The Week That Was

First off, I have some catching up to do in what I'm calling the "Mom's Brag Corner" of this blog. Back at the beginning of the summer when my dad was in the hospital and Mary came out for a week, she had to go to a KIPP DC awards banquet pretty much as soon as she stepped off the plane upon her return. (KIPP is the name of the charter school network where she teaches.) Her principal made her promise she'd be there, which was kind of a bummer after a difficult week and a long trip. But after the fact Mary realized the reason they wanted her there was because she was going to get an award. The banquet was for all the KIPP schools in DC, involving hundreds of teachers. So it was a huge honor and of course she was very happy and we're very proud. Although now having written this I'm reminded of the time when the kids were little and we took them to Paris and we met a man at a laundromat whose son had graduated from Georgetown. The dad had a photocopy of his son's diploma on his person, which he proudly shared with us. It was cute but a bit odd, which is maybe exactly how my sharing the two month-old news of Mary's award makes me seem to you?!

When Mary got that award on June 2, school was still in session. Even though they have a short summer it was clearly awhile ago because they're already back in session, as of last Thursday. This is a first-day-of-school picture from KIPP DC's Instagram feed last week. (In my constant search for interesting and fresh material for this blog, many of today's photos are thanks to the magic of Instagram—and also Snapchat—not to mention the generosity of Peter and Mary.) It's Ms. Harrison standing at the door to her second grade classroom. If you squint (or it's easier just to click on the picture) you can see that the door to the classroom is decorated with Stanford S's. That's because the classrooms at Spring Academy are named (and decorated) after the college where the teacher attended.

School hasn't started yet in Morocco but Peter and Jessa are back there, getting settled in their new apartment and enjoying some downtime. I'm posting this picture of the front of their refrigerator for no special reason, just because it's colorful and fun. (And also because the Civil Life magnet at the top will be the only visual reference to John or Troy for this entire post.)

Moving on, this is the view from their new apartment. It looks nice to me, and I think Peaches also approves.

And their brand new dining room set. Looks like they're planning to put all their quilted table runners from my mom to some good use.

Same view, same cat, different beverage.

Meanwhile, here in Long Beach we participated in a neighborhood garage sale on Saturday. It was a fun day and a successful sale.

During the garage sale Allie was mostly on patrol upstairs in our house, but she did come down for a bit to check things out.

Last Sunday we were treated to a visit by my St. Louis yoga teacher, Bruce, and his wife, Linda.

We visited two museums here in Long Beach, including the Museum of Latin American Art (above).

Parking at the museum was awful, so we parked my van in a nearby school parking lot. After we were ready to go home we went to the lot and discovered that it was closed and padlocked. A neighbor told us a church uses the school for Sunday services and after church is over the parking lot gets locked. So we took an Uber home and fortunately the school was open on Monday, when we got my car out without any problem. (Attention Harrison children: I will not end this story by explaining the moral, as I think it's quite evident. And yes, I did learn my lesson.)

On Sunday evening after our company left, Brad and I walked down the street to our local park. They have jazz on Sunday evenings for a few weeks in August so we took our lawn chairs and a picnic and enjoyed some music outside.

One final picture, from Monday morning, when it was our favorite kind of weather for a walk: overcast and gloomy. It's good for dogs and it's good for people too!