The Wood Life: Monthly Newsletter #57

Dear Landon,

I know this one is a little late, but we were on vacation on the 3^rd, and… well…let’s face it – vacation is not the time to write a newsletter, and neither are the 5 days post vacation when a person is trying to recover from the vacation. So here we are.

Anyway, this month has been crazy busy and a lot of fun too. We hosted what I hope will be our first annual crawfish boil. Next year, we’ll probably do it a little earlier in the season, and probably with a few less crawfish – but all in all I think it was a success anyway. A few of your friends from school showed up and a sampling of the people from each group that I invited. All in all, it wasn’t too bad for a first run at it. I learned a few lessons on this one that I can easily change about next year.

I made plans with one of your friend’s moms to have a play date at some point – although then we promptly left town, so we haven’t actually done it yet, but I will call her, I promise.

You’ve decided that you do want to take swimming lessons. I’ve been looking on-line and asking your friends’ parents about where they took their kids and why, and I think I’ve found a place to do it, I just need to make sure I can get the scheduling done so that you can make it to all of them. I’ve pretty much given up the idea that I could teach you. Parents are just not that great at teaching their kids those kinds of skills – seems odd, but sometimes it takes a stranger.

We went to one of your friend’s birthday party, and you and she and her best friend had a great time – and I made plans with her mom for a future play date too. I hope these tentative, half assed, pseudo-plans turn into something real, because I think that’s something we’re lacking, is friends outside of school. Granted these are friends from school, but you never see them outside of school except at birthday parties.

And the biggest part of the month was our vacation, ahem, I mean tour! Aunt Kathleen’s schedule worked really well…we only dropped a few things we had scheduled, but we had a great time. We will probably have to go back to Washington DC again in a few years, since it’s really more of a 5 day city, not a 2 ½ day city, and we missed a lot of stuff. You had a great time and of all the things we saw you keep saying that your favorite part was the liberty bell. (Which is odd because that was something we came up with after looking at the map and happening to see we passed right by Philadelphia in driving to and from New Jersey.) We even got to do a few more things in NYC than we did last time, even though we also repeated a few things. We got our picture taken on the beam at Top of the Rock – which we were absolutely unable to convince you to do last time, and we got to see Time Square at night with all the flashing lights and even saw a few cool street performers (Spiderman in the street at Time Square – being your second favorite part of the trip.)

Fireworks on the National Mall were spectacular. I think I am ruined for watching fireworks now. Seeing fireworks as tall as the Washington Monument go off right behind the Washington Monument is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity, possibly like being in time square on New Years’ Eve – which, incidentally, I’d also like to do one day. I’ll put it on my bucket list. I can’t wait to sort through all the pictures of all the stuff we did and make our vacation picture book.

For some reason you are noticing all the Eiffel Tower pictures and things I have around the house lately, you’d like to see it for real, but I told you we’d have to wait until you’re 9 or 10. It’s a pretty expensive trip, and I want to be sure you remember it. I’m hoping to steer you towards wanting to see something on the West coast next…although you seem particularly content if we just go see Mary Lou again…we’ve been in the fall and in the summer, so by your reasoning we should go back again to see her in the Spring and in the Winter, just so we can cover all the seasons.