Alex says this morning

"Know what kind of monster I'd be to scare Shaggy and Scooby Doo? A Lizard-Person. Half lizard, half robot and half person."

He then proceeded to hulk around the room showing me how scary it would be.

Some of the girl

A few new pictures of Gracie. She has started her first foray into team sports, joining the girl's softball league here in town. Luckily coached by Annie's father (one of her very best friends).


Hopefully learning here how to not throw like a girl. Love those cool pony-tail baseball hats.


Ball actually leaving the tee. Batting helmets are so big they look like football helmets (fine with me - better protection for those new adult teeth coming in).


Just stopped the ball and ready to throw it back in.


Grace and her other best friend Anna. It's a wonder how those girls can see under those big ol' hats.


My little ham before the first night of the school's spring variety show. She did a great job dancing to "Car Wash" and can't wait to be in the show again next year.

Water water everywhere...

Just as I think I'm getting used to this Yankee life up here, something happens to smack me back to reality.

This morning we got up as usual, and as I was in the kitchen about to make Jim's lunch I hear a sound from the basement sounding an awful lot like pouring water. Upon investigation, YES - not pouring but spewing water, with water all over the basement floor. We had lots of rain last night which apparently our sump pump did not like. I don't know if there is a clog in the french drain that caused this, but a point where two pipes are clamped together has sprung a leak, so every 15 min or so when the pump kicks on water starts spraying out from this connection.

I've got most of the water sopped up with mutiple uses of just about every towel in the house (saturate towel, spin cycle in washer, hot setting in dryer, repeat - I'm rotating about three batches of towels). Looks like we only lost one framed picture, a sisal rug (that I didn't like anyway) and a box of videotapes - most everything else that got wet can dry out and survive, and the really good stuff is on a shelf up high or in plastic bins. I'm patiently waiting the arrival of the plumber, going down and changing towels out that are trying to catch the occasional spray from the pipe.

Before moving up here I don't think I'd ever been in a basement in a house or seen a sump pump. I'm still a bit mystified by the pump - this big strange hole in the bottom of my house that water drains into. At least this is still covered by the home warranty, so hopefully I'm only going to be out $95 to get it fixed.

Sunday paper tidbits

I'm back with some more.

- In the spirit of downsizing our lives, many are downsizing their vacations. If you are looking for some place to drive to rather than fly, the website at freemaptools.com can help out with this. An option at the location I linked too can let you look at what constitutes a 500 mile radius around any point, with the idea that 500 miles can easily be driven in a day's time. When I draw a radius from Newark, 500 miles includes Columbus(!), all of New England, Toronto, and just about down to South Carolina. It can open your eyes to places to visit without the expense of airline tickets. But Jim pointed out that since our move our 500 miles includes many more states than from Dallas where most of your distance is still just Texas.

- With the recession many more families are embracing "slow parenting." Pretty much cutting down kids activities and having family spend more time together - adding more quality time with the family. Wow, we've been "slow parenting" for quite a long time now. Maybe we're trendy and didn't know it.

- Our newspaper runs a "Meet Your Neighbors" section on Sunday where they feature an interesting person in Central NJ that maybe would not normally get much notice. This week they told about Clara Kramer, 81-years-old, who is a Holocaust survivor. During the Holocaust when Clara was 15 she spent 20 months in a crawl space under the house of her sympathetic neighbor in Poland. For as horrible as it was - vermin, hunger, thirst, fear - if she'd left the hiding place it would have been certain death for both her and the neighbors who hid her. In order to occupy herself she kept a total of four diaries during that time that she and her family were able to smuggle out of the country once they escaped. The diaries eventually made it to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum where they were rediscovered and Clara was convinced to turn her story into a book. Just the thought of what she went through at age 15 makes me want to buy it. So I think sometime after Tuesday I'll go out and do just that - "Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival" by Clara Kramer.

Easter eggs and living room

Just a few photos from egg hunting.






This was when sweet Grace was evening out the number of eggs in the baskets (meaning she was giving some of hers to her brother). An Easter miracle!


Eating the loot.


Our new floor, new paint, and new entertainment center Jim and I put together. It kicked our butts, but it looks great.

Grace wanted her picture in front of the new furniture. The floor lamp is going to go away as soon as we get can lights installed in the ceiling. And for as beat as we were after all this, we then had to move the furniture back in the room.

