The 2012 East Coast Tour: Part 6

Man, I've got to power through the rest of this trip. We're going to Seattle in a couple days and I need to move on!

Here's one last shot of farm camp. You can see the "pool" made of of hay bales and tarps. 

 

So, the next day we headed back to NJ. 

Evan's best friend got married and had a baby a while back. I wasn't able to attend the wedding. (AND it was a Jewish/Indian wedding, a bunch of folks that know how to eat and to party. I was disappointed.) They proceeded to have a delicious baby that we didn't see enough of. They graciously made time to see us (quite a feat, with our packed-in schedule!) and we met in downtown Princeton.

 

We had a lovely walk through campus, and my eyes drank in all that yummy old architecture. I know what "sight for sore eyes" means these days. 

 

We ended up at the fountain in front of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs (yes I had to look that up, and yes, I was delighted to see a huge photo of Paul Krugman when we went in to use the potty) and, like decades of local kids and drunken undergrads, paid no attention to the sign telling us not to wade in the fountain.  

 

John and Baby Daniel. Danny sleeps in our old crib now, which completely delights my kids. 

 

We dried off and took off to see Grammy K (Grandma-Mary-Kay) and Grandpa Chuck.  And mostly Shadow. My kids loooove Shadow.

 

We ate an absurd amount of Italian take out and hit the sack. The next morning, we went out for pancakes and then walked over to the pool the minute it opened. They live in a swanky 55+ neighborhood so we wanted to cause a ruckus before the crotchety folks showed up. 

 

The Goose loves her Grammy. 

 

Arlo is pulling a Bart in this picture. 

 

Slightly less so here. It was a brief but lovely visit with the NJ grandparents. We hope they visit us in CA soon. 

We drove up to Maplewood/South Orange and I got down and dirty. Antonio's Mozzarella Factory. Italian Sub with Roasted Red Peppers.  People, I can't tell you how blissful this sandwich was. They guys totally remembered us (well, I was there basically once a week while pregnant with The Goose. Little known fact: The Goose is 73% Italian Sub).

 

They can't make good subs in LA. And they don't even come close to this. I also got a gigantic sopressato to smuggle home with me. 

We went to home new NJ home base, the Brody-Kaplans. Hank and Oscar were very interested in something on their new back porch.

To the POOL!

We enjoyed the lovely new bridge, but just like every other kid under the age of 13, we wondered what happened to all the locks on the old chain link bridge. (The bridge over the stream leading to the pool is right next to the middle school. I think it's a middle school custom to add your locker padlock to the bridge at the end of the year. The old bridge was covered with them.)

We were delighted to see a couple locks on the new bridge! And even better, on the other side of the bridge: REDWINES!

 

James Edward!

 

Cal! Whose logo we see all over the place in LA!

Oscar B, Izzy, and an unflattering picture of gorgeous Robyn. With some blessed iced coffees from drive-thru Dunkin Donuts.

No balls in the pool. Tee hee.

Nathanial and Oscar B. Arrr.

Man, how much do we miss them?

Steampunk Lila.

After a catch-as-catch can dinner with the Brody-Kaplans and the Redwines and the Huetzes, with everyone eating each other's fries and sharing ketchup, it was time to go.

My friend Mona linked to a piece in the HuffPost about the baby pool. The parent I am today was made at the baby pool in South Orange. I have accepted "tea" and smooches and hugs from strange children in the pool. I have saved a couple kids from going under, and all of my kids have been saved by kind strangers. I have grumbled about the dads and nannies that let the parents in the pool parent their own charges, and I have detangled my own kids from dads and moms and nannies that were in the thick playing with any kid who came near.

I love the pool. Nothing like it exists out here. We have public pools, and although our local pool is lacking, even the awesome ones don't touch the NJ public pools. A friend out here was wondering how my kids swim so well without any lessons. I told her that we spent every single summer afternoon at the pool, and eventually you learn to sink or swim.

 

That's my crew leaving the pool in 2012. 

Here they are a year ago, almost to the day.

They got tall. I got old.

Way off in the sunset, we saw Mr. John's ice cream truck, that we hired to come to Evan's 40th birthday party and our last BBQ in NJ. He insisted on giving us free ice cream and water bottles every time we saw him, and although I really wanted to walk over and say hi,  my kids couldn't tolerate any more sugar that day.

One last walk for Izzy and Arlo and Charlie Dog.

And one last drive past the old homestead. It looks great outside. The new owners and I have many mutual friends and I hope they are as happy as we were there (and that they aren't that angry that their property taxes went up by 30% this year. Dude, it pays to be home and be nice to the assessor. And give him an ice-cold Coke on a sweltering NJ summer's day.)