Sitting on the dock of the bay............

Saturday June 23rd to Saturday June 30th Our closest beaches are now over 1hr away at the infamous Jersey shore - too far for me but not much we can do about it at present. Next best thing to being able to pop to the beach regularly was to go on "vacation". G&G being in town provided the perfect excuse so we headed off to a condo we had booked on the highly recommended 7-mile island. Not the greatest fan of change in holiday destinations (bit unfortunate in the given circumstances), I was sceptacle - how could it ever compare to the beauty of Whitstable, Minnis Bay, St Maragret's at Cliff, Seaview, Priory bay, Branscombe, Lulworth cove, Sennen Cove, Porthmeor, Porthminster, Fistral beach, Watergate Bay, the beaches of northern France and the Netherlands.............? I was glad to be proved very wrong - apparently there are beautiful beaches all over the world. 7 mile island is a barrier island on the east coast, 4 blocks wide on which are the resorts of Avalon and Stone Harbour. The island is bordered by sand dunes and amazingly long white sandy beaches with rolling waves on the Atlantic side and a beautiful wetlands bay, home to lots of interesting wild-life, on the west side. We had a wonderfully relaxing week building sand castles (there is a different standard here), watching the diamond back turtles laying their eggs, kayaking in Sea Isle City, watching ospreys and gribes in the wetlands, crabbing, visiting Cape May and their light house and World War II look out tower (not quite sure it was as useful as the ones in Kent.........), body boarding in the surf, jumping in the waves and swinging our legs with our Jersey version of fish and chips (breaded flounder with sweet potato or old bay fries) watching the sunset over the dock of the bay. Even M managed to join us for a couple of nights after he had shouldered the brunt of the moving. Congratulations to V for winning the crazy golf championship but G for coming a very close runner up. Didn't knowingly bump into the stars of the show (since I have never seen it not sure how I would know even if I had......). Very much looking forward to returning to The Shore for many reasons including that it is much less sticky than PA - need to come up with some clever ruse. Avalon really is cooler by a mile.

 

A Hot June Night

Monday 18th June One of the most famous concerts of all time is Neil Diamond's Hot August Night Love at the Greek Performance in Los Angeles nearly 20 years ago. Now - when these famous performers come ones way, the opportunity to see them live should not be easily passed up - especially when their family member fan club is in town. The last time this duo (me and G senior) saw the man himself was June 2008 at the Rosebowl in Southampton. That night - far from balmy - is etched in our memories for traffic flow, watching elderly ladies scramble up the M27 embankment and muddy car park exits - not that the music wasn't good. We hoped that the Wells Fargo (that really is a bank and not a made up name) arena on the outskirts of Philadelphia would surpass those memories and we were not disappointed. The arena was packed to the rafters with a good cross section - the fan club in the front row along with the "You are my Light" banners. The night opened with Soolaimon and a great African drum crescendo. The hits flowed - Beautiful Noise, Forever in Blue Jeans, Red Red Wine, I'm a believer and Sweet Caroline with several encores (full set list recorded here for posterity http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/neil-diamond/2012/wells-fargo-center-philadelphia-pa-13df21cd.html). The encore itself included America - written in memory of his grandmother who, at the age of 12, travelled by herself on a train from Russia to Holland and then by boat to USA over 100 years ago - incredible. The star was only booed by the crowd when he talked about his recent marriage - clearly some disappointed followers there. Good band, good backing singers, great lighting effects, well natured enthusiastic crowd and good company. Cracking night out.

Father's Day

Sunday 17th June Hot on the heals of Mother's Day, Father's Day dawned sunny and not too hot at all. We had the pleasure of being able to spend it with two fathers - the resident one and G of G&G, who are in town to enjoy some summer holidays. As an added bonus we had a visitor from far flung Singapore as well. Picnics and out door activities being our thing (some might say cheap and cheerful) we headed off to another county park this time Springton Manor Farm (http://www.chesco.org/ccparks/cwp/view.asp?a=1550&q=616437). The butterfly house was very pleasant and we enjoyed seeing monarchs with their jade green crysallises and lots of other types that have passed me by. Well - that is to say we were enjoying looking until the ranger mentioned that it would help to try to spot the wood frog who had been enjoying the butterflies as tasty snacks and discarding the wings, so we were unable to resist seeking him out and then using a picnic tub to capture him - I am sure that the undergrowth will recover and at least neither of the two fathers ended up in the pond. After releasing the frog in a far away pond and a picnic watching ground hogs playing in the fields we headed to the farm to see the new piglets but instead were entranced by the swifts (chimney swifts?) darting in and out feeding their multiple squarking chicks in the tiny nests nestled in the rafters. The day was rounded off by a swim in our newly acquired swimming pool - well everyone dived in apart from the Singapore resident who said it was too cold...........thank you very much Kim for coming to visit - it was a great pleasure to catch up with you and compare experiences of international relocation.

