Out of the Tulgey Wood

After nearly the entire summer spent away from home, it is both wonderful and awful being back. Wonderful, because I love it here. The girls are back in school. I am no longer driving a half hour just to check e-mail, and I no longer have to rely on the wind and sun to dry my newly laundered clothes. It's awful though, because the end of the summer means leaving our other home in Vermont.



I will happily admit that the hour-a-day play activity did not always include me. One of the beautiful things about being in Vermont is that the kids have something they simply don't have here: freedom. Independence. In Vermont they were able to disappear outside, into the woods, up into the tree house for hours on end without a grown-up in sight. I wouldn't take that away from them for anything. For one month a year they get to experience what I did as a kid: complete freedom from the grown-up world (the one that is there to monitor and protect -- the one that spoils the fun).

However, I did make a conscious effort to play some games I haven't played in a long, long time though. And here are the pictures to prove it.


(This photo was actually take at our old neighbors' house in MD on our way to VT.)


Blocks. I helped build this. I particularly love the Etch-a-Sketch screen and the man trapped in the glass (Jenga) box.


The view from the Ferris wheel...a ride I haven't gone on in twenty years or more.



Chutes and Ladders and a zillion games of Chinese checkers. That's the summer in a nutshell.


Until next year.