The Wedding

My little brother got married to Kate. There was so much talk about this wedding, as I guess there always is about a wedding in your family. The wedding week officially started with the Bridal Luncheon, apparently a southern tradition of the woman in the brides family, in this case Kate's three Aunts, having a luncheon the day before the wedding. My cousin Vicki decided to go and we had a great time. It was fun to go to a nice restaurant in the middle of a work day and sip wine and eat salad. There were 20 woman there, I got to meet the 2 girls in the bridal party that I had not met before. After lunch we went back to my house where Sue was watching our boys and Vicki' girls. The kids had had a great time. After that Aunt Thelma took the girls to dance class while Vicki and I went to get our nails done. I was so happy with the way mine turned out. I never get them done and they really looked great. I went home and got ready to go to to rehearsal. Sam and I went and we rehearsed a couple of times. The priest, minister or whatever he was, put me in charge of directing the ceremony from the back. So I had to make sure that everyone walked when they were supposed to. Sam did GREAT. He was so cute practicing and I was very hopeful for a repeat performance the next day. After the rehearsal we went back to my parents house for dinner. Mich and Isaac met us there. As usually mom made a great dinner. The kids ran around and had a great time. We finally got out of there at about 10 and we were all very tired. I went into work at 6 the next morning because I am preparing for a conference next week. I left work, went home, showered and primped. Then I went to Kate's mom's house for photos. Meanwhile Mich and Sam got ready for the wedding and we all met at the place at 5:45 for more photos. The wedding started a bit late, but it was very nice until is started to rain. Yes, it was outside. It didn't rain all that hard until the very end and no one ran for cover. The combo Priest/Rabbi was great and you'll think these two guys had been doing these together for years. Sam and the girls were like kids out of a magazine, they were so perfect walking down the isle and they looking stunning. Not as stunning as Kate, boy did she look beautiful! The reception was very nice and after too many cocktails I found my way home. The next day I woke up early, nursed my headache while uploading the photos that we had taken. I got all 100 printed, pu them into an album and brought them to the brunch that Kate's parents were having the next day. Everyone was so happy to see the photos. The brunch was very nice. Rob and Kate are in Portugal for 12 days and will be back Wednesday. Now I'm just waiting for cousins. ;-)

Grape Pie

I had never heard of it either. It's totally yummy though. It's like cherry pie only made with concord grapes. It was served with vanilla ice cream. A delicious dessert even for a non pie lover like me.

The Weekend

Friday night Michy worked late again. I called Cynthia to see if she and Marc wanted to bring the kids over and have dinner together. Sam was thrilled with the plan. He and Julia really love each other and play wonderfully together. Jonah and Isaac are ever showing signs that they will play together soon. They are basically still into parallel play but they are so darn cute together. Jonah is only 3 months younger then Isaac.

