The weather has started to kinda cooperate in a “this is New England and it is never more than a few wind gusts away from snowing” way. I always have this thing in my head that if all the snow in my front yard is gone by Opening Day we are doing about as well as we should be. Opening Day is this Thursday and there is no snow. That doesn’t mean we won’t get snow between now and then though.

All that said we spent as much time as we could this weekend outdoors. We climbed Mount Wachusett on Saturday (and yes there were still skiers getting in that last slope run of the year) and then Sunday morning I-man and I woke up at the crack of dawn and rode mountain bikes at our local trail system for about an hour. All in all, a weekend spent outdoors is never a weekend wasted.

Despite the mask requirement, we still managed to snap a picture at the fire tower that crowns Wachusett. The lead image is us all smiles and masks. Well all of us but the Beeth, who was not thrilled with the idea of doing anything other than hanging out at the koi pound which is also at the top of Wachusett. As you can see, both boys were enthralled, especially because the koi pond is away from the main crowd and we could go maskless. Note the intense stare into the murky abyss on Ethan’s face.

So the blog on blogger stopped running with my devices as it refused to update, but my devices continued to change. The end result is, it laid dormant for over two years. In that time a lot has happened. Bianca got diagnosed with cancer and successfully went through treatment, Ethan moved to St. Bernards, and the world plunged into a pandemic which is slowly receding.

The boys are still the boys though, doing things that Isaac and Ethan love doing, mainly playing with each other. As we nagivate the cloistered world of Covid, they have become absolute best friends. They can play for hours without interruption.

But our life has changed even more. My Mom and Dad, finding out that Bianca had cancer, dropped their entire lives and moved out to Massachusetts. They lived in our basement and then built a house, and now they are residents of Lunenberg. They have made the strong bond between themselves and the boys even stronger. And so the Nut House has two more varieties that join us on a regular basis—a grandma and grandpa.

Hopefully, the blog will be updated more frequently now that it is on a new platform (that auto updates with new tech—yay! Squarespace!).

The flow of kids in and out of Ethan’s classroom at Goddard, like it was for Isaac when he was there, is huge. Kids move up a room and leave, new kids come in from younger rooms, and then totally new people get dropped into the system. Because of that, just about everyday a new person comes or an old person leaves.

This Monday, a new person came—a totally new person. It was a little girl and apparently Ethan and she played together all day. I imagine it was a pretty good introduction to construction sites, magnatiles, and mosasaurs for that little girl.

When Bianca picked Ethan up he was his normal chipper self jibbering away about his day and all that happened. As he was just about to leave, the little girl ran out and asked Ethan for a hug. He obliged and gave his new friend a squeeze. As she retreated to the room, he then turned to Bianca and told her: “That new girl, she really likes me.”

Total Han Solo move kid. (As in: Leia: “Han, I love you.” Han: “I know.”).