June
Twice a year, Hopewell has a municipal yard sale. It's a bit like the entire town having a car boot sale in their front gardens. And of course, if there's a car boot sale going on, there's no keeping Linda away from it. Surprisingly enough, despite the fact that we streamlined our stuff to come out here, we still had plenty of stuff to lay out and try and earn a few extra dollars. We didn't make a lot of money, but we did get to meet with a lot of local people. Hopewell is a very community-spirited town, and sometimes its hard to remember how dismissive we were when we first looked around. We will try hard to find another home here when we move out of the apartment.
In a complete contrast to the collection of new American experiences, Linda, Debbie Smith, Sue Capon and a few other ex-pats got together to arrange the most marvellous street party in honour of the Queens Golden Jubilee. Well, it wasn't in the street - Debbie and Colin have a house on an enormous farm, room enough for a large barbecue and a good old game of rounders. The weather was remarkably good, much food was eaten, very much drink was drunk and Union Flags abounded ! Long live the Queen !
On June 6th, Thomas 'graduated' from Nursery with a program of singing, dancing, recitations. When the children were asked to describe what they were going to be when they grew up, Thomas told everyone he was going to become a Pæleontologist !
Once school was over, Thomas was at soccer camp for a week, where they seemed to find many excuses to arrange all sorts of activities other than soccer.
Chris flew to Los Angeles to spend a week visiting Factiva's West Coast offices. 
LA offered a very typical welcome - on arriving on Sunday afternoon the cab driver had to drop Chris 100 yards from the entrance to his hotel because a movie was being filmed in the street outside. Chris' trip took in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, SF again before Linda and Thomas flew out on the final Friday to join Chris in San Francisco for our summer holiday.
July
Thomas also attended Elementary School Summer Camp, which is a great way for him to meet his new teachers and learn his way around his new school before school starts. A sign of things to come are that for his two weeks of induction Thomas has to take with him on various days one new t-shirt, a baseball shirt, swimming trunks, a half-gallon milk carton, and his bike and helmet. They believe in keeping kids busy, and if Thomas works half as hard at home as he will do at school - well, that will be a lot of work.
At the end of July, it was time for the annual RnR trip to New York. Unfortunately Graham (with new born pending) could not risk making the trip, but Chris and Andy had a traditional boys weekend of beer, baseball, steak, beer, clubs, films, beer, pizza and more beer.
However, making the reverse trip from the sublime to the ridiculous, Chris had to travel from NY to a work appointment in Boise, Idaho - which is a bit like having a business meeting in Sutton Coldfield. Boise is famous for growing potatoes and, as Chris discovered, having no direct flights from the East Coast.
August
During August we made another big road trip. This time, Linda and Thomas flew down to North Carolina to stay with Sandy and Craig at their new home in Raleigh.
It 
was nice to catch up with Sandy and talk about their new life - living in a lovely wooded lane, instead of in the close-knit borough streets of Hopewell. At least Sandy was near her family now(!) Thomas re-acquainted himself with Isis, and spent as much time as he could out in the garden with her. Sandy took Linda and Thomas to met her parents in Thomasville ! This was about two hours away from Raleigh, so they all stayed the night and took advantage of next doors swimming pool, while Sandy's father grilled. The return trip included a visit to North Carolina Zoo. Linda didn't know who was more excited - Sandy or Thomas !
In the middle of the week Chris loaded the Chevy Tracker up with cans of soda, sandwiches, CD's, roadmaps and directions and set off to drive from Princeton to Raleigh, through Phildelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, into Virginia and onto North Carolina. The 500 mile trip was completed in 8 hours, with only one 15 minute stop, and mostly through a dramatic electrical storm and torrential rain.
Together we all went to the beach at Wilmington, where we bought Thomas a boogie board of his own, and Chris bought himself a really nice kite which the Beach Gestapo would not let him fly it.
On the return trip, we decided to break the journey in DC, and spent one night in the obligatory Holiday Inn with pool (Thomas' choice) before wheeling round some of the sites. Washington is actually an amazing city, and far more tourist friendly than New York. There are so many important, famous and interesting buildings to see in Washington that you could easily spend a week there - well, without a small child you could.
The only downside is the interminable traffic problems that plague the city, at least anyone who is trying to get around it on the Beltway - think of the M25, double its length, add another lane and it's still blocked solid all day long.
