Holidays 2006

I've finally uploaded all the photos from my 234MB worth of memory sticks. Lots of photos to sort through. My photo utility has somehow disappeared from my computer, so I have to upload them all manually, which is a huge drag. So far, not too happy with the Dell. Yeah, they have great customer service, but unfortunately that's because they need to. Argh.

So, where to begin? Craft night at Grandma's, I guess.

Grandma is one of eight children. Between her generation and the next one down (mine, obviously), the Gassman family managed to produce five, yes FIVE boys in the year 1997. My R is the oldest. Anyway, Grandma has hosted a winter craft night for all of her nieces over the last several years, and last year she decided the boys were getting old enough to have one too. So this is the second year we headed up to Maine two weeks before Christmas for craft night. This is only four of the six boys invited. One completely forgot and showed up an hour late when Grandma called to remind him, and one never showed up at all. No phone call, nothing. Grandma felt pretty bad, and next year plans to have everyone RSVP. The boys all had a great time and are herewith pretending to eat the snakes they all painted. They made lots of cool things to give to people as gifts.

Here is E holding his first cousin M. E fell so in love with that little boy and kept asking me why we can't have any more babies. "I want a girl baby." M would get fussy, so I'd take him from E and within a few moments I'd get "Mom if you want me to hold him again, I will". It was so much fun to watch my baby interact with my brother's.



The boys had a great time with Grandma when she arrived for Christmas. She came a few days early and arrived with lots of goodies. One of their favorites was the gingerbread Christmas tree. She also brought a house, but they all agreed the tree was easier and more enjoyable to make.


Here's the Halloween tissue box cover I made for my mother (Grandma) for Christmas. I made covers for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I'm not much of a seamstress, but I was pretty pleased with how each of them turned out. I actually had a cardboard tissue cover from a craft store and took it apart to make a pattern. Then I had to tape the cardboard back together because the fabric covers had to go over it to give them form. I wished I had another cardboard cover to make a set for myself. Honestly, even if I find one now, the moment has passed. It was a lot of work for someone who had only made curtains with straight lines on her sewing machine up until this point.

I have to admit I did a really bad job taking photos of Christmas this year. I remembered to charge up the video camera, but found in the morning there was no tape. And I hardly took any stills. I was just too busy being there and enjoying what was going on I guess. It was a fun day.

Nagy Papa had gone up to Maine to spend Christmas with my siblings, so we had dinner and celebrated with him a few days afterward. It was very enjoyable.

Last weekend we headed down to New York to celebrate with B's family. Here is a photo of all the nephews:
My husband B is one of three boys and each of them had two boys. My mother-in-law is not thrilled, but she is getting used to it. N is going through a long stage of not wanting to be photographed. He's not a very happy boy, unfortunately. I hope the Joy Berry books I gave his mom help him out a bit. I really do. My heart goes out to him every time he is being yelled at from across the room.

That's about it for Christmas. I'm sure all the fun stuff the boys got will show up here in the coming weeks. My resolution for this year is to blog more often. It helps me focus on the great stuff we have going on. So stay tuned!

By the way, if anyone out there is using the new blogger dashboard, please let me know what you think. I'm always so scared to fool around with what's working just fine.

Photo storage

Okay, these need to stay on a posting on a blog in order to get them stored on the blogger server, I guess. So here they are. I'm going to back date them so they hopefully get lost in the past. Use the links on the right to buy them!

Aunt Debbie

E: "Here's one dollar and four quarters. I'm going back to the hardware store to get that frog for Aunt Debbie."

Me: "But E, you already bought something for Aunt Debbie."

E: "I love her."

The Spirit of the Season

I really look forward to the day E decides to start smiling in photos. Santa could have done better himself.

The boys have to put 10% of their allowance each week into a plastic bag to save for charity. And last week we found a good way to use it. The library has a Christmas tree with cut-out paper mittens on it. Each one has the sex and age of a child, plus a gift they would like. The boys got really into it and each took two. They wondered though, why the kids don't just ask Santa. I replied that perhaps they know that Santa can't bring everything they want, so they use the mittens for the stuff they don't want to waste asking Santa for. Seemed to fly. And they each took great care in choosing the gifts they were purchasing.

The other day in the car, we started talking about our plans for the holiday season and E came out with "You know, Christmas really is all about love." And R came back with "And giving." Woo hoo - despite my total enjoyment of the commercial aspects of Christmas, the boys are really getting it. Yesterday R told me that he feels bad that no one ever really thinks of Santa, so he is going to leave him a thank you note on the mantle on Christmas eve.

