Smartinof4steve: Family time.

At the time of this writing, the kids and I are curled up in bed, watching an animated Bernstein Bears knock off, missing Alexe. We brought her to the airport this morning at 5. Taking three weeks away from her business has been wonderful for us as a family, but had a significant impact on the store's bottom line.

From here on out it feels like the summer is winding down as we squeeze in a few more adventures before heading back to the blue house in MS.

Here's a little recap of the last few days with Alexe.

Reading with their mommy.

Searching for crabs in the tide pools at low tide, and singing to periwinkles to get them to come out of their shells. New favorite sound: Alexe and the kids sitting together at the beach singing into their hands.

We did a loop of the local farm stands. This spot has opened a little restaurant, with outside tables. It looked fun, but we had lobsters and had stopped by to grab some corn to go with them.

Annaliese's restaurant. Alexe had a restaurant-manners refresher course with the kids after a particularly poor performance on their part. Annaliese is very strict about other people minding those manners when they're eating in her restaurant.

I was visited by an impromptu marching band while watering the flower beds.

This is entirely Alexe's fault. She taught them this, and if I was feeling less moony over my traveling girl, I might have posted the picture that included her on the right.

We took a picnic lunch into Portland, to a nice park in the middle of town. This wading pool with imbedded fountains is great. We ate on the grass overlooking the pool, and the kids ran around in the water while we lounged and read the paper afterwards. At one point we looked up to see Caspian drop his drawers in the middle of the pool and pee. We were too far away to get to him in time to do anything, and the place was pretty full. I would have felt worse if 1) the pool wasn't a constant flow out to the duck pond and 2) moments later a boy's mother came running by to grab her son, who was behind our picnic spot, with his pants around his ankles. Good times with kids.

They had a blast, running between home-base and the rest of the park.

Returning from a game of crocodile, coming to get me.

We're a little disjointed on time here, the park visit was pre-shaving. Beautiful little girl:

Handsome little boy. Annaliese gets very upset if her brother is referred to as beautiful, she insists he's handsome and only girls can be beautiful. Of course he insists he's beautiful.

We learned two gender neutral words to address this: attractive, and elegant, which they both get to be.

Our next stop was a different park overlooking Casco Bay. Nice spot, lovely sea breeze, and the kids and I played while Alexe went to explore the nearby Rosemont Market. (A small neighborhood grocery.)