On Friday, we went to visit Matty’s childhood bestie, Lesley, and her family up in the NH boonies (no offense, Les), but we’re talking the most picturesque, just-stepped-out-of-a-Rockwell painting boonies of all time. I kept expecting a little black and white dog to run up with the Saturday Evening Post in his mouth. I’m serious, she even lives across the street from the town hall, which has those old timey red white & blue half circle banners (you know the ones), and next door to a general store in a red barn that sells homemade whoopie pies.

When I let Lesley know our ETA, she texted me back saying she’d “alert Slowpoke.” I assumed she meant one of her kids, because, well, kids are slow (at least mine are), but oh noooo, she meant her neighbor, Slowpoke the tortoise. That’s right, a tortoise lives next door. He’s 15 years old, eats fruit and veggies, and has a little dog-turned-tortoise house painted like a tortoise shell and we are in love with him.

It was hard to match the excitement of feeding Slowpoke, but we did get pretty psyched about going peach picking. The O’Rourke kids (and adults) have a healthy obsession with peaches, so I had this vision of bushels of big, juicy, orchard-fresh peaches. But that didn’t happen.

Instead, we went blueberry picking. We are also big fans of “bluebs”, so that worked out well.

Then we had lunch, and one of us helped herself to a whole lot of Trader Joe peas.

While George and Eliza napped (in the same room!), Hazy and Nora performed a fashion show/play/art piece.

Then we went for a walk and some bench jumping, as you do.

Before we went home, the Steinhausers treated us to a really awesome sushi dinner (definitely the way to my heart), and in return, George put the moves on their youngest. Sorry, Steinhausers.

Then the little O’Rourkes passed out while I took the long road home to non-Rockwellian JP. But don’t worry, the fun’s not over yet. In my continuing quest to give these kids the Best Summah Evahhh, we then headed to Martha’s Vineyard for two days with Auntie Gigi & Uncle Heavy. Update to come.