2018 Life Logs, Day 173—Last Day of School, Plus More Friends Visit
Date: Friday, June 22, 2018
Weather: Sunny; High 72, Low 57 F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was the last day of school for the Goldpebbles. Heather had been told that Jonah was getting a special award at this morning’s school-wide Town Meeting,
so I decided to go. I left Ed and Lynn on their own and went to the school by 9:15 am. I haven’t been to a Town Meeting since my days of teaching in Concord, New Hampshire, and I was very impressed by the East Falmouth meeting. There were numerous year-end awards, music, student-produced videos, recognition of a retiring teacher, and more. Jonah and Ollie both got a certificate of attendance for missing less than 5 days of school and Jonah got the Academic Achievement Award for his third-grade classroom.
Go, Jonah! Jonah has also been part of Peace Builders group that meets for lunch once a week and that group read The Peace Book for the whole school.
Near the end of the meeting, the kindergarten classes sang a very cute little song about moving up to First Grade.
Can’t believe Ollie is going to be a First Grader. The students were all well-behaved and the meeting helped end the school year on a very positive note. I got back home after 11 am and then at 12:15 I got a text from Heather asking if there was any way I could pick the boys up at 12:40 as this last day was just a half-day. She got up to go running at 4:30 am and then went to work in Woods Hole for three hours, rushed back to East Falmouth for the Town Meeting, but then had to go back to Woods Hole to finish getting her program “in the can” for airing. I went to pick up J & O and took them Smitty’s for an end-of-the-year ice cream treat (the boys splurged and both got frappes) and some play time with other friends there.
When Heather arrived, I headed home and found that Lynne had made a lot of progress on the coffee table puzzle. But I stole her and Ed away to work on screwing down the loose boards on the dock. They did a great job and I got some gardening done while they did that.
Later in the afternoon, David and Judy Howell arrived in their motorhome.
The last time we were together, Judy and Dave in their catamaran named Freebird, Ed and Lynne in their sailboat named Constance, and Mark and I aboard Windbird, was in Cochin in southern India in 2010. A lot has happened in all our lives since then and none of us still owns our sailboats, but it was great to be reunited as the ‘new’ us.
Dave and Judy left their home on the California-Oregon border the first week of May and have been traveling across the country since then. From here they will head north to Boston and eventually on to Nova Scotia. But tomorrow they will return here from dinner and more visiting, bringing with them friends who are flying in from the West Coast to be with them for about week in the Boston area. Unfortunately, it is supposed to rain, but we’ll find a way to enjoy.
One last note. In the afternoon after I left Ollie and Jonah with Heather, Heather took them to the beach to celebrate the last day of school with friends. She sent me a great photo of Jonah with his friends that I just had to include here.