Excuse me while I pat myself on the back for a moment :-)

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular deserves it's name!

We left home at 9:30 on Friday morning, and arrived in Manhattan about 11:30 am. We drove down the Saw Mill Parkway into the Henry Hudson, and parked on West 97th Street. I found a great website to locate cheap parking within Manhattan. It was only $17 for the day; a real deal.

We walked one block to Central Park West and took the B train down to Chinatown. When we got off the train we noticed the overpowering smell of fish, and had fun checking out the fish market right there. The live crabs were cool. We had headed down to Chinatown because I was looking for a new setting for my engagement ring. We only got through a couple of stores though before I realized that to continue would not be fair to the boys. So we got some Chinese pastries instead. B and I wanted to eat lunch down there, but R was pretty insistent that we have pizza.

So we hopped back onto the train up to the Rockefeller Center area, and ate at Pronto Pizza. Then we headed over to Radio City for our Stage Door Tour. It was interesting, but certainly not worth even the group rate we were charged (whole thing was set up by a homeschooler here in Connecticut). I was very disappointed to not actually see the real back stage and witness up close the hydraulics the stage uses. They showed us a video. They also had us up above the third mezzanine looking down from a window at the stage while they told us about what we weren't seeing back stage. The boys were more interested in seeing the show which was in progress, than in listening to information about stuff going on behind that stage.

"E, why don't you want your picture taken with the Rockette?"
"I just want this tour to be over."

We had time between the tour and the show, so we headed over to Rockefeller Plaza where the boys played some tag and enjoyed a three dollar pretzel. It was cool to see the scaffolding all around the big tree. We also went into Duane Reade to get some cheap sodas, which we were glad to have done since sodas in Radio City were $4.50!

Radio City did a "check" of our bags which was a joke really, since they said nothing about my camera or the sodas we brought in. I guess they only cared about weapons.

We were happy to run into some friends in the lobby, and made arrangements to meet them during intermission. But there was no intermission, so we did visit some more after the show.

The show itself really does deserve its name. Spectacular is the perfect word. E's favorite scene was the 3D movie of Santa flying around. (They gave out glasses in the programs.) R's favorite scene was the Nutcracker dance starring people in bear costumes. My and B's favorite part were the Wooden Soldiers. I also really enjoyed the use of the screen in the background to make the three rows of Santas look like hundreds in the Here Comes Santa Claus scene. And we all thought the moving stage was very cool - not to mention the ice skaters.

Back when B and I lived in New York, we had gone to the show two years in a row and were really aggravated to have spent that much money on the same show twice. We assumed it would change every year. But it doesn't. I was very happy to hear during our tour that some of the show is new this year, and I was pleased that the changes were great. I was surprised though, on how much of the focus was on Santa Claus. The Living Nativity scene at the end actually felt gatuitous. The boys thought the camels were cool. Click on the photo above to see a larger version.

We did meet our friends in the lobby afterwards, and had a short visit with them before heading back downtown to the East Village for Indian food. B and I enjoyed the meal we had so much last time, that we went back to the same place. During the walk between the train station (subway for all you non-New Yorkers) B remembered he wanted to stop at Pommes Frites to have some fries next time we were down there. While B was in there, the boys and I went two doors down to Love Saves the Day, one of my favorite stores in Manhattan. Hanging from the ceiling right inside the front door was a giant Peewee Herman sitting on Chairy. Peewee was the size of E. The thing was $1200. If I were rich, and I had the room for it, I would buy it. I almost bought the smaller sized version which they had, but it was in the box, and I would have felt guilty taking it out to play with it. So the one I have, with the broken pull-string, will have to continue to suffice. The boys had a great time in that store. R was very intrigued by the small box of gummy penises, but he ended up buying a Pez dispenser of Hammy from Over the Hedge. And E bought himself three action figures, chosen out of a giant box of them.

Dinner at Taj was great. This time there were even two performers, one on some sort of string instrument (no, not a sitar) and one on percussion. After dinner we walked all the way over to the west side to catch the B train uptown. It saved us having to switch trains along the way. The boys played tag all the way, which kept their minds off how far a walk it was.

We took the express train to Columbus Circle and got off to wait for the local. That's when E started doing the "I'm going to pee in my pants any minute" dance, so we decided to exit the subway and look for a bathroom (luckily we had purchased all day subway passes, so paying again wasn't an issue). When we got to the top of the stairs there was a police station (yes, within the subway station). Luckily the cop behind the counter could see that at 10pm a six-year-old dancing in his station really was an emergency and he let both boys use the restroom. New Yorkers really do like tourists.