When Michy finally came home at nearly eleven she told me that the possibility had come true and that she had to work on Saturday. She said that she wanted me to go to PA with the boys and have a good time and they she'd catch up with me later. I had gotten the Amtrak schedule because somehow I knew this was coming. She left for work at 7:00 a.m. We talked about her coming on the train that got in at 6:27 p.m. Okay, so she'd make it in time for dinner. I got the car packed and the boys ready. Just prior to leaving I decided to see if Sally had to pee, Bernie wouldn't be picking her up until 4. Well the *!%!ing dog rolled in something horrid and she needed a bath. So, I quickly threw her in the tub and scrubbed. Then we got in the car and we were off. Lancaster is a 2 hour and 45 minute and actually it went quite well. For those of you that have never been to NJ, you aren't allowed to pump your own gas, it's illegal. So, we are in PA and I see a station that has gas for $2.68 a gallon, at home it's over three dollars. I pull into the station, rolled down Sam's window and I get out of the car. Sam says like he always does, can I give the car to the man. Usually I had the credit card to him and let him hand it to the attendant. So, now I'm at the pump and he's asking again to give the card to the man. I tell him that I have to pump the gas. I see his little mind churning and then he says, Mommy, you're the man??? I cracked up! So finally we get to the place, it's in the middle of nowhere. We went over a covered bridge to get there then through giant corn fields and finally turned down a farm road and saw the house. We were greeted by the owner, who I had talked to on the phone. She said, you traveled all this way alone with the children? So, I said yes that I had to pick up Michelle at the train later. She introduced us to her two grandchildren ages 5 (Isaiah) and 3 (Becca) and said that she had to run to the store that was closing at 1 and that her g-kids come show Sam the animals and we could show ourselves to our room. So we went in and dropped the bags down and used the bathroom. Cute house, religious references everywhere, the room was clean and decorated nicely with not too many little things for Isaac to mess with. Then we went outside. The boys were in their glory, there were about 10 kittens, many cows, goats, chickens, sheep, a pony, a dog and a bunny. Soon Sam is learning terrible things from the G-kids, they were picking up these kittens by one paw. Then Isaiah is throwing cow poop around telling me it's no big deal cause it's dried. OY! Then our friends arrived. They went inside to drop off their stuff and came out back. I was telling Tyson about the kids and he told me that we had to come up with a new name for them because everytime I said the children were.... He'd assume it was our kids so his name: Pawflinger. Sam and Ronan did learn a little about how to abuse a cat from the Pawflingers but that was quickly quelled went Sam got scratched. I explained that he needed to be nice to the cats so that they were nice to him and the rest of our visit went without incident. My brave little Isaac loved all the animals! So much that he tried to get into the cow pen and stuck his fingers into the mouths of all the goats. He was equally facinated by all the kittens and followed them everywhere. Angela had gone back into the house to go to the bathroom and when she came out she said, so your husband couldn't make it? Apparently this woman made the assumption that my husband wasn't coming but that I had a friend coming to join us. I never did address that since I felt like I wasn't really in on the conversation. We then left for Dutch Wonderland and had a great time! I had gone there as a child and had fond memories and it's still a really fun place. The kids went on lots of rides. I'm sure that we will go back there again. As we were leaving the sky started to get dark and then the rain came very quickly. Of course we were at the back on the park at they had closed everything since it was 10 minutes past closing time. It poured and we got drenched. There were mini rivers that we had to walk through that came up to our calves. So, instead of going straight to dinner we went back to change. We went to the County Kitchen at the recommendation of our host for a traditional Dutch dinner. I had chicken which was really great but the best was my veggies called chow chow. It's a mix of corn, carrots and bean kind of pickled. Yum! The boys mac and cheese was amazing too. After dinner we went to pick Mich up at the Amtrak station. She was happen that I had saved her the majority of my grape pie. I had the foresight to change the boys into their pj's in the restaurant parking lot so it was easy to carry both our sleeping boys in to bed. The next morning I volunteered to go to the Stausberg Railroad to stand in line for Thomas tickets. The advanced tickets were sold out and 10% of the tickets were available for day or purchase. I was told on the phone that they start selling at 8 but to get there at 7:30. Well at 7:20 there was already a line of 25 people. They finally opened at 8:50 and I secured us tickets for the 12:15 ride. I got back, ate a little breakfast and we back to train-o-rama. A great time was had by all the boys and we got out of there as soon as we could. We grabbed lunch and then went to the Gap outlet, left there with a a giant bag of stuff. We started home and got stuck in a huge traffic jam took us 2 hours to go a mile.

Lancaster PA

Tomorrow we have a trip planned to go to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We are going with my college friend Angela, her husband Tyson and their 5 year old son Ronan. This trip has been planned for a couple of months. We are going to see Thomas and to go to Dutch Wonderland amusement park. We got rooms at the Bed and Breakfast on the farm where you can help feed the animals. What a fun family trip, right? Well, Michy is probably not going to come with us. I did find an Amtrak train for her to take out if the city at 3:00 on Saturday but she will miss the whole day with us. It's totally killing her. She is working so hard and I hope with all of the hope I have that all this work is going to pay off big time for her. There is nothing I can do to help and she thinks that we should go along with our weekend as planned. Thomas isn't until Sunday so there really isn't a reason that we couldn't go in the afternoon. I haven't talked to Angela yet to firm the plans but the original plan was to wake up and go. I guess that would be better then the boys and I trying to amuse ourselves all day while Mich worked and then starting a car trip. Mich will be able to relax on the train. It's totally better then her idea of driving out there after she is finished working. Since there is no one using the rooms that we are staying in tonight the woman told us that we could come as early as we wanted. It would be great to get there are be settled so that we could enjoy the afternoon. Mich said that she can't have the pressure of this weekend too, that she needs to focus on work. I'm not adding the pressure it's all self inflicted. So, I totally looking forward to Dutch Wonderland, I have a very fond childhood memory of the place. Their website tells me that it was voted in the top 10 amusements parks for kids under 10 years old. I hope that I'm not disappointed. I really could live for the rest of my life never seeing Thomas again. I know that Sam will have a cow when he sees him. He still talks about the last time we went and Isaac wasn't even alive then. It will be fun to see Sam and Ronan together in all their train glory. They both love those trains so very much.

