Belated birthday shots

I realized I'd never posted any pictures from Grace's birthday party. Didn't get much, mainly because most of her party was at the movie theater. We took five little girls and Grace to see the Disney nature movie Earth (two other girls couldn't make it), then back to the house for cake and presents.

My beautiful 7-year-old girl.


About to blow out the candles. Look close and you can see where my homemade cake cratered after icing (I don't normally make two-layer cakes; I'm not sure what happened). Once I stuck all those mini-Oreos on it the kids didn't care one bit. And Grace really wanted the big number 7 candle this year - that stuck on too early may have been the cause of the crater now that I think about it.


Alex ate his cake and ice cream in the back room. Not only did he not want to be near all the giggling girls, he also refused to eat his cake on a Hannah Montana plate or use a Hannah napkin. I've got a girl-classmate's birthday party to take him to this Friday and I'm thinking I will need to stash a plain paper plate and napkin in my purse for it.

I missed having our big party in the backyard with all our family and friends, but I must admit this year was much easier on me. But I am so happy we had Bonnie here to help out. Even with a small party it is nice to have at least one other family member helping out!

Art Show

Grace had been telling me that her art teacher put a picture of hers into an art show, but I never received anything about it so any info I received came from the mouth of a 7 year old. Well we discovered this week that it was in the district-wide art show for Westfield schools. I don't know how many people from each school got entered, but I know there we only two kids out of Grace's class of 20 who had entries (there were entries from every school from Kindergarten through seniors at the high school). Anyway, today was the last day of the show so Alex and I stopped by for a minute to check it out. Unfortunately I didn't realize there were night hours earlier in the week, so poor Jim didn't get to see it.


Sweet Alex wanted me to take a picture of him next to his sister's artwork, without me even suggesting it.


Grace's penguin picture on display. That's a fish in the penguin's mouth, and the little things to the right of the bird are not penguin poops but footprints (I got a "No Mom!" with a big 7 year old eye roll when I suggested the poops).


Alex and I looked at a lot of the art, and he likes a lot of the paintings and drawings. But of course the oversized sculptures were the most exciting.


This was my favorite. Truly show-stopping to me. I would have gotten a closer shot, but wanted Alex in the picture for perspective on how big it was. Beautiful rendition of Van Gogh's Sunflowers.


Alex wanted a picture with the big Coke bottle, though I'm not sure he knew what it was because I don't think he's actually seen a glass Coke bottle.


Funny boy acted out the poses for the big Keith Haring cutouts, but wouldn't do it for the camera.


Alex's favorite piece. A big fishbowl made out of saran wrap wrapped around bent wires, with seaweed twisting up in it and fish (which you can't see here) dangling in it.

Sunday paper tidbits

- Historians say many of the legends of Geronimo are more myth than reality. It is most likely NOT his skull being used by Yale's Skull and Bones group. While he was a prisoner at Ft. Sill for the last 15 years of his life, he lived in one of the tribal villages on the post and did not wear a path in the stone floor of his cell by pacing as school children touring the fort were told for decades (he only spent about three weekends in his cell house). A common story was that he had a blanket made from 99 Mexican scalps (yuk), but the problem is that no one ever saw it that can remember it. Geronimo was apparently a master of PR. And the use of yelling "Geronimo!" before jumping was first used by a World War II-era paratrooper who had seen a Western movie about Geronimo the night before a scheduled jump. Do kids still use it when jumping off the swing set?

- A new independent bookstore just opened up in NYC. First off, kudos to bookstores still opening up. The store is called Idlewild, and out of it's more than 7000 books in stock, about half are travel books. And the books are not organized alphabetically; they are sorted geographically by state, country and continent, mixing novels and memoirs with travel guides. They strive to personalize their book choices for people. A cool feature they have are "Destination Kits," a selection of books tailored to individuals. A customer calls with information about the traveler's interests and destinations (and amount they want to spend) and the store will pick out appropriate books. For a trip to Berlin for an architect they offered up TimeOut Berlin, the Knopf Map Guide, "Berlin: The Architecture Guide," Christopher Isherwood's "The Berlin Stories" and Peter Gay's "Weimar Culture." Go to www.idlewildbooks.com to check them out; and if you aren't near the NYC area I'm sure they can ship to you!

- The last tidbit comes not from the Newark Star-Ledger, but from our local weekly paper The Westfield Leader. This week they published their annual "This is Westfield" section, which gives all sort of information about the area. But since the paper has been published since 1890 they also included reprints of past stories. One fun one to read was titled "Martian Invasion Broadcast Provokes Polite Yawns Here," referencing the War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938. While about 30 phone calls were received at Westfield police headquarters from frightened residents about the "Martian attack" (some were hysterical), Maplewood and Newark, NJ, both reported 1,500 calls. Trenton received 800 inquiries and an Elizabeth church was filled with worshippers praying for deliverence. An Orange movie theater emptied in two minutes when a man rushed in announcing the state was being invaded. Many residents of Montclair and Orange packed belongings and headed into the mountains for safety. Women fainted when they heard the news second-hand (maybe these were the ones too delicate to listen to the broadcast themselves?). I had never realized the story centered on aliens invading New Jersey, which I guess explains people freaking out so much here. But apparently the Westfielders were able to keep level heads and reassure each other that it wasn't real.

What's growing in the garden

As I've said before, one of the fun things with moving up here is seeing what will erupt out of my ground as the weather gets warmer. I missed photos of the grape hyacinths, the lily-of-the-valleys and most of the azaleas. But coming back from Field Day across the street (have I mentioned lately how much I love living next to the school???) with camera in hand gave me a chance to show off a little of what is out there now.