We headed back to the car and pulled out of the parking lot at 10:20 pm. R was mad when I told him he couldn't listen to his book on tape on the way home, because I wanted him to go to sleep. "But I never fall asleep in the car, sniff, sniff." Here he is "not sleeping" in the car. At least E doesn't live in denial and settled in right away. We got home at 12:05 am; not bad at all.

A "spectacular" day overall. Follow the link at right for more photos.

Our final trip to the Bronx Zoo before our membership expires.

What an exquisite day. It was like a mini vacation. I managed to live "in the moment" for the entire day, right up until bedtime. I did not think about anything except what I was actually doing for the whole day. I did not even turn on my computer at all. How refreshing.

We listened to Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix on the way to the zoo. E brought a CD player with headphones so he didn't have to listen with R and I. He enjoyed music all the way. We parked in a different parking lot than we usually have, one where the actual gate for the zoo was so much closer to the lot. One where the exhibits were so much closer to the gate. I should have discovered this parking lot four visits ago.

We visited a couple of exhibits we had never seen before; Aquatic Birds, Large Birds, and the Aviary. This had been hidden behind the construction area, so we had not gotten to it. During our membership over the past year we visited the zoo four times, and it took those four times to see everything. Not only that, but the construction is under way on a large chunk of the place. Once that area re-opens in the summer of 2007 we will think about becoming members again.

In the Aquatic Birds area we enjoyed seeing the puffins, which we had only seen pictures of before. They had a great exhibit where the water was half way up the glass wall, so we could see what was going on above and below the water. This led to a brief conversation about refraction, which we will have to return to since I have just recently learned the technical reasons behind it.

In addition to the puffins, we also enjoyed seeing some large birds; the owls, eagles and vultures were entrancing. Seeing a real kookaburra was neat too, as were the flamingos.

We enjoyed every ride there. No lines for anything! The monorail was sitting there waiting for us when we arrived.We also enjoyed the Skyfari and the shuttle. E's tooth actually fell out on that. It had been loose all day, and freaking me out with the way it was protruding.
I kept telling him to pull it out, and finally it just came out as he was playing with it with his tongue. He looks so precious with no front teeth now. I can't help but smile every time I look at him.

We spent some time in the Congo area and checked out the gorillas who we hadn't seen since October 2005. The gorillas are one of my favorites to see in the zoo. Check out this shot I took in the Congo area. I am going to win something at the Durham Fair with this baby.

We also looked at the Wild Prairie Dog exhibit which had opened in June and which was new to us. Along the way E had mentioned that he wished he could see some cheetahs, and boy were we surprised to see some along side the dogs! He wished, however, that he could see them run. They are his favorite animal.

We went into the World of Darkness too, where we saw lots of bats and cats and rats, and the only breed of nocturnal monkey. I have to admit I annoyed lots of the creatures with my camera flash, so that we could actually see them!

I must say that of all the times we have gone to the zoo, October is hands down the best. Yes, there were a few school groups. A very few. And some of them used language I would have preferred the boys not hear quite yet. However they weren't very much interested in what they were seeing, so they flew past us through the exhibits and we mostly had the place to ourselves. And they all left by 2:00, so we had three whole hours without them. They probably wouldn't have been there at all if it hadn't been a Wednesday, since "Admission on Wednesdays is by donation".

All the rides are open through the end of the October, as well. And as previously mentioned there was not only no wait, there was no line - literally. Walk up and get on. Everything. Absolute heaven.

We tailgated for lunch. I actually had two lawn chairs in my trunk, for our perpetual soccer games, that E and I sat on, while R fit comfortably in a little nest in the trunk, under the raised hatch of the van. We enjoyed some cold pizza and made up a story about hippos getting out of their area and scaring zoo visitors. We each took turns adding two or three lines to the story, and although the boys tried very hard to have the zoo keepers get the hippos under control, we ended it with lots of screaming and agonizing visitors while the hippos ran off loose in the zoo. I guess the boys were kind of happy when they later realized the Bronx Zoo has rhinos and not hippos.

The parking lot was so close to the zoo! It was so incredibly nice to not have to carry our lunches and drinks in a backpack the whole time. And the car was so close that I was not the least bit tired before the drive home began.

E was perfectly happy all the way in the back with his headphones and his White Castles. R and I got to fly through many of the 24 discs of Harry Potter. (We are now at the climax on 21 and R actually bribes E to let us listen to it, with candy and coins.)

