so the girls went on their very first canoe trip this weekend. we went with michael, laurie, visiting dignitaries-bhavani and joe, plus shayla and three of her friends from smith. it was quite a scene, 4 canoes, couple of chairs, lifejackets, coolers, etc. we went to grafton pond and tooled around for a little while, found an island to have lunch on, tooled around a little more, saw a mommy loon with 2 babies. the weather was amazing. the first sunny, warm (but not too hot) day in a long long time, perhaps the whole summer. and tho there were a lot of cars in the parking lot, the pond is big enough that it didn't seem very crowded on the pond itself. and there are plenty of islands to go around. pictures to come.

once again, we find ourselves woefully behind in thank you notes. don't despair, they are coming. we're just slow to crank them out.

friday, the girls and i are doing a buy-some-new-fall-clothes run up to burlington. old navy for the girls, j crew, eddie bauer, gap for me. i don't need much (i stopped growing some time ago thank you very much), but they need miscellaneous stuff to keep them warm in the cooler weather to come, as well as a first-day-of-school outfit for rory. we'll also get in a visit with the maddens, friends of ours who moved up that-a-way last year.

this is rory's last week in the panda class at 'school'. next week, she'll be a big koala girl and alix will be a teddy 3 days a week.

it's going to be a busy couple of weeks! and the weather is supposed to be GORGEOUS!