Early Summer Fun

On Father's Day we continued our tradition of running the Melrose Firefighter's 5K. It was steamy hot, so we didn't have the best times but still enjoyed running together as a family. 

Caleb took a weight-training class this summer at the YMCA every Thursday morning. He walked to pick up his friend Dante and then they headed to the Y and enjoyed a bagel afterwards. 

Caleb's piano teacher (Mr. Papadakis) finally made good on his promise to come and visit us. He biked to our home and brought some Greek food along with him. The kids were so excited to bike around the neighborhood with him. 

The kids and I visited the Saugus Iron Work historic sight one morning in early summer, which was surprisingly fun! We learned all about how iron was made into useful things like nails, tools, etc... We also really enjoyed watching the nesting barn swallows. 

The kids finally had their first trip to Fenway during the last week of June and we had a blast. It's definitely been a summer of baseball and the Red Sox have made it really fun to watch.

 We thoroughly enjoyed living right across from what's known as Blueberry Hill this year. We made a couple trips to the woods across the street to pick wild blueberries and were able to bring home about 4 quarts!

Of all the things we've done this summer, this day at Crane Beach was one of our highlights. It was a hot day and the water felt great. While hanging out in the ocean we met Captain Rick, a native of Ipswich and he taught us about clamming. Pretty soon we were all raking the ocean floor with our feet in search of sea clams. We ended up finding 6 of them and Rick was nice enough to clean them for us and put them in a bag for us to take home. Caleb and I even tried raw clam, known as sweet meats, fresh out of the water. Rick also gave us a recipe for baked stuffed clams, which we made for dinner and they were incredible! We talk about Rick often and were happily surprised to run into him at Crane Beach on our last visit before school started.