The basic premise of the documentary is about a normal Dad from London, David Bond who appoints himself as the Marketing Director of Mother Nature because he sees that his children are watching too much telly and are not playing outside as much as they should. Bond goes to various marketing gurus and creates a lovely manifesto that implores people of all ages to go outside and explore and embrace their childhood:
"The Wild Network exists to champion and support connection with nature and
wildness in children and young people.
The Wild Network mission is to support children, parents and guardians
of children to roam free, play wild and connect with nature.
We believe all children should have the right to access the outdoors for play,
learning, expression and development of healthy mind and body.
We encourage, provoke, nudge, support, innovate and campaign for children,
kids and young folk to get up and outside."
Even though we live in the city we do try to get Oliver outside as much as possible. We go to our neighbohood park daily (weather permitting) and we go hiking in the surrounding reservations and we also go to Drumlin Farm to see animals but we still do exist in our daily life in a city setting and I do hope that Oliver can foster a love and respect for Mother Nature. I hope that we as parents can remember to let go a bit and embrace the saying coined by Lady Allen of Hurtwood a landscape architect; "Better a broken bone than a broken spirit."
Now that Oliver is back at school and loving playing with all of his friends we decided why not rock the boat a wee bit more and move him from his toddler bed into a bigger bed and by bigger I mean we put him into a full bed! He loves it and got to pick out sheets at Target. He went with the Avengers so he now rests with Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man, not too bad for a 3 1/2 year old! The first night I went in after he was asleep to peek on him an oh my did he look so small in that big bed but he is loving it and it has made his room look much more spacious. So now he can get on with playing Dr. Oliver and taking care of his fuzzy friends, maybe even he will learn to play upstairs on his own for more than two minutes before he desperately needs me for something, anything. 
waiting for lunch. (with a sweet before?!) 
watching the trucks. 
Over the weekend we went on our first apple picking excursion of the year. We went to a favourtite spot in Stow, MA called 
this year Mondays are my day with Oliver. So this week we struck out to the main library in Cambridge and walked by plenty of doe eyed freshman en route to their morning classes. It was a beautiful day so we took our time ambling along the storied Harvard paths chatting and searching for all of the "red" items that we could spot as we walked.
watching the world go by in the "treehouse" children's section of the library.
loves the train and he was a bit disappointed that we were only taking it one stop.
pretending to drive the Mexico?! Sometimes I wish I could crawl inside of his brain to see where these schemes and ideas come to fruition. 
reading books after school while ignoring my pleas to pack up his lunch box.
Here is a large chunk of pictures from our time in Michigan. I cannot really put into words how special this place is to me and it truly makes my heart sing that both Oliver and Matt have embraced the shores of Lake Michigan as much as I have. It is one of the highlights of our summer and we look forward to our excursion out to the Midwest every summer. The Little Cottage has been in my family for centuries and I hope to continue to eat ice cream, enjoy sunsets, cook simple dinners, and swim in the lake until I am old and grey just like my grandparents did. 
here we go! another year of preschool for my boy. he is in the green room this year and I do believe he would have walked himself to school if we let him! i love that he is so happy at his school and it makes is so much easier to walk away knowing that he is having a ton of fun with buddies. I cannot get over how big he has gotten and overall we had a fabulous summer filled with trips and time at the beach and lots of sunshine. 
such a hambone.
the lake was high and the weather was touch and go and so foggy on some occasions that it felt more like San Francisco than Michigan but we still swam a lot and even though we did not have the stunning sunsets that we have come to expect the crickets and crashing waves kept us company at night.
a bit blurry and I swear they were all having a wonderful time! one of my closest college roommates, Liz who now resides outside of Detroit drove with her two wonderful kiddos, Ainslie and Declan to play and eat popsicles and splash in the water and generally run around with Oliver like the three crazy kiddos that I love. It was so wonderful to see them and my gosh do I wish that we lived closer. 
