Hangin’ with Simone

It is always fun to see our favorite Grand Daughter, Simone, when we are in Boston. She is such a smiley, happy kid. And at 17 months, has a surprisingly large vocabulary. She has been able to do a lot of animal sounds since she was one, but now she is starting to be able to name those animals. She is not quite getting “Grandma” and “Grandpa” yet but she has figured out “mama” and “papa” and “Gus”. She is even working on her first two syllable word, “water”.

We got to accompany her on her first bicycle ride. Maureen seemed a little unsure at first but Simone didn’t try to look around her very much, which can make controlling a bike tough, when the center of gravity keeps shifting around. But it went very well and Simone seemed to have a great time riding along behind Mama.

The next day we got to have dinner at Simone’s house. It was a very nice evening so we had dinner out in the back yard and then did some playing. Jordy went along and got to hang out with Gus a little. We all went for a walk and played with balls in the back yard. It was great fun!

Day three had us having brunch out with Simone. It was a belated Mother’s Day brunch. Simone was a little lady and wore a cute little sweater that Grandma brought for her from our friends Dave and Myra. It was another sparkling day in Boston. We have had a lot of those while we have been here. our luck with the weather has been very good after a lot of rain and gloominess in Connecticut. We’ve had a couple of cool days but for the most part, temperatures have been in the 70s.

After a break of one day, we got to see Simone again for dinner at her house, but this was a very busy day for us. We got up early to join one of our favorite Rabbis, Neil Gold, for breakfast and a long catch up on all the things that have happened in the last year and a half since we had seen him. There have been some big changes in his life but his family is doing well and he seems very happy with how things have turned out.

Next, it was into Boston to go to the Science Museum. We have a membership at the Mote Aquarium in Sarasota and this gets us free membership at the Science Museum in Boston. Pretty sweet. However, we did spring for admission to a couple of the Omnimax movies they have there. We really wanted to see the one on National Parks because we will be seeing some of them this Summer.

After a great dinner at Simone’s and some fun around the living room before bed time, we headed off to our fourth event of the day, a meet-up with an ex-coworker of Ellyn’s from IBM, Mary McDonald. She lives in Texas but was in Boston for some work related activities and we met her at The Cheesecake Factory for dessert. Whew! And poor Jordy was home alone the whole day. We did get a dog walker to come to the RV around 3:00 but Jordy would not go for a walk with her. He did get his dinner though.

So on Saturday the 21st, we stopped by Simone’s house to baby sit while her parents went tout to look at a house. They did not decide on t, but we got to get some hugs from Simone before her nap and then some quiet time while they were out and she was napping. Then Logan and us went to see the Red Sox play at Fenway. It was one heck of a game with the Red Sox winning over Cleveland 9 to 1. We had a great time!

Sunday was Geoff’s birthday and Simone and Logan came by in the morning after Maureen went off on a business trip. We played in the playground at Normandy Farms and walked around the campground a little. Then we all went out to lunch at Fresh Catch before Logan and Simone headed back home for nap time.