June 2022

Tessie finished her first season of town travel soccer

She still favors her left foot

Erin finished spring track at the Massachusetts middle school state championship meet

Coaches Joe and Dave from Waltham Track were on hand to watch their proteges 

Erin ran the mile in 6:19, well off her personal best, and had to retire from the 4x800 relay due to recurring pain in her heel from Sever's disease. She will take it easy this summer to recover for XC in the fall.

Tessie finished her spring track season in the 9-10 age bracket and excelled in long jump and the 100-200

Breakdown of living room shoe collection: Tessie 14, Erin 7, Caroline 4, Heather 5, Dave 1 

We started a deck project to replace the aging shade deck

We continued lessons to teach our girls to play cards with real people

Summer picnic around the solstice

For Juneteenth weekend Dave and the girls traveled to DC to see sisters and cousins

Peter cooked up a feast at the beach and the kids played hours of beach volleyball

The next weekend was Caroline and Erin's weeklong Appalachian Mountain Club hiking camp

5 days of alpine hiking and staying in the AMC high huts of the White Mountains

Even though temps at the bottom were in the 80s, the summit of Mt. Washington did not disappoint for its reputation for fierce weather. Winds while they were there were sustained at 60 mph and gusting to 70 mph with a temp of 38F and wind-chill of 22F. The weekend before a solo hiker had gotten caught in a snow squall beneath the summit and despite radioing for help he died from exposure. 

We were home for the 4th of July and enjoyed the surprisingly good local Lexington firework display

Spring 2022

 

One of Caroline's extracurricular clubs is Envirothon, an environmental sciences club that culminates in a statewide competition on subjects such as forestry and water quality. We visited the Arboretum to bone up on identifying Massachusetts trees

After learning to distinguish a shagbark hickory from a pignut hickory, Caroline and the team went to the state competition and took home first place. The prize is a week in July of EnviroSci camp at the national competition, this year hosted at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. 

A perk of our town composting program is receipt of one free bag of compost. I'm hoping to complete the circle by growing garden veggies that I will compost, and so on.

Another push from Caroline is to try meat alternatives and I have to say that these chik patties are a decent substitute for a breaded chicken breast

The town's zero-waste coalition is raising awareness about plastic recycling, such as the non-recyclableness of black polypropylene

Erin was a star on the middle school track team focusing on the long jump and mile run

Tessie's completed her first year of math team with an extra big class

On May 13th we hit our first 80+ degree day of the year, which triggered a trip to the town ice cream shop

We went to Somers for Memorial Day and the fish were biting. Everyone got in on the action...

We landed 21 fish for the weekend

Other activities included dousing invasive phragmites plants with herbicide

Planting a tree sapling

enjoying time with Grandma Joan and Grampa Ed

and bringing Tessie to New Jersey

This time we visited Ellis Island and its famous hall of immigration

The Passenger Search database allows you to look for family members who arrived at the Port of New York from 1820 to 1957. There are records for 517 Ehmanns and 152 Loseys but no Heather Loseys, Erin Ehmanns, or Theresa Ehmanns. There were 6 Caroline Ehmanns and 1 David Ehmann.

Lady Liberty was looking fine

On the way home Heather and Tessie left from Newark to visit Heather's Dad and Maria in South Carolina. Tessie got a VIP tour of the cockpit