The boy's wish

Alex tells us tonight "If I saw a shooting star in the sky I would make a wish that every day was Spring Break." We had a fun week last week - so sad it's over.

Working on the house

Just a few pictures to satisfy the curious.


Our pretty new floor (VERY much so when compared to what was previously here).


Grace was being a dog for some reason.


Jim touching up the little bit right up near the ceiling. It's hard to tell from this picture, but the walls look a million times better than when they were dirty, hole-covered pale blue. And these walls were extremely hole-covered. It's amazing how much crap the previous owners had hanging everywhere. Trim will get painted a lighter shade of green tomorrow, plus we have a trip to Ikea to get the new entertainment center. Yay!

The house is sold!!!

Yes, as of 5:45pm Eastern time today we are no longer multiple home owners (unless you count our portion of the rent house, but you know what I mean).

This has been the most stressful two weeks I've been through in a long time. As many of you are aware, this was the most nit-picky buyer EVER. And of course we had to bend over backwards to make things right because after about 6 months of two house payments we were totally ready to unload the old house, no matter how much we loved it and will miss it.

So now we are ready to hit the ground running with projects on our current house. Tomorrow the floor guys show up to take out the nasty parquet floor in our family room and put in some beautiful new hardwoods. A little bit of painting and a trip to Ikea and we'll pretty much have one room completely redone. It will be nice to get these things done, to finally make our house a little bit more "ours."

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Well, not as successful a trip today as we had on Sunday. Part of the problem is that we got on the road late because Mommy & Daddy had to spend time at the bank getting papers notarized/faxed/fed exed/etc for the impending house sale tomorrow (everyone please still keep fingers crossed on that). Plus art museums seem in theory more fun for your kids than what they really turn out to be (at least with an almost 7 and 4 1/2 year old). Looking back I should have prepared us a little more for the trip - I read that kids get excited seeing art in person that they've seen before in a book or on TV. But we decided on our destination just yesterday, so there wasn't much time to plan. The kids were excited at the beginning, but quickly devolved into hungry, tired, cranky little devils. But for as tough as it was to experience, I still feel it was worth it. If we don't expose the kids to museums they won't ever learn to love them. So for even a tiny trip (we probably drove in the car for as long as we were at the actual museum) I still think it was a good day.

Enormous column we saw upon entering the museum. Grace was impressed enough that she sketched it in her sketch pad.


As we enter this room the 4-year-old says (not too quietly) "Mommy, I see penises in here."


The Temple of Dendur. An actual entire temple inside the museum - very cool to see.


Graffiti from the 1800s can be seen throughout the temple.


The kids really liked this part because we let them throw coins in the water at the temple. Alex also liked that these little fences were made with chains similar to ball bearing chains - felt neat to run your fingers on.


We swung by the Medieval armor area on the way back to the car. Even though Alex was very cranky he was quite impressed with all the swords and guns. Just like a boy.

Tomorrow Grace and Jim have their "date" on Broadway. Grace is very excited about the whole thing (as she should be - I think they will have a wonderful time).

Central Park

We couldn't have asked for better weather yesterday to explore Central Park (and just a small part of the park - so much more to see). It was sunny and about 65 degrees. The Chicago song "Saturday In the Park" kept rolling through my head, even though it was Sunday. We didn't do much - had hot dogs and ice cream, climbed the rocks, listened to street musicians, walked around. The line to the zoo was way too long, so we skipped that. We also didn't make it up to the Alice in Wonderland sculpture yet either.


Kids excitedly waiting for the train to arrive to take us to NYC.


Little bit of park, little bit of city shot.


Alex showing off the last of his hotdog bun, soon to be devoured.


Forsythia like these in Central Park are blooming everywhere, even in our yard at home.


Sweet Grace posing in the daffodils.




Climbing one of the many rock "mountains" in the park. This was the kids absolute favorite activity to do that day, and this photo doesn't do justice to how big the rocks actually were.


Our surprise at FAO Schwarz. This is the first time Alex had no fear at all with a costumed creature. He turned to the guy after the picture and said "I have a stuffy at home just like you!"

No Sunday News Today

It's Spring Break here so no time to put any Sunday paper tidbits down to share. Hopefully I'll have some pictures posted soon from our fun day we had at Central Park today.