We came home a different way this time too. Rather than go up 95 or 15, we went up 684 in New York, and came east on 84 into Connecticut. It was five miles more, but 30 minutes shorter, and during peak rush hour! Ah, some things we learn late. But we still tuck them away for future reference.

When we got home at 7:00, I pooped out on my recliner in the livingroom with The Witching Hour, which I already read once over a decade ago, and I am totally absorbed in again. It's not that I was tired so much as I needed time alone to unwind. The boys went off and played, and B was kind enough to finish up the Chicken Paprikash which had been cooking in the crockpot all day. I caught the show 30 Rock, which I thought was not worth watching ever again, while B put E to bed. Then he and R watched the Mets game while I snuggled into bed with my book. Once I fulfilled my tooth fairy duties, including writing a very teeny answer to the question which had been written out and left, I actually went to sleep at 10:30! I haven't been to bed before midnight in months. (By the way I have very recently begun to appreciate the correlation between sleep and outlook - pretend there's a little emoticon here with rolling eyeballs.)

An exquisite day. And now that I have identified what it takes to achieve living in the moment, I will be doing so a lot more often. I am resigning from CHN. And I will be focusing on my business again. And my so incredibly lovable children.

Today in Stop and Shop the woman in front of me on line got one of those instant coupons the machine spits out after your purchase. It was $5 off your next purchase, and she gave it to me because she wouldn't be able to use it before it expired.

Karma happens.

A busy October

I've decided not to put out my Halloween decorations this year. Things are just too busy and it is one less thing to do. I'm missing the festive feeling in the house, but am secretly relishing the absence of that extra work. October is flying by in a whirlwind. October is my favorite month, so I'm not overly thrilled about how quickly it is going this year, but on the other hand we are experiencing lots of fun things. I'm missing having time to even record them here. Blogging is my way of pointing out to myself how much learning actually goes on here.

Today B's parents visited. I was so glad to have an excuse to drop everything and clean! The boys even washed many of our dirty walls, after having it pointed out that they were in fact caused by them. They were very helpful the last couple of days, and not complaining about my lack of attention. And I got a clean house for a day at least.

Our visit with Grandma and Grandpa was very enjoyable. We did some apple picking at Lyman Orchards and dinner at Young Young's, an all-you-can-eat Chinese food buffet, which everyone who ever seems to visit us absolutely loves. It's a nice treat for me too, since I don't have to add preparing dinner to the list of things to do when people visit. Anyway, it was a very relaxed afternoon.

What else have we been up to?

Lots and lots of soccer. R is on the all-star team this year, so he has practice Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and two games (sometimes three) per weekend. Add this to E's soccer games on Sunday afternoons.

R is also enjoying his Lego Robotics class at ImagineNation on Friday evenings. The first of two sessions just ended. He and his partner finished creating their robot and learned how to program it on a computer. R was waaay into this. I'll be looking into getting a set for his birthday.

Craft and Swim is going well on Thursdays. It is an hour and a half for me to be alone without hiding.

Monday evenings is R's drawing class. School holidays the past two weeks have pre-empted that though. That actually worked out fine, since this past Monday, Columbus Day, we went to the Renaissance Fair, and didn't have to worry about being home for anything. We were supposed to have gone over the weekend but B wasn't into it, so we saved it for Monday when he was at work. Boy did we have a blast.

E dressed up in his knight costume, and was glad he did, although his cool headdress didn't make it through the 80 degree heat.. His favorite thing was the jousting. R's favorite thing was the human chess game, and mine was the sword swallower, who also removed himself from a straight-jacket and a bunch of huge chains. We also really enjoyed the puppet show; I'm so grateful my children are still young enough to enjoy that stuff too. We had a fabulous day, and returned home with two large wooden swords, which are already showing lots of battle wear. We've decided to go more than once next year, and are thinking about getting season passes.

We are having fun getting to know the Greater New Haven Homeschooolers Group. They already have some classes planned for the Eli Whitney. Unfortunately the 5-8 age group is on a different day than the 9-12 age group, so we'll be passing until next time around, when we will probably be the organizers. We also had a really enjoyable day with them at Lyman Orchards last week, when we got to experience the corn maze, which by the way, is only worth it when you are paying the group rate. It was fun though. The boys are really happy to making new friends. Here are some of them feeding the ducks and geese.
The Tuesday before last we also had fun at our first Science Club meeting, which is a co-op we are participating in with two other families with children E's age. It will be a challenge to keep R interested, but I'm looking forward to trying. The next meeting is at our house this week, so I'll be planning the lesson. We will be meeting on bi-weekly Tuesdays.

