North Shore Round Up

We had such a wonderful two days visiting dear friends and old stomping grounds on the North Shore this week.  Watching our boys run around Gordon's campus - playing on the chapel steps, running across my old soccer field, playing in the gym...it all brought back so many wonderful memories for both of us and it was completely surreal to be there with our children.  Our days at Gordon don't seem very long ago.  We are still so close with so many friends and professors and both of us truly treasure the years we spent there.  It was fun to be back and we definitely want to make a point to visit more often.

We started off our adventure on Tuesday by heading over to the seacoast to visit a college friend who is now the Athletic Director at Portsmouth Christian Academy.  We had never seen the school and Scott and John have been in pretty good touch the last couple of years as John was looking into getting involved in the world of private schools.  We had a great time catching up and seeing the campus and then we brought the boys to the Children's Museum of New Hampshire in Dover.  The boys had an absolute blast running around to all of the different exhibits - they are both so curious and imaginative.

After a quick lunch the boys napped in the car as we headed to the North Shore.  We, of course, had to stop at White Farms for some delicious ice cream once we reached Ipswich!

We headed straight to the ocean and enjoyed running around the nearly empty beach.  Singing Beach was one of our favorite places in college.  I used to spend tons of time there with my girlfriends....

and now I got to share it with my little boys.  Life is crazy sometimes! 

After the beach we stopped by Gordon briefly to visit our cousin, Meredith, and her precious little daughter!  Little nugget is growing up!  So fun to see them, although it was way too quick!  After a long day of travel and fun we headed back to our home base.  We stayed with the family I used to babysit for and it was SO wonderful to hang out with them and catch up on life.  Willy, who was about six months old when I first started babysitting for them, is now 8 years old and little Jinx is now in 8th grade.  It made me feel so old to spend time with them again, but it was so natural and like no time had passed at all.  We've stayed very close to this family over the years...they have been so generous with passing on their old toys, games and clothes to us and their kids were all in our wedding as well!  We feel so blessed to have them in our lives.  Camden and I went to Jinx's eighth grade play where she played Jasmine in an incredible production of Alladin.  Camden was enthralled with the whole experience and wasn't even afraid of Jafar!  :)  He's such a big boy these days!
Here is a picture of me and Will at our wedding...

And now with my boys!

 Me and my kiddos!  We're missing Henry who is now a freshman at a boarding school!  Crazy!

 On Wednesday morning we hit up Stephy's - our favorite breakfast joint in Beverly.  YUMMY!!!

 After breakfast we headed over to Gordon. 

 We hung out with Jerry for a while (of course, I hardly had a chance to talk to him because of our very overtired three year old who decided it was a good time to throw a little tantrum)...

We headed over to the gym where I got to catch up with one of my very best friends (soccer and lacrosse coach and Sports Information Director extraordinaire!) and it was one of the highlights of our trip.  The boys really loved Bess too!  :)

We finished off the trip by stopping by the house of one of our current students are at Proctor.  They have an incredible home with horses and chickens and we thought the boys would love to see it!  Of course, they both fell sound asleep on the 10 minute drive so Scott and I got a grand tour of the house and property all by ourselves.  It was gorgeous and we hope to get back down someday soon to take a little trail ride!

 And of course, one more stop at White Farms on the way out of town.  Yes, we shared this one.  I did not eat it all by myself although I probably could have!

Thank you North Shore for being so good to us!  We love all of the memories this area holds for us and all of the friends we still have down there.  We saw about 1/30th of all the friends we wish we could have seen so we'll come again soon!  :)