And I'm still trying to figure some plants out, so if you notice I have the type of plant wrong please correct me!


I have one bleeding heart in front of the house (and these are some of the final blooms on it). I think I want to plant more of these because the flowers are so cool, even though they only bloom in the spring.

I'm not exactly sure what this is, also almost totally bloomed out as you can see. Before turning brown the entire section of blooms were light purple. I first thought it was butterfly bush, but after a little research I actually think it might be lilac. I have about three of these in various spots around the house, but I think at least one is not getting as much sun as it would like, making it a little leggy.


I finally have azalea bushes! I have one that is still covered with flowers. The other 3 or 4 are pretty much done. None are huge - most are about a foot or two in diameter. But one lavender one is about 3 feet across and is right next to where we park the car so we can see it all the time.


A little patch of dianthus is growing in front of the house. I may plant some more of these because I like their spiky gray-green leaves.


My FAVORITE currently blooming. I've always wanted poppies, but never had the sun in Dallas for them. These are at the end of the driveway, actually on the side facing the neighbor. But they are impressive (you can't tell by this picture, but the flowers are about 4" in diameter.


I don't know what these little guys are, but they are popping up all over the place. Only about 4 or 5 inches high. I should know what they are, but got tired of looking in the books.


The hostas are coming up all around the house. Also something I never had much luck with in Dallas - snails, slugs and roly polys seemed to eat mine up.


I did a double-take when I noticed the size of these leaves. But I don't think it is an elephant ear - I think it is just a giant-sized hosta. I'll be interested to see if they grow bigger.


Alex holding one of the flower pods I've been finding all over the ground. I couldn't tell where they were coming from, but I think it might be from the sweetgum trees (however I haven't noticed them in the back yard, where we end up with a lot of "pokeyballs" from the trees).


Alex's favorite thing to find in the yard right now are these big thorns that have dropped off the same trees as the blooms. He likes to think of them as tiny swords. That's what he is holding up in front of him in the hosta picture above.


And I don't want to forget my viburnum. There are two of these blooming on the opposite side of the house from the driveway, so didn't realize they were there until I looked up from the table and saw these big snowball-looking blooms right outside the window next to the fireplace.

The yard guys are here today to treat the weeds. There are so many in the back yard that we have to just get rid of everything and reseed the entire yard. But hopefully soon it will end up looking as nice as the rest of the areas around the house.

Sunday tidbits a day late

Happy day after Mother's Day! I'm going to post my tidbits quickly - I'm having too much fun with Bonnie here to take too long on the blog.

- Extinction is a possibility for North American bats. "White-nose syndrome" has killed more than 1 million bats in nine states from Vermont to Virginia since 2007. Bats help nature maintain an ecological balance by eating tons of insects each year. But last month an annual inspection on hibernating bats in a large mine here in New Jersey yielded a count of only 750 bats, down from the normally 26,000 to 29,000 that are usually counted there each year. "White-nose syndrome" causes bats to awake early from hibernation and go in search of bugs that have not yet hatched, causing the bats to starve and freeze to death. Also a strange white fungus appears on the bats' noses which may be causing scar tissue and may make female bats unable to reproduce. This double-whammy of starvation and non-reproduction could be a fatal blow to the bat population.

- Bushmeat smuggling is a problem in the Newark airport. For those unaware, bushmeat is meat butchered from wild species, legal or illegal, and including elephant, monkey, antelope and rodents. It is favored by many Africans and used in many of their native dishes. Authorities consider it to be a potential carrier of zoonotic (animal-to-human) viruses like Ebola, HIV or monkeypox. Yikes!

Happy 7th birthday to my big girl!

Love her so, so much.

Happy Birthday...

...to my dear sister!

This is probably the first time I've ever had to dig out long sleeves on our birthday. Rain, high of 58 today, but I'm still going to have myself a margarita tonight (with my bean soup and cornbread!).

Sunday paper tidbits

Rainy day here in NJ, so kids are playing the Wii and Jim and I are surfing away. But it meant that I had no guilt in lingering over my Sunday paper with my cup of coffee.

- Work begins next month on the nation's biggest mass transit construction project in recent history. New York and New Jersey are building the first rail tunnels under the Hudson River in a century. It will employ thousands of people with many working deep underground in round-the-clock shifts (those of you who know my phobias know that makes me shudder). They will use tunnel-boring machines that are longer than a football field. So by the time 2017 rolls around it should ease the commute from NJ to NY which experts are projecting will have ridership that is 60% higher than it is today.

- 38 school districts in NJ are now offering Chinese as a foreign language. Very smart considering the article says 1/5 of the world's population speaks the language and it is the most used language on the internet. Interesting how different languages come in and out of vogue. Twenty years ago Japanese was the "hot" language up here; some schools still teach it while others have since dropped it. And schools in Summit, NJ, no longer offer German (Valda Carroll must be spinning in her grave). If Chinese is still offered when Grace gets older I'm sure she'll want to give a try, but I bet it is a really hard language to learn.

- Salamo Arouch has passed away. I wasn't aware who he was, but apparently he boxed for his life in Auschwitz. He was a Sephardic Jew from Salonika, Greece, who was sent to Auschwitz in 1943. During his nearly two years there he estimated he defeated 208 opponents with two draws. Pretty much had to fight for his life - the man who lost the bout was severely weakened, "...and the Nazis shot the weak." A movie was made about his life in 1989 starring Willem Defoe titled "Triumph of the Spirit." After Greece was overrun by Germany in 1941, 47,000 residents of Salonika were sent to prison camps. Only 2,000 survived the war.

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!"