Kyle left this evening for New Hampshire where he will be working over the weekend. Maya has another week to go at camp. Nico will return from Nantucket on Sunday and sent this photo he took on the beach. Jeanine and I are enjoying the peace and quite but are admittedly missing our babies. With the van sold, Jeanine is starting to get serious about a replacement vehicle and did some test drives today. We will probably spend some time over the weekend checking out different brands.

When he discovered girls, he became irresistable. He is a man now, and next year at this time, he will be getting ready to leave the nest for college. I fear that day will come all too quickly, and I want to cherish every day with him from now until then.

When he found sports he grew strong.

Then we sent him to school and he just kept getting smarter.

The more we fed him the more he grew.

18 years ago today I met a very nice little man. It was love at first sight.

Today I met with Nora Micheva, the MIT graduate student I am mentoring as part of the Gordon Engineering Leadership program. She is currently preparing her Master’s thesis while working at Analog Devices and will graduate next spring. She is an electrical engineer and has expressed an interest in possibly working at iRobot after she earns her degree. I enjoyed giving her a brief tour of the iRobot museum and comparing notes on our respective exploits over the last several months. Here she is in a recent video interview with MIT Tech TV (link).

Yesterday Jeanine returned from Oklahoma where she spent the last week with her closest childhood friend, Kris Earle, pictured here atop one of her horses. The two spent hours gardening together and gathering peaches and blueberries and turning them into yummy things, some of which made their way in the form of preserves back to Concord. Jeanine returned with a nourished soul.

Nicolai has been sleeping away most mornings on this summer vacation. Today he did not appear too happy at 5:50AM while waiting to be picked up by a friends family with which he will spend the next week at their summer home on Nantucket. Despite the mood captured in this photo, Nico is thrilled for this opportunity and has been looking forward to spending time with his friends.

Although I enjoyed observing the marine life, I took even more pleasure from watching the boys interact. It is not often these days that they spend time with each other absent the presence of their friends or electronic entertainment. Kyle spent a large part of the weekend working and is tired and hungry. Both boys required feeding before and after the aquarium visit. We ate at Quincy Market and lingered to enjoy a street artist.

To the utter dismay of their mother, who returns from Oklahoma tomorrow, the boys elected to go to the Boston Aquarium for a boy’s night out. Jeanine constantly strives to expose the kids to educational and cultural enrichment opportunities often to her total consternation. Although the boys have grown up a lot since their last visit, they remained quite enthusiastic about the penguins, jelly fish, sharks, giant octopus and harbor seals.