Doing the dirty

The Boy made a tactical error this morning. I dropped the children off at a local day-camp (what in England I think we'd call a summer play-scheme) and he chose to leave his smelly old blankie in the car. So I took it home. And I washed it. Hallelujah.

The Girl enjoyed her novelty value at camp: once they learnt that she's British the other kids all wanted her to say things 'in her accent'. The Boy also seemed to have a good time, though before it started he had adopted a 'camp stinks' stance which he is loathe to drop. We'll see how he goes on through the rest of the week.

It has been uncomfortably hot again today, though some rain fell after dark. Tonight I babysat for the Exiles while they went out for a rather exclusive meal and driving home steam was rolling up at me from the road - quite spooky.

By Jiminy!

What a cracking day out! We were invited to join some of the Girl's friends at Jiminy Peak, just over the Massachusetts border. It's a ski resort all winter, but in summer transforms into a mountainside amusement park.

Rather a good one at that - not too many attractions, but all of them challenging in one way or another. There's the spiderweb - cimb up through layers of mesh and descend by an inflatable slide; a rope-walk obstacle course; climbing wall; harnessed trampoline bouncing; an alpine slide - a sort of bobsled run reached via a chairlift; and the only mountain-rollercoaster in the eastern United States.

I was concerned that my kids, who had found some of the rides at Hoffman's Playland daunting, wouldn't get much out of the whole experience. How wrong I was! The real wuss of the family was well and truly exposed today - but I did manage the alpine slide once, and the mountain-coaster twice (at the Boy's insistence - he was whooping all the way down and shouting 'This is GREAT!!!!' as I grimaced behind him in our shared 'sled'). Girl and Boy were up and down the spiderweb and bombing down the mountainside as often as we would let them.

Also in Jiminy Peak's favour: the setting is lovely, it's very uncommercial, there were hardly any queues, and all the rides are powered by wind-turbine - so it's eco-friendly too.

Berry blues

Today was a bit hit and miss. We went to the Boy's favourite model train shop, but it was shut. Then we went to pick strawberries, only to find that the strawberry season is over already. We managed to pick blueberries instead, though the children refuse to eat them (silly children, they are very tasty).

We had a happy hour or so with the kids from next door - first we invited ourselves to their yard, then they came over to our house. There was a riotous game of miniature table football.

Top marks of the day go to the sweetcorn we had for dinner - fresh and delicious, served with melted butter and hot spices.

So on and so 4th

One good thing about jet-lag this way round is that you can get a whole lot of weeding done long before the day heats up. Other than that there's not much to recommend being wide awake from 4am.

Today is a holiday, Independence Day. We celebrated by drinking cups of tea with the Exiles, our most local fellow Britons. The children had fun on a water slide. The Man had fun on a bouncy-bounce (bouncy castle).

Tonight there are big firework displays, but our kids are already in bed so we're missing those. However there's a fine display of fireflies to enjoy in our own yard.

Bags of time

Although it involved a painfully early start (we set the alarm for 4:30am to be absolutely sure of being on time), the first part of our journey home went smoothly enough. There was just one 'Come again?' moment when the gate announcer wished us all a safe flight to Newark ('Newark? But I thought we were going to JFK..?').

JFK is a messy, unfriendly airport. It took ages to arrange to get our main luggage onto the conveyor belt allegedly bound for our onward flight. But we got through to the departure lounge in plenty of time, only to find the Albany flight was delayed by an hour. Once finally aboard the plane we then sat on the runway for another hour before take-off - we could comfortably have driven home, and stopped for a pizza on the way, in the time we had waited. Ah well.

And then it was no surprise at all when our luggage failed to emerge on the carousel in Albany. It was just so inevitable that I could barely raise any interest, let alone disappointment. But the bags did at least catch up with us first thing this morning.

I'd been feeling no sense of anticipation about returning to Albany, yet as we banked over the city and surrounds during our descent I felt my spirits rise at the sight of all the now-familiar landmarks, the open spaces and the trees, the trees, the trees. It really is a lovely looking place this time of year.

Sofa so good

We're home, safe and sound, though I've had so little sleep since writing the last blog entry that I'm having trouble remembering my own name, never mind what continent we're on or how we managed to get here. So I'll save the details of our trip until tomorrow, when with luck I might also be able to report on the whereabouts of our luggage...

So long, farewell

We said goodbye to our Devon friends this morning and set out back to Watford. We stopped off on the way at the Yeovilton Fleet Air Arm Museum - just for the cafe and naval-themed play-park, mind you. A blurb for the museum claims cheerfully 'You can even see an atomic bomb!' It should continue, 'Have fun explaining that one to your sensitive six year-old!'

There was no-one to greet us this time in Watford as my parents are away on a long-planned holiday on the Danube. We're just using their house as a hopping off point to Heathrow very early tomorrow morning. With that in mind I'll finish here, but not without a final huge thank you to all our friends and family who have made this a really wonderful holiday for us. We'll miss you all over again now - keep in touch!