Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

What you get when your big sister discovers you have been entering her room unbidden:

Driveway is done!

Well, it has been done for at least a month now, but I never got the pictures up. So to prove to my mother that it is finished, here you go!


Lovely, isn't it.

I have a lot of fun Texas trip pictures to post that I hope to get to soon. Once we finish reeling from the fact that Jim was laid off last week. So if anyone has any NYC advertising/marketing contacts, send them our way!

More driveway work

After a five-week wait we finally reached the top of the list and got our driveway work underway.


Workers laying the Belgian blocks. I missed taking pictures of them tearing up the old driveway. Unfortunately as they were tearing it up they discovered a slab of concrete under part of the drive, which of course is going to raise the cost of the job (concrete is much harder to dispose of up here then just asphalt). When they told me about the "surprise" they were very apologetic (there was no way they could have foreseen that being under there). I just had to shrug my shoulders because when you live in a 100-year-old house you find all sorts of things that confuse you like that.


Here they have most of the Belgian blocks laid in the trenches. There was no mortar in between them at the time. After this was completed we had a Sunday and a day of rain, so work came to a standstill.


Today (Tuesday) the workers made it back to mortar between the blocks and level out the driveway. So this is what I came home to after an afternoon at the pool (the tire tracks are from my car).


Same scenario as above, just showing the spot directly in front of the garage. Nice and level!


So with our 82 degree day and sunny blue sky, after a quick visit to the pool with the kids I was able to relax on our deck with a glass of wine and the latest Better Homes & Gardens I picked up at the store today. These are my lovely potted plants on the corner of the deck (I didn't notice the basketball in the pic until I was looking at them on my computer this evening).


And the pretty girl reading next to me. It was a perfect way to end the day.

Graduation (sniff!)

Alex had his preschool graduation last week. Very sweet - they all marched in and sang some songs as a group. Then each of the individual classes got up and sang their own two songs. We were very proud of Alex - we weren't sure he would participate and "shy Alex" would emerge. But he stood right up there with his classmates and sang along (though you can see from the video that he probably didn't know the words as well as he could have).



(Try this link here if you can't get the above video to work.)

Best friend Henry is the redhead behind and over one from Alex; other best friend Peter is the other boy on the front row. (I don't know why the video is bigger than the posting area - maybe I can get Jim to tweak this later because I've tried everything I know to make it fit).

Even Alex's teachers were proud of him that night. He's just come such a long way from the boy who would sit there with his arms crossed and head down, refusing to participate.

Here he is with two of his three teachers:


We were so lucky to find this school for him. It was such a wonderful, caring place that worked to make him feel at home. I've had people comment about it being not a very "academic" school, but that is just what my boy needed. He'll get academics soon enough; he just needed a little more socialization. And if I can brag for a minute, my 5-year-old recently-graduated preschooler is already reading just about all his sight words, so I think he's doing quite well in the academics area!

Landscaping the garage

The landscapers came last week to pretty-up the new garage.


Here's our nice Japanese Hollies along the side of the garage. The little plants between are lilies - pink and yellow and red. The strip of yard between the grass and the mulch has grass seed on it to fill in over the bare dirt that was left behind after the construction.


A little harder to see these shrubs in the back. They are Cherry Laurels, which I've never had so I'm pretty excited about them. More of the lilies in between the shrubs.


This is what I'm most excited about. No more white trash fence to keep the dog in!


The other new non-white-trash barrier.


From the front you can see our new little fences. The one on the left was moved up to be flush with the front of the garage, plus it now matches the other fencing around this edge of the yard. The only part on the right that was added was from that corner post to the right of the garage going back to against the garage. So so happy I can let the dog out without checking on her multiple times.

Hopefully the driveway guys will be able to come next week to get started on that. Once the new driveway is in we get to start actually parking in the new garage!

Mother's Day gifts

As I wake Alex up yesterday morning (at almost 11am, no less), the first thing he says is a murmured "I love you Mommy" into the pillow. He then tells me that every night when he sleeps his heart grows and when he wakes up he loves me even more. Sweet boy!

And my other Mother's Day gift is of course the birthday of sweet Gracie. Eight years old today!

I love this girl!!

