Proud builder

Alana put together this Tinkertoy contraption at our friend Jake's house (it's a bad photo, taken with my cell phone, but she looks so pleased with herself).

Trip to the zoo

It was a beautiful day, after a cold and snowy Thanksgiving, so we met our friends Geo and Nicole (and their mom, Dawn) at the zoo for a frolicsome afternoon. This is all four kids peeking out of the penguin cutout (left to right: Caleb, Nicole, Alana, Geo).

Tea Party

This is not Alana's first tea party, but it's the first tea party where I made real food. Such sweet memories - tea parties were one of my favorite childhood activities!

Icy time

We had a wonderful walk in the park today, but the kids were good and ready to head home to hot chocolate by the end because they spent the first 15 minutes at the park smashing the ice in this puddle. (Alana is in her brand new coat that we bought at Burlington Coat Factory yesterday afternoon.)

Battleship play

After a long walk at the park, we vegged out most of the day. Among other things, Caleb set up a bunch of soldiers on this battleship (he took this photo himself).

Thanksgiving

Burt and Bobbie weren't able to make it - Burt is coughing like a mad man and is taking antibiotics again - the trip is just too much. Such a shame, though Larry's Right Hand Man, Tom, and his wife and 3 children came. It was a great success, as the children played really well together and the adults were able to visit. The meal was a success as well (my first ever full-hostessing of the event), though I would tweak several things if I could - the turkey was quite tasteless, which surprised me, since we stuffed it with onions and garlic and spread garlic and several other spices on top (next year I may try brining overnight), and even though we used a roaster bag, it was dry on one side (boo hiss!) The mashed potatoes tasted good, but I should have mashed them more (they were quite lumpy). The (Stovetop) stuffing and store-bought gravy were less than satisfying, no surprise there - I should have gotten Pepperidge Farms! The pecan pie was gorgeous (Jeannie's recipe), but could have used 5 more minutes in the oven. The wild rice stuffing that I made from scratch was wonderful, but the wild rice was crunchy - not the texture that I had expected (I would make it again, but partially precook the wild rice).

The major triumph was that I really timed everything perfectly - everything that was supposed to be hot was hot when we sat down to eat. Also, I made cranberry sauce from scratch for the first time and it came out really well (next time I would dress it up with some orange peel or chopped pecans or something). There were plenty of leftovers (we sent some home with Tom and his gang) and I made soup with the turkey carcass, so that felt like a triumph too.

Alana was especially excited about Thanksgiving this year and had said several times in the days leading up to it how much she loves eating turkey (not sure why, since I don't think we've had any since last year, which she surely doesn't remember).

Caleb said the sweetest stuff that he was thankful for - only his family and not his toys or anything ("that stuff doesn't matter") - I almost cried.

Larry is suddenly fixated on Turducken for some reason and when Leo called in the morning to say "hi," what do you think he'd just made? Turducken! He ended up talking with Larry so I never got the story of why, but it did seem a freaky coincidence. Larry had a huge turkey banquet at TRH on Wednesday, with contributions from all the staff. They deep fried a turkey and all agreed that it was fantastic (crispy outside, juicy inside). Larry is determined to deep fry ours next year!

BD earrings

I got some money for my birthday and ordered a bunch of new earrings online, to go with my longer hair. The blue rectangles are little books. These all came from two sites: Ten Thousand Villages (a fair trade site) and The Greater Good Network (which donates profits to various charities, including breast cancer research).

Brrr!

From the "It's Always Something" file - overnight Saturday, our furnace died. The ironic thing is, we're just waiting for the approval of our home equity loan to get a new furnace and do some other winterizing.

We had a repairman come in on Sunday. He said the circuit board died, but because it's an older model, he doesn't have the part and has to order it.

Fortunately, we have electric heat in the master bedroom and Matt's bedroom (left over from when the house was first built - the gas heat was added about 5 years later). The kids slept on the floor of our room and we closed the doors of the other two bedrooms.

It could be worse - it's only seasonably cold right now - 30s overnight and 40s during the day - nothing like the frigid temps we'll get later in the winter. I was worried about how cold the house would be in the morning, but the thermostat read 54 degrees when I got up, so there's either some residual heat coming from the furnace, or just lingering heat in the house.

Larry spoke to the new furnace people today, and they said they can come first thing Tuesday morning. So we're not going to bother getting the old furnace fixed - we'll just huddle under blankets tonight and be grateful that we'll have heat the next day.

Snowy walk

It snowed a bit more overnight and it was so freakin' gorgeous in the park, it almost made me cry - just enough snow to cover everything with a light, fluffy white blanket. Roxy ran around all over, and went nuts when a squirrel ran across the path in front of us - I think it was the highlight of her life so far.

Snow!

Our second snow of the winter. It was snowing like mad when I was coming to work, but it's done now and there seems to be only a solid dusting on grass and rooftops. This is the view out my office window (that's the helipad in the very upper right corner).

The Horror, The Horror

I was just trying to get Alana out of a fussy mood, so I let her help me pump gas (she loves to help). I wasn't paying enough attention, and when she pulled back slightly on the pump handle, the gas shot out of the tank opening, spraying her full in the face. It was so awful. I rushed her inside and flushed her eyes. She was fine, but we all got a fright (even the other people pumping gas came over to see if she was O.K.) She was upset b/c she thought she had been bad, but I assured her that it was totally my fault. The smell is lingering in my car, but that would be a small price to pay as long as Alana recovers.

Ugh!

Worst stomach day in a long time - something I ate, of course, though it's hard to know what. The only meals that aren't suspects are breakfast on Saturday (b/c I made that myself) and lunch at Rice on Saturday (where I ordered from the GF menu). It's (almost) worth it though!

