July was a very busy month! Bob came back from Vermont ahead of Penney so that he and Andrew could get in a "mini-cruise" to Kelleys Island before it was too "iffy" for Andrew to leave (in terms of the coming birth). Penney followed to help put on a baby shower with Emily's Mom and sisters. Then, it was back to Vermont, where we hung out at the auction and the Brattleboro Farmers' Market and heard an address by Peter W. Galbraith, son of the late economist and Ambassador to India in the Kennedy Administration; he has extensive foreign-policy experience and is the only person I know who has been consistently right about both Iraq and Afghanistan.

These three photos are all from the Kelleys Island "mini-cruise":

Far left: Andrew at the helm on the trip over

Center: A deer greets us while we were hiking back from the beach

Above: Bob at the helm on the return trip, which had better wind and more excitement.

Emily and her sisters at the baby shower, held at her parents' home in Bay Village. It was a very warm day, but no one over the age of 9 actually went in the pool (although some of us wanted to!)

(l to r: Annabelle, Amanda, Abigail, Emily)

Bigtime baseball fan Emily looks at an Indians' uniform we gave the baby.

Uncle-to-be Paul at the shower (note clever pink-and-blue tie; at this point,, no one knows the baby's sex).

Drew was a very good sport about wearing the bib, especially made for him by Emily's maternal grandmother.

At another party the same day, Heidi Hist Demaline (the first baby Bob Baptized when he came to St. Thomas) shows off her own new daughter, Allison Grace.

Among other things, Andrew plays in a community band which plays its concerts in the Victorian gazebo on the Town Square in Medina. Here is one of the concerts we attended this month; they are very well-attended and feature bake sales, ice-cream, and other goodies for sale. Medina is about 30 minutes south of Berea.

Penney at the auction! (Mom is in the white sweater just to the right of Penney's nose). I think this was just before she bought the slot machine for her school!

Peter W. Galbraith (a Vermont resident), addressing an overflow crowd at the Rockingham Library about Afghanistan (it's an unwinnable war, he says; I agree).

Mom and Penney eating a Thai lunch at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market, a Saturday tradition in Brattleboro, a town about 35 minutes' south of Bellows Falls, just north of the Massachusetts border. It's where the 1960s went to retire—you can still find psychedelically-painted VW microbusses around!

This was just after the auction, which was held maybe 25 minutes NW of Brattleboro, in Townshend, VT.