Hello friends! It’s Mikaela and Carolyn again, checking in before another awesome vacation with the Prestowitz grandparents. This year, we’re vacationing in Maui which, we agree, is not a bad place to spend the end of our summer. As we write this, we’re flying somewhere far above the Pacific Ocean. We likely won’t land for another several hours, so in the meantime we’ll leave you with a quick recap of our summer so far. J
In early June, Mikaela finally got to try summer skiing up at Mount Hood, Oregon under the instruction of her Sugar Bowl coaches. After enduring a six am wake up, a broken flip-flop, and a ten-hour van drive, she finally reached the famous glacier. Mikaela proceeded to have blast with the rest of her teammates (so much so that she didn’t take any pictures. Oops.) Five fun-filled days later, she returned home smiling, sore, and with a large pile of laundry. She’s crossing her fingers that she gets to go again next year!
In the meantime, Carolyn was busy goofing off at UNR soccer camp with all her soccer teammates. Carolyn played soccer all day with her closest friends under the guidance of the university women’s soccer team. They played scrimmages together, worked on drills, and had a mini match of world cup. Carolyn spent her nights in the college dorm rooms, her days at the college stadium, and every second having fun (once again, no pictures. Sorry. Heh.) All in all, Carolyn improved her soccer skills while having fun with her best friends.
Then, in mid July, the entire family waved hello to the east coast and our relatives on Mom’s side of the family. This time, we got pictures (although still not enough)!
First stop: Cabot's Ice Cream!
Cousin Leia digs into her giant sundae, while Mikaela prefers to strategize her plan of attack.
In the meantime, Carolyn digs right in! (Mom mostly just takes pictures and giggles at the green mint ice cream topping.)
To counteract all that sugar, the next day we helped Lola out in her garden and had loads of fun picking all of her homegrown vegetables.
Mikaela holds up the tomato harvest before adding them to the harvest basket.
Carolyn proudly holds up the day's harvest.
The next day, we drove down to Cape Cod to stay in Tita Krishna's gorgeous beach house (sadly, no pictures) where we mostly just hung out at the beach for the next several days (again, no pictures :( ). We do, however, have pictures of our visit to the nearby carnival.
Mikaela and Carolyn wait for their ride to start, while Mom tries (somewhat unsuccessfully) to wave to the camera as she passes.
We also visited our Grady relatives (Papa's sister Betty and her family) and splashed around in the lake behind their house.
From left to right: (Top Row) Uncle Mike Grady, Dad, Papa, Cousin Donovan, Cousin Savannah, Mikaela, Carolyn, Cousin Leia (Bottom Row) Aunt Betty Grady, Lola, Mom. (This would be a good family picture, if it weren't sans Uncle David, who was busy being the actual photographer.)
Mom always talks about getting candy at the 1856 General Store and mixing it with her ice cream, so we replicated the experience (in case you wondering, it was delicious).
We spent the next few days hanging around the house and the backyard beach again, taking a little bit of time to brush up on our musical skills.
Leia sings, while Savannah and Mikaela provide instrumental on guitar and ukulele, respectively.
One night, we treated ourselves to famous Cape Cod lobsters, completed with hard cider for the adults and lemonades for the kids, and followed up with delicious local-made ice cream.
After our fun filled week in the Cape, we eventually had to head back to Boston. We parted ways with Uncle David and Donovan as they start their drive back to Maine, while Tita Julie and Savannah stayed in Boston for Savannah's hockey tournament. In the meantime Lola recruited Mom, Carolyn, Mikaela, and Leia to help out Iskwelahang Pilipino (Boston's Philippine cultural school) make and sell food at the annual Lowell arts festival. As quickly as we could make food, people were eating it! There was a line stretching from our booth all the way around the corner, and we had to work hard just to keep up. One of the most popular foods was Lumpia, so Lola put us to work mixing up batches of filling.
The gang gets ready to do some serious cooking.
While we were busy mixing Lumpia filling, others had plenty to do grilling a variety of skewed meats, which were also quite popular.
One of our favorite foods at the festival was Turon, a traditional Filipino desert made up of a plantain, a wrapper, and lots of sugar.
By the end of the day, we were tired, hungry, and smelled like food, but it was absolutely awesome. (Side note: If anyone ever finds themselves needing enough Lumpia to feed a small army, let us know. We memorized it.)
Anyway, those are all the pictures we have right now. If we receive any more pictures from our various relatives we'll be sure to post them, but in the meantime we're going to get ready for our imminent vacation in Hawai'i. We'll try and post soon!
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