Family time

Stopped at the Crayola Museum in Easton, PA on our way back to Syracuse where everyone had a good ole time.

New York, New York

A town so nice, they named it twice.

I really enjoyed my trip to NYC, but the stagehand strike shuttered most of the B'way theaters, so we saw Cirque du Soleil at Madison Square Garden - fun, but not the same. The kids would have loved the show, which was specifically designed for families, but I found it rather underwhelming after seeing Cirque du Soleil on TV and knowing what they're capable of. Oh well.

I had wonderful lunch at Rice off Houston St (the rice-infused green tea was incredible and the Porteguese soup totally hit the spot). After the show, my friend Terri (who came in from Houston) and her friend Amy (who lives in Brooklyn) and I had dinner at Marseille on 9th Ave. Unfortunately, despite what I'd heard, they did not have a GF menu, nor any particular interest in accomodating me - the chef said the only thing that he could guarantee was GF was the salmon, which I don't much care for. They did have a very reasonably priced Prix Fixe menu - three courses for $35. I ordered the delicious "Tunisian chicken," and had a mocha parfait for dessert, along with some excellent capaccino, but the highlight was the roasted hazelnuts on the endive salad, which were almost as good as the tea I had earlier. Eating in NYC is the point anyway, right?!

I also really enjoyed walking around the city, which I used to do a lot when I lived in NJ, but haven't done in years. The weather was better than I had expected (the rain cleared out and it was fairly mild), which made it especially pleasant. This guy drumming on buckets, one of several street performers I saw, was quite good.

Another triumph - Matt was very impressed with Pace University and it's moved to the top of the college list (and so reasonably priced at just $40K a year). Larry and Matt had a splendid feast in Little Italy before heading back to NJ.

It's my birthday!

The month of October went by so quickly that I'm rather stunned to find that it's November and today I turn 45 years young. Now that sounds just ridiculous - how can I be that old? But time marches on, and mostly I just count and count and count my many blessings!

SNOW!

We got the tiniest dusting overnight - the first snow of the season (Alana is SO excited). This morning the kids' Halloween pumpkins look like they've been frosted.

Danny's O.K.!

I've been in a fever all week, since I heard BAD news out of Kirkuk on Monday:

http://www.news10now.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=125518

Four soldiers killed in Iraq
11/6/2007
FORT DRUM, NY -- Four 10th Mountain Division soldiers were killed in Iraq Monday. The soldiers, who were attached to the 1st Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Drum, were killed when a roadside bomb detonated near their vehicle in Kirkuk. The brigade has been in Iraq for two months.

But I got an email from Danny tonight and I don't think I've ever been so relieved in my life. The next 13 months are going to be so difficult!

Very first snow

Big news for Matt

He's already been accepted at his #1 school choice - the Univ of New Haven in Connecticut. We can't believe it happened so quick! Now we just have to see what kind of aid package we can find for him (he's already been awarded a partial scholarship) because the school ain't cheap.

Matt cooks

Matt made the entire dinner tonight - potato skins for the appetizer and crab-stuffed flounder with brocolli for the entree. In this photo, he's cooking Bananas Foster for dessert.

I'm the new president of TSOC Sisterhood

Holy cow! It's official - my friend Dawn and I are the new co-presidents of the synagogue Sisterhood (or Women of Reform Judaism)! I was sort of drafted to run, and after some initial misgivings, decided to Go For It. The group has been dormant for a couple of years and there's clearly an interest in creating a way for Jewish women to connect. We had a great meeting on Sunday morning, with an impressive turnout, and the group has lots of ideas for programs and activities. Dawn and I really wanted to hit the ground running, so to speak, so we already planned a Havdallah service at my house on Sat, Nov 17th (one thing I'd like to start is a monthly Havdallah group, hmmm, that sounds familiar). We want to have more activities at people's houses, to make it less formal and to serve the wide geographic area that members come from (the synagogue is downtown). And we especialy want to get away from what we witnessed last year, which is talking about lots of stuff, but never doing anything. We want to have lots of activities and not get bogged down in planning or second guessing (e.g., what's the *perfect* date for this or that). This way, we can raise of profile and get noticed in the synagogue community. We got a really positive response to our approach.

These are some other activities we discussed: my friend Jennifer, who is a "Stampin' Up" consultant, is hosting a Chanukah card making party the last week of November, a woman named Lisa is going to do a Quilling class, another woman, named Judith, wants to start a monthly salon (I'm really excited about that!), we talked about a book club with Jewish topics or authors, a monthly Shabbat potluck and a monthly lunch group. There was also talk of wine tastings, game nights, movie nights, and a health fair. We agreed that there are plenty of interesting women in the group and in the community to have guest speakers and meaningful programs at monthly meetings. And maybe most exciting, there are clearly some untapped babysitters among the synagogue teens - we're trying to get coordinated with them, for our meetings and events, and also just for people who need sitters and can't find any. The whole thing is very exciting! I hope we can keep the momentum going.

Walk in the park on a lovely fall day

Phillip came along. We took a walk first - for some reason, it was Attack Matthew day.

Then we hung out on the playground for awhile.

The Celiac Maven

Larry told me that someone at his restaurant last night said that the Watertown TRH is getting a "reputation" as very GF-friendly, due largely to his (Larry's) extensive knowledge. HA! That's to my credit of course, and Larry said so. But I was ridiculously thrilled to think that my efforts to educate him are helping any number of people almost a hundred miles away. WOW!

My precocious daughter

Today Alana told me that she wanted to be a doctor. She's FOUR!