short walk into Lenox, so it was nice to walk in for breakfast or to get ice cream. On the 4th of July we went to Shakespeare and Co. and listened to some music and watched the actors and community members read the Declaration of Independence. It was a beautiful day and a great event.



Cesar was able to stay the first weekend and then he took the bus back to Boston for classes. He came back Thursday night (our ten year anniversary!) and thanks to the Beauchamps we were able to go out for dinner. We saw several shows-- Three Hotels and Street Car Named Desire at Williamstown Theater Festival (with a slew of famous actors) and Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It at Shakespeare and Co. We also went to Jacob's Pillow twice.



Unfortunately, we never made it to Tanglewood. The kids has tons of fun playing with Eva and Devin and this year Sabine was old enough to be included in all of the games. The picture below shows them pretending to be rocks. It was an ingenious way of trying to get them to calm down a bit...



I enjoyed actually getting to have conversations with adults! We also went to Hancock Shaker Village and the kids really enjoyed seeing the animals and playing in the Discovery Room.






We also saw some wild animals on this adventure-- a baby black bear and a fox. The fox was hanging out by our house and the black bear was crossing the street. Unfortunately I couldn't get a picture of the bear, but it certainly was cute!


We had a great time; I wish we could have stayed there longer!

We are now back in Cambridge. I haven't seen Cesar in three days because he is working so hard (he discovered the library, so he isn't even at home any more when he is working). I have been given readings and assignments to have completed before school begins in the beginning of August, so I need to have some time to work on those. Not sure when that time will be, maybe after I finish procrastinating by writing this blog :)