Sick Day

I'm at home today with Sadie, who's not feeling well. We've read lots of stories, but mostly she just feels like relaxing with her favorite blankets and watching TV. Here's the patient:

Weekend without kids

This weekend the kids are down at the lake with Gram and Poppy, and we're getting ready for our first "adult" party tomorrow night. Ali even asked me if we should have some decaf coffee ready. Coffee? Decaf coffee?? The party is for Ali's Sunrise work friends, a few of whom are leaving the company after long tenures. It'll be fun. We have a kareoke machine.

Anyway, the kids were so excited to go down to the lake this weekend. Here's Jake deciding which cars to bring with him:After we dropped them off we stopped at Wegmans on our way home. Think of the largest grocery store you've ever been too, then imagine that store as a tiny wastebasket in the corner of a Wegmans. It's probably too big. If we lived near one, and Ali sent me out for milk or sugar or something (which has never actually happened), I wouldn't be back for two hours. It's so big there's actually a restaurant in the middle of it. We sat down and had oysters and soup and hamburgers. It's amazing what you can do without toddlers. You can actually just stop and sit down for 15 minutes. Jake and Sadie are not big fans of sitting down for 15 minutes.

Good luck Gram and Poppy! Just remember, the short one needs diapers!

More pictures from Thanksgiving

Here's Sadie with a funny head-tilt on the 13th green:
And here are Jake and cousin Arjuna hamming it up:
Sadie carefully hanging ornaments on Gram and Poppy's tree:

Overheard while putting out the Christmas decorations tonight:

"Hey look at all these chimney socks!"

And as Jake unpacked a little manger scene:

"Daddy there's a cute little baby in here! She's so tiny!"

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy belated Thanksgiving everybody! We had a great weekend, starting out with a great Thanksgiving breakfast at Mimi and Grandpa's which held us over until the big feast down at the lake with Gram and Poppy and the gang.

More pictures to come, but here are the kids meeting Santa, who arrived by yacht. It looks like is Sadie is crying, but she's really just yelling "I love you sooooo much Santa!!!" Jake asked for a racecar, and a babydoll for his sister.

Duck House

Last night Grandpa and Mimi took the kids for a sleepover, and Ali and I decided to get some dinner at Mark's Duck House. It's a Hong Kong style Dim Sum place that has great food and that we haven't been to in a couple of years. So we arrive at 6 and the place is empty and we realize we're still eating at kid-dinner-time, even though we're kid-less for the evening. So we take our time reading the menu and wondering what to get. The waiter comes over and Ali orders the Duck Moo Shoo which is the best I've ever had, and I ask for advice, since the menu is 15 pages and mostly in Chinese. He says they have some "very special, very special oysters from Pa See Fic Ocean in ginger garlic sauce" so I follow his advice. The oysters were great, and bigger than any oyster I'd ever seen before. They were the size of soup bowls.

Ali's Duck arrived and they prepare each pancake for you at the table and we chatted with him a bit about the food:

"So, how many ducks do you roast a day?"
"About 200."
"Wow! 200?!"
"Well, we duck house"
"Oh, right"

Thanksgiving Feast

Here's Jake giving his stock "smile" for his class picture today. They had a Thanksgiving feast show where all the three-year-old classes sang songs and dressed up as Indians, Pilgrims and Pumpkins. It was pretty cute, and once again there were more cameras than a Britney Spears paparazzi detail. I couldn't quite make out all the song lyrics, but there was one about an Albuquerque Turkey that when Jake sang later for me turned into the "Albaturkey turkey", which still rhymed.