calvin tries on his birthday zombie mask while the rest of us contemplate how glad we are he was born.

clearly annie's yard has much to recommend it as a potluck location.

potluck at annie's house.

apparently, sitting like a bump on a log is harder than it looks

when it comes to securing herself a floaty, nama doesn't mess around.

post-wading-pool-dry-off-space-out x 3.

rye shows nama how to use her new camera. #whypeoplehavegrandkids

three kids in a fountain.

cheers, to dinner with the fam.

they drowned a forest (and a town) to make this lake and the tree stumps are pretty fantastic.

for true frigidness (should that be frigidity?) the waters of rattlesnake lake have got lake washington beat hands down. but what about that amaz vista?

would you look at these two bathing beauties in their color coordinated resort wear.

everybody in the water.

toothbrushing as stand-up comedy.

spray-park hijinks.

how lucky are we, getting to eat amazing food and lounge around with all these beautiful people whenever we want? so lucky.

meanwhile kale and calliope were outside thoroughly denuding devon and angelica's raspberry bushes.

seconds at the amazing taco spread angelica's mom cooked up? 'don't mind if i do' says riley. (really what he said was, 'oh my god this chicken is so amazing i need to have more' but you know, creative license and all that)

nama keeps a close eye on these two agile climbers.

up close and personal with mama and rye.

they were in the middle of a game called "the snake charmer and the brave maiden, who didn't do anything wrong, get thrown into prison by the wicked king and need to escape" when i made them pose for this photo. i would like to make a shout out to waldorf educated cousins everywhere for their imaginative awesomeness.

kale has already finished his ice cream truck purchase, riley has yet to make a dent in his.

sarah brown had to pretty much drag the children from their seats to join the center court train, but once they got there they discovered the joys of getting in on the action.

the seattle storm v. new york liberty game was both a nail biter and divisive (craig, sarah and calliope were rooting for ny despite being guests in our fair city).

can you guess who just won the staring contest?

first things first, people. and the first thing to do when nama is in town is the check out the medicine bags she brought.

we sort of hoped that the house painting would be finished before nama got here.

fierce game of flyers, runners.

the finished product. voted best hair by his fellow campers.

for kooky hair day at camp kale decided to go green. you might be surprised to learn that despite repeated scrubbing our bathtub is still not white.

riley was worried that he wouldn't get to see his friends over the summer. boom. worry laid to rest.

world cup finals at ilvs & beth's house on a giant projection screen. almost made up for argentina losing.

i call this one 'space-out with special'.

back home and ready to beach it up lake washington style.

shout out to jessie and lisa for hosting us and letting us play on their "epic" swing.

and look at that, aunt julie and cousin eli just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought they'd join us for a little fresh water swimming.

a visit to the valley wouldn't be complete without a dip in puffer's pond.

picking raspberries in bella's front yard. it feels like there was a real theme to our northampton visit.

but the kids were enormous and so mature.

the old wednesday night potluck crew all came out for celebratory bbq. all the grownups looked just the same...

picking raspberries in our old noho backyard with our old friend thu. it's like we never left.

remember when schuyler and co came down for a beachy visit? me too, and it was so great to see them.

riley and kale and their new best beach friends riley and walker played a lot of beach soccer and then, inspired by the world cup players, did a lot of hi-fiving and group hugging after goals.

annual front-porch photo.

watching the fireworks from a sensible distance.

riley has had it up to here with the mamarazzi, and he's got the eye roll to prove it.

kale likes to eat sand, eli likes to feed him sand. done and done.

everybody's gotta carry something down to the beach.

wheels in motion.

lawn sports - ON THE BEACH!