Practicing Parenthood: The Blog is Back: Summer Kick-Off 2011 in Chestertown, MD

To every thing, there is a season (or not) and apparently, fall, winter, and spring, although my seasons for moaning about torrential downpours and record-setting snowfalls and the tyranny of the dailies, are not my seasons for blogging. I’m the migrant worker of bloggers: I disappear for most of the year, but come summer, I am back and ready to work.

Summer kicked off for our clan this weekend in Chestertown, a tiny hamlet on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that my husband and I have dubbed “Mayberry” and which is home to Washington College, the Chestertown Tea Party of May 1774 (the country’s lesser-known cousin to Boston’s showier and infinitely more well-known version), and last but not least, my parents. It is an excellent choice for those in search of a laid-back and wholesome family weekend getaway.

Almost continuously since 1968, Chestertown has been hosting its annual Tea Party Festival every Memorial Day weekend. Since attending festivals of any sort with three children ages six and under always sounds better in theory than in actual practice, our attendance was abbreviated, but highlights included: picking up squirmy baby turtles at the Sultana Center, an educational space featuring a variety of hand-on exhibits run by Sultana Projects in the heart of downtown; getting faces painted to support the Humane Society of Kent County; partaking in the local cuisine of clam strips, crab cake sandwiches, and curly fries for lunch; and laughing at the kids’ level of hilarity usually solely reserved for old episodes of “Tom and Jerry” while watching the refreshingly politically incorrect “Punch and Judy” puppet show on the Courthouse Green.