Flinging ourselves head-first into summer

It's the first day of summer vacation. How to kick it off?

With a surprise trip to Lake Tahoe! Doug and I secretly packed up the car, piled the kids in, and it was a good half-hour before anyone asked where we were going. We headed to our favorite haunt on the North Shore for a beautiful Father's Day weekend. Adventures included swimming (in the pool, not the freezing lake), miniature golf, and -- drum roll, please -- first time kayaking!

The boys were fantastic for the hourlong trip out onto the lake. Finn was too small to wield a paddle, and was pretty much immobilized by his  life vest. Which probably was a good thing. Calvin helped paddle a bit and quickly figured out how to steer. He asked for this picture to send to his kindergarten teacher, who promised to write over the summer.

 I managed to help the kids prepare gifts for Father's Day and Doug's birthday even as we were doing our end-of-school projects. The boys helped make a simple mechanical race car toy -- they were so excited about it! The other gifts included a pack of specialty soda, a gift card for Doug to design his own shirt, and some crumpled paper and toy cars Finn wanted to present.

The next day, Calvin started a full-day science/spy academy camp with his lifelong friend Simon. He came home with spy cameras and fingerprint kits and all sorts of "ideas."

Midweek, we celebrated Doug's birthday with a pretend trip to Hawaii. The kids picked the theme, and it worked out especially well with the big gift: a new, comfy hammock for hiding from the kids and trying to get enjoy some peace and quiet. I managed to combine requests for carrot cake and volcano cake, and the boys and I hurriedly made matching pirate shirts for the whole family using a cool glue batik method.

It wasn't nearly as relaxing as a real trip, but it was close enough. It beat Finn's original proposal to have a "spicy" theme because "Daddy loves spicy food!" Though now I want to try a chocolate chipotle cake...

No time to experiment, however, because the end of the week brought a new round of adventures: a trio of visiting Red Sox fans for weekend games in San Francisco. Which will be another posting.