Before school started, we visited Grandma Joan and Grampa Ed in Somers for a weekend
As usual we caught many fish in the pond, but we also grabbed a baby snapping turtle
Back at home Erin passed her driver's test
and a Hurricane named Erin riled the seas in North Carolina. We hope that our Erin won't churn up any trouble on the roads.
Tessie started 7th grade at Jonas Clarke Middle School
Erin started 11th grade at LHS
and the girls cross-country team was selected as pre-season #1 in the state
We enjoyed our last days with Caroline. This is the (not-so) classic card game Dragonmaster.
First and only trip to the ocean this year at Hampton Beach, NH
Last run on the town trails
Heather raised monarch butterflies again and quickly fell into the vicious cycle of needing to find clean milkweed leaves to feed the caterpillars, but also finding newly laid eggs on the milkweed, which led to more caterpillars, more leaves, more eggs...
By the end of the season we had raised over 50 and tagged 45 butterflies for tracking by Monarch Watch to see if any reach the mountains of Mexico for overwintering
Dropping Caroline off at Dartmouth was easy-peasy. Her stuff filled my car for the 2-hour drive.
Her dorm, Little Hall, is in a complex called the Choates that have seen better days
Her 1st floor room has lots of natural light, as the real estate agent would say. It also has spartan furniture and 67 years of white paint coating the cinder block walls. Caroline's roommate is from Brazil and she was all set up when we arrived.
Thanks to Heather's planning, we didn't have to do any last-minute shopping for Caroline's set up except to order a dresser that would fit under her bed
The Dartmouth campus is great for outdoorsy people. Just across the street from Caroline's dorm is Occam Pond, which leads into nature trails for walking and jogging
By afternoon we said goodbye and headed home
Then for the next 10 days Caroline partook in onboarding festivities for the class of 2029
Dartmouth has a house system borrowed from English schools like Hogwarts. There are 6 Dartmouth Houses and the sorting hat landed Caroline in School House, possibly because of the fish mascot. Three freshman dorms feed into School House, and then in later years they have access to 3 upper-classmen dorms
Here on Instagram we caught a glimpse of her. We'll see how well she communicates with us.