Softball season

Softball has started. Grace is on a team with many of her good friends, once again coached by the father of her best friend. And after only a couple weeks I can already see improvement over last year. Timing this year is a bit of a killer - all the 2nd grade girls in town practice at the same time in the same place. So Thursday nights from 6:15 to 7:40 are now filled (luckily the carpool has been activated, so I only have to be there too once every four weeks). And team practice is combined with the games on Saturdays having us up at the fields from 1:30 to 4pm. How about a couple action shots?


This year is the first year the girls' softball teams got to march in the annual Westfield Baseball (and now Softball) Season Kickoff parade. We had a lot of fun - I dropped Grace and her friend off with her coach at the starting point, then Alex and I drove down to the ending point to watch the parade come by. Poor Jim was sick as a dog and had to miss the fun. After the parade there is a street party with all sorts of inflatable slides/bounce houses/etc. and throngs of people.



Here's a tiny clip of Grace and her friends walking by in the parade. They were one of two teams that did not receive their shirts at the prior Thursday practice. So while their team name is the Jays, their signs say Rockets because we didn't know what we would be. And all the girls got their hats and shirts that morning, which explains how everyone's hats are not fitting heads very well.


Alex ended up having an awesome time because we connected there with BOTH his very best buddies. They were so excited to see each other you couldn't tell they'd just spent about 7 hours together the day before in a combination of school and playdate. My little guy who is so reluctant to do anything new told me he can't wait for the parade again next year!

From 8A to 6B

Zone hardiness, that is. And what a difference that makes when looking at my outdoor planting. We've had a wonderful stretch of low- to mid-70s highs lately, with nighttime lows in the mid-40s. But as a story in my paper this morning pointed out, New Jersey is not yet past the threat of hard frost, and most parts of the state shouldn't put out annuals until mid-May. MID-MAY! That's when my flower beds in Texas would be going gangbusters, before the horrific heat of summer sets in and fries everything (we would give up by August - the week vacation to escape the heat also resulted in a week of no watering, meaning everything would be brown upon return).

It's going to be really hard this weekend when we move everything back into the garage and I'll be able to access all my pots lining the deck again. They looked so beautiful last year, so I just need to be patient before going and snapping up all my plants to replace them this year. May be easier to wait after tomorrow - our high temp today is supposed to be 73, but tomorrow is only 56. Not back into the 60s until next week. But at least I'll still have pretty flowers well into August. Sigh.

Looking good

Garage door guys came today, as did electrician and gutter guys. It was crazy around here for a while, and poor Lucy was about to lose her mind barking at everyone.


But look how beautiful this is! More on the chair to the left in a minute.


Is it sad to be excited about new gutters?


Also had a guy out to get another bid for redoing the driveway. Unfortunately an unexpected added expense. What is hard to see is the huge trench right next to the concrete edge here.


One of our projects to do ourselves is figure out how we are going to close off the fence areas that opened up when the town made us move the garage back about five more feet. We are ready to get rid of our redneck dog barrier. And you can see the electrician has another day of work - the yellow wire is where an exterior plug is going. After coming from our house in Dallas where we had no exterior plugs, having two outside (one on the house and one on the garage) is going to spoil me!


Our other dog barrier. It will be nice to actually be able to sit on our chairs again.


Another project for the weekend will be to HAPPILY move all this crap back into the garage. Hooray!

YouTube version

Click here to see the video on YouTube - the video screen is much bigger there. The video says it is currently still processing, so hopefully once the entire thing is done the video will be much clearer. You can click on the icon of the four arrows pointing out forming a box and it will make the video full-screen.

Also note that this group was the only one to entirely sing the number. Most of the other songs either have the kids just dance along with a song or if there is singing they do it with the original song playing along. Ours had Cat Stevens taken out and just the kids' sweet voices carrying the tune.

Variety Show number

Grace performed night #2 tonight at the Tamaques Variety Show. Kids do songs and/or dances in groups of similar age. Grace is fourth from the right. Part of the skit also had the kids dressed up as what they wanted to be when they grow up, which was included in the slides during the show. Grace's slide is the third one. You can't see what it says on the bottom of the screen (because it ended up superimposed on her friends Elie, Katie and Sierra) but her dream is to be the "first female baseball player for the Texas Rangers." That's my girl!

Hope the video plays - I know it is sometime hit or miss. Be sure and try it more than once; that seemed to work for me on previous videos.

