Today Liam was doing his math homework when he popped off his noise cancelling headset and with a look of absolute wonder announced, “I don’t have a headache!”

Well, shucks, we may just have rounded the bend on his concussion recovery. I looked up his fall date–Feb 5th–and since then, until today, he had one long headache. It’s kind of hard to imagine.

We’re delighted he’s feeling better.

One of the silver lining of this concussion has been listening a bit more to audio books. We all loved Trevor Noah’s memoir. Here’s Liam report on the book:

Born a Crime Report

Liam and Reid have been hard at work homeschooling. Because Liam is in a protracted concussion recovery and is not able to use screens for hours at a time, we’ve needed to invent some of our own material. The kids have been reading a ton: currently Percy Jackson, Trevor Noah’s memoir (some would question the appropriateness here, but we sure have laughed a lot), and LeGuin’s Earthsea. The kids have been productive writers as well. Below is Liam’s review of the survivalist novel Brian’s Winter.

Brian’s Winter

Reid recently finished this report on the moon:

Moon newsletter

Life is busy with online teaching and work for adults, as well as homeschooling kids, but we’re having fun. Love to all!

 

 

Liam is taking full advantage of middle school sports. Soccer was short lived, sadly, due to a concussion. But this season Liam has loved nordic skiing (he now has two races under his belt, including one in which his boot broke and he skied on one ski and then finished in his coach’s boots). He has also played on the basketball team here and there when he hasn’t been busy with nordic. Here’s the nordic team:

Reid’s delightful teacher, Mrs. James, runs her classroom as a town, called Jamestown, naturally. The citizens of Jamestown each have a job which comes with a set salary, and occasionally they get the opportunity to spend their savings on provisions (candy, toys, etc). Some citizens–or at least one of them–are arguing for a wage increase.

In case I haven’t posted this before…. A list Reid made early in first grade when he was learning to be literate in both Spanish and English. He decided he wanted to make a book of photos, so he wrote this list of photos to include.

By Liam

A few weeks ago, thinking our road trip adventures were over, Mom and Dad took us on a drive to Fan Lake in Deer Park to go to one of my favorite places in the world, Camp Reed. At first Reid (my brother not the place) was having some second thoughts about Camp (afraid he wouldn’t meet new friends) where as I was entirely ready to do archery, explore, stay up late, sleep in, swim, and have fun whether I did it with a friend or not.

Thankfully, I made many new friends at camp wether they were in my cabin or not. The kids in my cabin’s names were Brody, Alijah, Sparrow, Cody, Tristan, Christian, and Anthony. There were definitely some interesting children in my cabin so I’ll go forth to tell you a fact about each of my cabin mates.

Okay, so Brody has been to camp five times and his favorite counselor was Aztec (my mom’s cousin). Alijah is a newbie to camp like me and lives in Spokane Valley. Tristan is about 4 feet tall and claims he’s twelve; his mom is in jail and his dad smokes tobacco. Anthony is scary, always wants to get into fights, and has a collection of rocks that he will throw at random intervals (he also calls me Cricket for some unexplainable reason). Sparrow is entirely Native American, probably like ten feet tall and has long hair. Cody is bisexual. Christian is overweight and I don’t know much about him.

My best friends at camp were Brody, Sparrow, Alijah, and Sky. Overall at camp I had by far the greatest week of my life and will never forget it.

Toward the end of our road trip, Tim and I visited Waterton Park, home of the Bulger family reunion for more than 50 years. Many of us haven’t been to Waterton in several years, so we thought it would be fun to put together a quiz to test out how folks’ memories are holding up.

All of you competitive Bulgers out there, sharpen your pencils. I know I should have a fancy survey form for this, but I figured you might want to read each other’s answers, or maybe even cheat, so I’d suggest writing answers down on a scrap of paper as you read through this post and then typing them up in a comment below. I fear this will be way too easy for folks like John and Megan–in such cases, turn to your kids to do the answering.

We would have loved to have been in Waterton with all of you!

XOXO, KQ and TW

 

THE BULGER WATERTON (WELL, MOSTLY) QUIZ

1. What does this wheel belong to?

2. What is the green object in the foreground? Clue: What hillside is in the background?

3. Where is this red space found and what is its function?

4. What is the specific location of the colored glass below?

5. From which beach in Waterton is this photograph taken? Be specific.

6. Explain where the image below comes from.

7. Name this falls.

8. What plant does this stalk in the foreground belong to?

9. Name the location of this photo where Tim dunked his head after a short hike.

10. Where does this light fixture live?

11. How about this one?

12. Explain what the yellow object is in the photo below.

13. How about this mechanism below. What is it a part of?

14. How about this shiny object below–there are many of them in Waterton. What is it?

15. What family or organization is in charge of this Waterton house?

16. What word do this Z and U belong to?

17. Name the business that owns this ice machine.

18. What neighboring business owns this walkway?

19. Name the business (general category is fine) outside of which this bench sits.

20. What Waterton business owns this sign?

21. What used to be at this construction site?

22. Where is this sign found?

23. Where is this wall found in Waterton?

24. And where is this dormer found?

Good work. Answers, to the extent that we know them, will be released round about the 22nd of July. Love to all of you!

While the kids were busy at Camp Reed for a week, Tim and I hit the road once more and began the long journey back to Maine. But first, we were fortunate enough to stop for a couple of nights in the Glacier/Waterton region. Logan Pass on the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier had recently been cleared of snow (at least for cars), and Waterton was as stunning as ever, even with its many marks of the 2017 Kenow Wildfire. Wildflowers, ranging from bear grass to Alberta’s signature wild rose, were out in full force.

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What a dream: to visit Washington and our West Coast family, but this time with a tent and wheels! Bri and Anna treated us to a camping tour of the Olympic Penninsula, and then Sal and O’da has us buzzing around Spokane on electric scooters. None of us realized it when we first arrived, but this will be Sal and O’da’s last summer at 458. It’s sad to say goodbye to our beautiful Quirk family home, but we’re happy for Mom and Dad that they are moving on to a more practical house for this phase of life.

Our feeling about virtually all of the places we visited on this trip was that we had too little time, perhaps particularly in California. What a huge, varied state! We only saw a few corners, but they were sweet, and seeing a few friends from our past there made the stops even sweeter.