I'm a single momma

Well not really but poor Mich is never home anymore. She is working her butt off. I'm not even sure that the factory is totally moved. She is working on so many new applications. The postcard that we mailed telling people that she moved and letting them know they could visit their new showroom was such a hit that she had at least 10 people walking through the door every day asking to see it. Well the showroom isn't finished either. Everything happened so fast and everyone there is so busy that it's just not complete. She has been going on the 7:40 a.m. train and the train that brings her home arrived at 9:33 p.m. She never gets to see Isaac awake, it's probably been three days now. Sam is fine until about 9:00 and then he asks about every 3-4 minutes, when is mommy coming home? Is mommy coming home? We both know that all this hard work is going to pay off but I feel so badly for her. Me, I'm having a great time with the boys. Monday night we went to half priced pasta night with Grandma and Grandpa. Tuesday we had Vicki, Joe, Julia, Allysa, Rob and Kate over. The boys had a blast! Last night I took the boys to the mall, not that I accomplished anything, I was looking for shoes for the wedding and Mich and I both need hoses. I did get to return something at Macy's and we ate dinner but didn't do anything else. Except look at the beautiful new fish tank that one of the store put in. I haven't talked to her yet today and I wonder if I will be a single momma again tonight.

Will you talk already?

There's my cute boy, yes that is a funny outfit. Let it be known theat his nanny picked in out and it's a good thing you can't see the shoes she put on with it. Actually most days I change his clothes before Mich gets home just so she doesn't see how silly he looks. Anyway, the boy is SO noisy but he doesn't have any words yet. He does sort of say things that make you feel like he is asking for something specific. Muh Muh Muh MUH MUH, okay do you want some milk? Whew. I can just tell how frustrated he is. We try to teach him signs for things but he doesn't seem to get it. I try to remember back to Sam and wonder did we have more time and work on signing with him more. Sam really didn't know that many signs but the ones he knew: up, more, milk, please, thank you, were definitely helpful. I can only hope that once Isaac does start to talk we are in for an explosion of words. He knows so many things. If we ask him to get something he will and never brings back the wrong thing. He will usually sit down when he is standing on some he shouldn't be. Like the top of the kitchen table. He has worked long enough on his motor skills now he should start on the verbal skills. He will already go down the highest slide at the park unassisted.

Ready to get some knowledge

Sam had his first day of school this week. We went to parent orientation on Sunday night, we all met together for an overview of the program and discussed the changes from last year. This year they will be driven by a student guided curriculum. They will be flexible in the classroom so that they can go with whatever topics are prevalent in the classroom on that given day. Instead of getting a schedule of what is going to happen next week we will get a summary of what took place over the last week. He has several familiar faces in his new class including Jon who Sam adores! We also love his parents so we are very happy too. Sam really seems to love his teacher too, Miss Meryl is a prize winning teacher and we are lucky that he was put in his class. Sam still comes home talking about Etan, which doesn't thrill us. Apparently they see each other on the playground. I keep hoping that somehow Sam will lose interest and we won't hear about him anymore. We had to sign a permission slip for Sam to go on walking field trips at any time during the school year. I wonder where they will go? There really aren't too many places close enough to walk to. Sam is such a champion that he barely looked back when I dropped him off. I asked if he wanted me to show him where his new cubby is and then I showed him, he hung up his bag and went to play. He really is an amazingly wonderful big boy!

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend turned out to be really fun especially going into it with no plans. We celebrated our 15 year anniversary. On that day we went apple picking with the boys. It was a beautiful day and to be outside in the field with no one else while out boys ran free though the orchard was really great. Sam loved picking the apples most of them weren't quite ripe so he took his whole body to pull them from the tree. From there we went to the Great Swamp and took a walk. It's a nature preserve that has several miles of boardwalks that go through the swamp leading to oberservation areas. The only wildlife that we saw was a snake that had just enjoyed a meal judging from the bulge in his belly. The lack of wildlife was probably because the boys were anything but quite. It was so great that we could let Isaac walk and there were only two direction that he could go in. That night we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant with my parents and we were presented with an over the top generous gift. The day before we went to Indian Town for a really great Indian buffet lunch and to have our eyebrows strung. Amy and Nadav joined us. We had a great day on Labor Day at our friends Jim and John's, the boys had a great time roaming around their backyard. Jim barbequed and we drank wine. It was perfect. On our way home Isaac feel asleep, no wonder he absolutely refused to nap at J&J's house. So, Sam and I went to the Italian Feast while Mich stayed home to relax with the sleeping boy. We met Vicki, Joe and the girls and had a great time. The kids went on lots of rides together and we finished up with us all riding the scrambler. Now Sam says he like to ride the rides that go fast and slow not just slow. We ate dinner there too. I got away without having to play any of the games. We did have fun playing the games last year with the Green-Moran crew but we DON'T need one more stuffed animal. We also had a great dinner at the Cohen's house. We christened their new grill with a wonderful meal and wonderful company. Sally was happy that she got to tag along and play with her friends too.