Papu Comes to Visit 2

It's been another 10 or so days of Papu in Vermont with us, and he's experienced more heat, severe flooding, Summer holiday camps, a long-awaited touristy activity, and many, many late dinners!

We returned safely from Plymouth VT just before mudslides, flooding and road erosion caused all major routes between there and home to be closed. It's been raining nonstop some days! The snack shack that we visited in Papu's first week suffered flooding similar to what they experienced in 2011's Hurricane Irene, and many more surrounding towns have been struggling to get on top of water diversion and mopping up efforts. We are fortunate to be safe and able to access necessities, and bar one wild drive in a thunderstorm last Thursday, we are trying to time outings around extreme weather forecasts.

Of course, this means that we haven't been out much! Last Saturday, however, the sun was shining, and PJ took the crew into Boston for a bit of sightseeing. They visited Fenway Park, Harvard University and Berklee College of Music to name a few, caught a whiff of a history lesson when the local tour group stopped by the souvenir shop that they were perusing, and discovered a large shopping mall and Red Robin restaurant on their way back to Vermont later that day.

Note to self: have them stand in at least one picture next time!

Papu also had perfect spectator attendance at Ethan's week-long soccer camp held in South Royalton. Despite rain, limited snacks, and us forgetting the camp chairs on more than one occasion, he spent two hours each day watching his eldest grandson run drills - one day in his newly acquired Drakensberg Boys Choir t-shirt, no less! I caught this proud moment of Papu congratulating Ethan on scoring a cracker goal just before the final whistle blew. What special memories we're making...

Catching up on a lifetime of missed music lessons!

You can take the girl out of Cape Town but...

Adrienne enjoyed learning to play Dominoes

Since I still have some studying to do, the kids have to lower their weekday activity expectations, and Papu is forced to be homebound most of the time. As his reward, he has cabin-feverish grandchildren begging for sleepovers every single night! There has been more than one movie marathon into the wee hours of the morning, I'm sure, and I hardly ever see the younger two this keen to shower after supper so that they're considered eligible. Ha!

This week offers more morning holiday camp for the children with down time in the afternoon and requires weather watching and studying. We're hoping to ramp up the tourist activities once roads are more accessible and time allows. For now, we're happy to enjoy pretty sunsets altogether.