More Christmas Pictures

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Christmas 2009

We have been trying for several years now to decommercialize the Christmas our family celebrates. We have made some strides in this direction, although realize that we have a LONG way to go. This year we celebrated Advent, the waiting for the Messiah, with several service projects and opportunities. We made cookies for teachers, neighbors, friends, and kids at Project Reach Youth. We bought canned goods for Feed Just One/CHIPS soup kitchen, we bought hats, scarves, and gloves for men who frequent a soup kitchen in Sunset Park, we bought hats, scarves, gloves, and socks for kids at Project Reach Youth, and we wrapped 40 packages for kids at this same program. We also served at Camp Friendships/Chips Charitable Holiday Dinner ... carving turkeys, pouring coffee, greeting those who came, cleaning up spills, and clearing tables. We desire to make it a top priority in our family to serve and love together while at the same time remembering the love and mercy and hope we celebrate at Christmastime. This is the 3rd year our family has decided to downsize the amount of gifts we give to one another and purchase an animal through Heifer International instead. This year we bought a water buffalo, cause nothing says I love you like a water buffalo. This water buffalo will bring valuable resources to a family in the Philippines. We are so thankful that God has blessed us in so many ways and are so grateful that we can share this blessing in this way. But, as I said, we are still a long way from where we want to be in the decommercialization of this very special celebration. Together we hope to continue making changes in the way we view Christmas and the way we celebrate Christmas.

That said, we still gave gifts to the girls, one of the best gifts, in our girls minds and ours, that we were able to share with each other this year was tickets to the Lion King on Broadway. We are all definitely looking forward to this experience at the end of January.

We were thankful this year to be able to celebrate Christmas with most of my family at Thanksgiving time and to share Christmas with Brad's parents on Christmas Day and the few days following. Thanks to everyone who made the trek to visit us this year!

The Parade!

It was an amazing day for the parade -- we were on 48th Street and 7th Ave.

Cousins.

Inflation Celebration

Thanksgiving in the City 2009

The Holidays are the perfect time to be in NYC. This year 9 from my family traveled to spend Thanksgiving with us. My younger sister's family, my brother's family, and my parents were here (unfortunately my older sister's family could not come). We creatively slept 13 in our 860 sq. foot apartment. It worked. We spent our days at the Macy's Thanksgiving Inflation Celebration, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Rockefeller Center, Central Park, Toys R Us on Times Square, on the train, on a water taxi, and various other places. Basically we spent the week eating. Apparently everyone in my family loves canolis (is that the plural for canoli?). We must have consumed about 10 of those things within the week. We had loads of fun playing with the little boys in our family! All in all, it was fantastic!

Halloween Fun

Halloween 2009

I'm sure through the years lots of evil has appropriately been attributed to Halloween and its festivities, but in Park Slope only good things happen. Already, there is so much community in the neighborhood of Park Slope, but on Halloween night this community is experienced maybe like no other night of the year. There is a huge Family Halloween Parade, maybe like several hundred thousand people watching and walking, that goes right through the heart of the Slope. We have walked in it every year for the past 5 years. You should see some of the costumes, amazing, creative, beautiful, elaborate homemade creations mixed in with the old stand bys... the witches, the Disney princesses, the creeps. One of my favorites this year was the father who was the peddler from the book "Caps for Sale" and his sons who were the monkeys. They did a fabulous job of recreating the characters from this great children's book. One of our friends was musician Bloody Holiday (you can see pictures of him on my facebook page). We saw a family of Star Wars characters, numerous pirates, a little boy dressed as an excavator, another boy as a streetlight, some dad in the hugest, weirdest, googly-eyed mask we had ever seen, and cats, farmers, scarecrows, mermaids, etc. Ali creatively chose to be a fly this year, her best friend being a Venus fly trap. Not only did Ali have to escape death by fly trap but she also had to avoid becoming bait for her fly fisherman father. Tori and I chose some of the oldies but goodies, witch and 50's girl. Tori's best friend trick-or-treated with us as a dead pajama girl. Anyway, by 3 p.m. Ali was out with friends trick or treating and by 5 Tori, her friend and Brad and I were out. The parade began at 6:30 and ended an hour or so later at the park right by our house. As we walked in the parade we saw friends from Church!, friends from school, friends from our block, friends from the neighborhood; cheers, greetings, and screams of fright were exchanged. Fun and creepy times!

