75

One of our final outings in NYC was the celebration of Mom's 75th birthday.

Blair and his family drove up, so Mom spent her weekend with all five grandkids -- a first.

The grandparents were here to help us move; only a few days till our one-way flight to California.

Annapolis

Tess took her first trip to Annapolis not long ago.

Sadly, the frequency of our Annapolis trips will most likely decline once we are in California.  We drove down this July for one more visit before the move.

More pictures of our trip are here. 

Rosemary, Aden, and Talia were ready to catch some crabs.

But the crabs were not ready to be caught.

Afternoon in the pool.

The two TJKs.

Charlene's Last Day

After six years and seven months, today is Charlene's last day.

We are moving to California on July 31.  I'm happy to have found a new spot for Charlene, with another lawyer at my firm. 

Charlene loves our children and they love her.  The hardest part of this move will be separating them.

Despite our best efforts to explain things, I know that on the second or third day of living in California Rosemary is going to ask, "When does Charlene get here?"

That's going to be a hard conversation.  And Tess will miss Charlene without any way of knowing why she's gone.

We are deeply thankful for more than six great years of having Charlene care for our kids.

Telephone

Kitchen: Will you accept a collect call from the bedroom?

Kinda Reading

Kinda Crawling

Camps

School ended last week.  Ms. Kaufman dedicated one of the final days of class to "Camp Read."

The kids of 101 spent the day reading at Inwood Hill Park.  Silas had a ball.

Silas is currently reading (and loving) James Marshall's hilarious "Fox" series of chapter books.

More pictures from Camp Read are here.

On Monday of this week, Silas began Camp Yomawha.  He looked so old getting on the bus!

Camp Yomawha is an outdoor day camp run by the Washington Heights Y and located in Orangeburg, N.Y. (half an hour away, across the Hudson).

Lots of Silas' friends are going.  He had a good first day.  And all he lost was his camp t-shirt and water bottle.