Settlement Day and the 6 month milestone

Friday 15th June

6 months of living in USA has now scooted past and we marked the milestone by finally spending some of that money from our house sale in UK (although slightly more than we bargained for by bringing it to USA just as the exchange rate hot rock bottom). We have now become property (part)owners again. Settlement was at 3pm and, unlike in UK, everyone fronts up together to meet the notary, sign all the paperwork and exchange checks (as they are called locally). After some confusion about who should actually be named as the new owner due to a msimatch of paperwork, the whole deal was done and dusted only 6 short weeks after we first viewed the house. Much like before we have purchased a doer upper but it has a lovely garden (yard) backing onto conservation land. Unlike before we now have a swimming pool - I am thinking positively and hoping that this will distract me from not having a kitchen or functioning bathrooms shortly - we will wait to see if this pans out. I will miss my weekly slots with the relator house hunting. I am hoping that the architect will step in as a new found friend.

So what have been the highlights? We are enjoying the wildlife - chip munks, ground hogs, and deer are regular visitors to our garden (along with squirrels and rabbits). The birds are also all very colourful with cardinals and blue wood peckers popping in and out of the bird feeder. The mini adventures to explore PA, New York and other local states have been exciting and the skiing (although now seems a distant memory) was great fun. Local league softball also brought lots of new friends. And of course we have enjoyed seeing those of you who have ventured to visit us. We have even managed to eventually to persuade a bank to give us a credit card. We are looking forward to getting settled in our new house, a front loading washing machine and more adventures to come, but I still am not sure about those supermarkets or stop signs.

School is out for summer - but that means no more clubs

This is a post by guest blogger G. A really good thing about living in America is that the summer holidays start really really early. We have 12 whole weeks off school. Hooray! We have all sorts of things planned. We are going to the beach. We are moving house. We are going to build a weather station. We are going to summer camp. And we are also looking forward to friends and family from England coming - it will be fantastic. I wanted to tell you about some of the school clubs that we have been doing. My favourite club was dance club. At dance club we learnt dances to different songs - Cowboy Joe, Dynamite and Party in the USA. For the last few dance clubs we went to the gym and played lots of fun games like cat and rat and polar bears and penguins. The children who went to dance club got to stand in front of the whole school and lead everyone dancing together for ACES day - a day to remind everyone the importance of keeping fit. I was a bit nervous. Another club which I have joined at school is Brownies. We did lots of things together like going to a karate centre as part of our sports badge and we made bags and T-shirts. At the end of the year every girl scout gets together for the "Bridging Ceremony" where the older Daisys become Brownies and the older Brownies become Junior Girl Scouts. All the groups did a different show for the audience. My group did a performance where we all said what we liked about Brownies and it spelt "Brownies". Both C and I have also joined chess club. The worst thing about chess club is that it is before school on a Monday morning. - yikes. The best thing was the tournament at the end where we played with all different sweets instead of chess pieces and even got to eat them when they were knocked off the board. I like playing with all the different children who come.

Build it and they will come

Sunday 10th June

This weekend marked the culmination of the little league softball and T-ball. Both girls have thoroughly enjoyed themselves and, with approaching 50 sessions of practice and / or matches in 10 short weeks, have had even more sport than Mr Riley could have rustled up. I am torn between joy at recovering our time to spend as we please and a sense of loss since we will no longer be chatting to the parents, coaches and children that we have got to know so well. For G the season ended with an all grade match with the national anthem (we still need to learn the words!) and with tannoyed announcements of each player as they stepped up to the plate (personal season statistics aside). Both were very pleased with their end of season trophies. We have no idea how either the Gators or the Marlins faired at the end of play but we know for sure that if it was judged by third innings performance alone then the Gators would be in with a fighting chance - why could they only ever get 5 runs and 3 outs in that single innings? The spirit of the whole league is captured really well in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MDYvzfwst0I.

We look forward to returning next season and roll on the field hockey in the autumn.

We can taste the jam

Sunday 3rd June It is a well worn phrase in our family that the jam is just around the corner but, today, we found it lock, stock and barrel.  We decided to investigate pick your own Pennsylvania style.  We plumped for the fairly local Highland Orchards http://www.highlandorchards.net/HOInc/Welcome.ohtml. I think that Guy Watson would still find some opportunity in this farm - it certainly has some way to go before becoming Riverford organics - but the strawberries were magnificent and we had a full 10lb tray of ruby red scorchers picked in under 20 minutes (none of the namby pamby 2lb baskets for this market!).  We topped up with some rhubarb and the trip was rounded off by a sighting of a real live ground hog (they really do exist!).  Where is a camera when you need it?  Those strawberries which are not in C's tummy are now preserved in jars as delicious jam - bring on the toast.  We will return for blueberries later in the season. Further investigations about jam have identified that one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites is in fact the Minaret of Jam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_of_Jam), a 1000 year old brick built tower in a mountain pass in Afghanistan. If it wasn't for the fact the G recently wrote in a school project that she wishes to travel to all countries in the world apart from Afghanistan we would be off to investigate - he ho, another one to save for the empty nester years. Enjoy your Jubilee weekend!!