NOTE: I think we may try to put this on YouTube to share because Blogger doesn't allow you to click on it and make it bigger. I'll put up a new post once that is done.

Painted garage and flowers

Only one picture of the garage today.


Because honestly other than having the rest of the siding on the front, the paint doesn't look much different than the siding did. But it is painted, and looks wonderful. The garage door will arrive Monday morning, the trench has been dug for electric and all the fixtures have arrived. Now we've got a couple of appointments set up to get some bids for replacing the driveway (gotta love unexpected expenses!).

So since I only have one garage pic, how about a peek at what is starting to bloom around the house.

The azaleas are getting ready to burst. This is the big purple one next to the driveway. Maybe it will soften the effect of the huge blue dumpster that is still there.


The multitude of hostas are starting to pop up. That was one thing I loved about the beds around the house when we first looked at it. I've got a bunch of spots where I'd like to plant some more - I really like these plants.


Tulips are starting to replace the fading daffodils.


The nice little grove of grape hyacinths next to the big tree in front of the house. You can see a red azalea getting ready to bloom right behind them.


This bleeding heart surprised me and showed back up this year. I thought it had died away, but I guess it is truly a spring plant. As soon as we get everything off the deck and back into the garage (and I can find a shovel) I'm going to move this little guy.


This is why I need to move him. He's that lone plant in this barren bed in front of the house. This is the year we are going to make those go away and just extend the grass all the way to the sidewalk. Now if Jim and I can just stop arguing about whether to keep the corner beds in the front with all the beautiful tiger lilies...

Sunny days = garage building

After a BUNCH of rain (apparently the past 12 months have been the wettest in NJ since they started keeping track in the 19th century), we finally have some sunny days again so work on the garage has continued.

Door and window were installed, and roof put on. These first two pics are from a couple days ago.


Getting ready for the garage door.



Almost all the siding is on the house as of today.


Apparently they are a little short, so he has to order a bit more siding in and finish on Monday. Tomorrow I'll go purchase the garage door, and the light fixtures are on the way!

Few more Statue trip pictures

I didn't want to overload everyone on the last post, here's a few more pictures from our Statue of Liberty visit.


This is the kind of gorgeous shots you can get as the ferry takes you from Ellis Island to Liberty Island.


Of course this is what the kids were doing when we were seeing those awesome views.


There is a neat museum inside the Statue base that talks about how it was made. This is a replica of the face of the Statue. Alex wouldn't go near it, but the other kids loved how her nostrils are kid-head-sized.


After the museum you go up to an area around the base of the monument. This is what you can see looking up. Notice our amazing blue sky we had that day!


And this is one of the views looking out from the base of the monument.


Just some beautiful photographer next to me (I love my niece!).


Shot of the kids on the ferry on the way back to the car. Sun reflecting off the water, wind whipping their hair, camera acting up - not the best picture of the day.


When we'd almost made it back to shore Alex started asking about the "King Kong building." So I pointed it out to him and told him we could get his picture in front of it. This was the best we could do since I did it quickly (we were all ready to get home by then).


I'll leave with a great shot of the amazing skyline as seen from Liberty State Park.


And with a great shot of me and two of my favorite things in the world.

Lady Liberty trip

Kathy and family were up here for Spring Break. Second year in a row for them to come visit, just as fun as last time! I let the kids play hooky from school yesterday and we all went out to see the Statue of Liberty. We started at Liberty State Park in New Jersey (you can also start from NYC). You take a round-trip ferry trip from there, going first to Ellis Island and then to Liberty Island.


Cousins with an amazing backdrop (unfortunately the one I got with all the kids smiling had the Empire State Building partially obscured behind Alex's head). This is from the ferry landing at Liberty State Park.


Alex gets lots of holding (hugs?) from cousins when they are in town.


Ferry ride to Ellis Island.


Rest of our crew.


Two little buddies enjoying lunch together.


Look at this sweet face! Laughing at funny Uncle David.


I think this is where the kids had the most fun. Playing imaginary tree houses on Ellis Island.


Ellis Island as we are ferrying away.


I was informed as Alex was looking at this picture with me that they were watching the boat "toot". Apparently that is what all the bubbles coming out the back of the ferry looked like.

I've now got a 5-year-old breathing down my neck for a chance on the computer, so more pictures tomorrow.