First Days of Summer Vacation in In the Meadow

Summer vacation for the kids started on Thursday. We have been to the pool a few times. We have also been watching some of the World Cup soccer. The kids have been reading. My husband has been teaching them checkers. They have played checkers before but not with any kind of strategy, so we have been working with them on that.

The kids are spending today and tonight with my parents. My husband didn't work today, and we decided to go to the beach by Lake Ontario. It has been a while since we went to the beach without the kids. It felt sort of weird. When the wind is blowing off the lake, it can be quite a bit cooler by the lake shore. The temperature was in the mid-eighties when we left home and in the low seventies at the beach. We went swimming and then sat on the beach for a while.

There is an ice cream stand near the beach that we stopped at afterward. They had cannoli flavored ice cream. I had never had that flavor before and I asked for it in a cone. The lady said it was really soft and asked if she could put it in a dish. I told her that was fine. I was kind of disappointed though because I wanted to get it dipped in chocolate shell. I'm always sort of embarrassed to admit that I like my ice cream dipped because it seems like such a kid thing. Yes, I'm a mother to two almost teenagers and I like dipped ice cream cones.

We could get a lot of Canadian radio stations on the way home. Today is Canada Day and there was a lot of discussion about that. It is very close to the U.S. Fourth of July celebration. I guess no one gets fed up with the ruling government in the winter.

After this we watched the end of the U.S.-Belgium World Cup soccer game. Tonight we are watching a baseball game.