The other Tuesdays of each month we'll go to Flippin' Families at the YMCA. They open the doors to their gymnastics center from 12:30 to 2:00 on Tuesday afternoons for kids to play. Full members like us get in free! This was the first week and we were the only ones there. The friends we invited are not members anymore. But I spoke to two of the moms of kids in the Craft and Swim class and hopefully they will come next time. We'll try to talk other friends into joining us too, since non-members only pay $7 for their entire family for the 1.5 hours.

E has been liking his karate class, but I think I'm pulling him out. They are just not teaching any of the non-violent philosophy that I had expected. He didn't seem too upset that he might not be going any more since he "knows enough moves now to fight R". In fact, the two of them were karate fighting yesterday out in the backyard. Now I've learned to be somewhat okay with weapons, since the swords only clash against eachother, but I don't see the value in kicking someone's face in. So I'm leaning toward dropping that.

This week? Tomorrow (Sunday) two soccer games for two children, from 1:30 pm till 5:00 pm. Then in the evening the new CHN website gets uploaded, and I finish up the monthly newsletter to send out. Monday is a birthday party in the afternoon and R's drawing class at night. Then I will be filling an order for 10 fundraising t-shirts which was placed to LuminociTees.com (woo hoo!) Tuesday is Science Club here at our house, and then up to Oakville to Green Planet to pick up our raw milk, then soccer practice from 5:30 to 7. Karate would also be here from 5:45 to 6:45. Wednesday we are going to the Bronx Zoo. Our membership is expiring this month and I want to use up all my free parking passes. R will have to miss soccer practice that day. Thursday is a dentist appointment then Craft and Swim, and Friday is Lego Robotics. Saturday we have one of R's soccer games, a Halloween party, then another soccer game.

I love October...I love October...I love October...I can't wait till it's done!

Thomas Dolby in concert

Okay, it's 1982 and I'm a senior in high school, and this amazing song comes on the radio called "She Blinded Me With Science". I at once become a huge Thomas Dolby fan, and have been ever since. I saw him perform at Radio City Music Hall in 1984, The Ritz in 1988, Roseland in 1988, and this past Friday at The Canal Room in 2006. He actually left the music industry for a really long time, and only returned because he started reading fan forums about him and realized that there really are people out here who would love to see him return.

The concert was amazing. There was one person between me and the stage, so I had an awesome view. The forum was teeny - probably about a hundred people there - so the show itself was really intimate. It was totally excellent to be surrounded by people my own age, who love the music as much as I do. I have to admit there were others there who knew some of the words better than I did too! I also have to admit to being disappointed that he only played 1.5 hours. His songs are long so they were not as many as I would have liked. Nevertheless, traveling two hours for a 1.5 hour show was still worth it. And it was very cool that this time he was alone. In his previous shows he had a full band, but in this intimate setting it was just him and his synthesizers and computer and "tubes and wires."

Here's another song which made it to the charts and which you'd likely know. And my favorite of his songs, which you wouldn't. That synthesizer music is great stuff; for dancing or head music, you can't go wrong with Thomas Dolby.

The boys slept at a friend's house, so B and I were able to have a real night out in Manhattan. I never think I miss the place until I go back there. (Well I don't actually miss Queens, but I do miss Manhattan.) After the show we parked in the West Village and walked over to the east side to have dinner.

Sixth street between 1st and 2nd Avenues has always been the place to go for Indian food; there has always been at least a dozen restaurants to choose from. They had no liquor licenses, so the food was really cheap and you could bring our own bottles in. Well, it's different now. The addition of liquor has changed everything. The restaurant entrances have become quite ostentatious with neon signs and such, and also have "hosts" out front trying to talk you into their restaurants.

We walked along the street peeping through windows at empty places until we found one which was crowded with NYU students. Taj Cafe at 310 East 6th Street was an excellent choice. They have not updated themselves along with all the other places along the street, and frankly they don't have to. The coconut samosa was a definite highlight, and the rest of the food was excellent and reasonably priced.

We really enjoyed eating Indian food in Manhattan in a crowded restaurant at 11:30 pm on a Friday night. Seemed like old times. There are definitely some things about NY which we miss. On 6th Street, and along 1st Avenue, we also saw restaurants which feature Cajun, Thai, Peruvian, and Ethiopian Vegetarian, among others which I now can't remember. And the streets were crowded. A real haven for a night owl light me...

We arrived home at 3:00 am or so, and were very glad that the boys spent the night someplace else, because it meant sleeping late in the morning. Although in the old days 10:45 am would have seemed early, now it was a real treat.

The boys had a wonderful time where they were too, so it worked well for all of us.