Butternut Squash Apple Soup... delish! It was a little thick, so if using a bigger squash you might want to add more stock.

Butternut Squash Apple Soup Recipe
Ingredients
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 rib of celery, chopped
• I carrot, chopped
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, chopped
• 1 tart green apple, peeled, cored, chopped (squash and apple should be at a 3 to 1 ratio)
• 3 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth if vegetarian)*
• Pinches of nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper
*If cooking gluten-free, use gluten-free broth.
Method
Combine butter, onion, celery, and carrot in large saucepan. Cook for 5 minutes. Add squash, apple, and broth. Bring to boil. Simmer for 10 minutes or until squash is soft. Puree. Add spices to taste.
Serves 4-6.

Saturday, October 10th we made our 6th trip to Terhune Orchard in Princeton, New Jersey. We've been going the last 5 years with Church!. Gabe, one friend from Church! says this is his favorite activity of the year! It is tons of fun, plus you get delicious apples, apple cider donuts, chili, apple cider, etc. etc. There's a fun, although fairly lame, corn maze, old farm horses to ride, pumpkins, wagon rides, fuzzy baby chicks, and fabulous company. This year 34 from Church! went. We make a day of it, leaving at noon and getting back by 8. Now our family has about 30 lbs. of apples, yummy -- one family came back with 72 lbs. ... Wow! It's always fun to share this day with old friends and get to know a lot of new friends too.

Ali's 10th birthday

Ali turned 10 on September 25th. Due to busyness we are having her party tonight.... a sleepover with 3 friends. Pizza, ice cream cake, donuts... what more could you want? On Ali's birthday we went for a family dinner at the Hibachi Grill, delicious! She also had donuts with a candle in them for breakfast and 2 days later, on a day off from school ate breakfast casseroles for dinner -- she loves those and wanted them on her birthday, but we couldn't swing it because it was a school day. Hopefully bedtime falls before morning tonight :)

There's a man that stands on the corner of 9th Street and 5th Ave. who knows he can ask me for a cup of coffee every time he sees me. If I have money, I buy him one. Sometimes, if I'm in a hurry or if I have no money, or only have a $20 or something, I keep my eyes looking straight ahead, or across the street, or looking at something or someone else, rather than having to say "no" to him. The other day I saw him on the corner, and I had no money, I had groceries, several bags, but I had purchased them with a credit card. Whenever I have purchases but no money I always feel like he must think I'm lying when I tell him I can't buy him coffee today. As I tried to walk by unnoticed he began to speak to me, I fully expected him to ask me for money for coffee. Instead he asked me if I needed help. Boy, did I feel sheepish, trying to avoid him, and he wasn't even asking for anything, he was offering something. I guess it just goes to show me what consecutive kindness can do.... maybe now I will offer my kindness in a more willing way, and hopefully soon I will learn his name, I've been wanting to for awhile, just always feel awkward for some reason. Lesson learned, at least I hope.

Urban Gardening????

Well, for the 4 summers prior to this one I have had a little bit of ground to plant in. Four years ago it was tomatoes, and lettuce. Three years ago, tomatoes, two years ago, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, green peppers, lettuce, spinach, peas, last year tomatoes, green peppers, lettuce, spinach. This year, no ground to plant in. So, I thought I'd try container gardening on my balcony. There must be some trick I just don't know. Maybe it was the organic soil I used, maybe it needed some organic fertilizer in it, or some yummy chemicals. Or maybe it was the cold, wet summer. Or maybe I overcrowded my containers, I think this may be very true. I planted spinach, it died, I planted lettuce, it died, I planted green peppers, they grew to be about 8 inches tall,obviously no peppers. I planted basil, got enough for one recipe, I planted tomatoes, I got 1. Now, let me tell you about this dear little tomato, for it was the only thing that grew this year. It grew very late, so at the beginning of September it was still green on the vine and I was nursing it along. One day I realized I had overwatered my plant. In an attempt to empty some of the water I knocked my precious solo green tomato off the vine. What sadness. So then I placed it on the window sill, it would still be home grown, just not vine ripened. And it turned, it turned a beautiful orange and then a delicious looking red. One day Brad said, "looks like it is ready". I failed to retrieve it from the window sill on my balcony. That night a major rain and wind storm. I awoke to my precious tomato on the floor of our balcony. Poor little guy. That day we ate him, he was quite delicious, although a little smushy on one side. I think I need to research container gardening before next spring.

1st day of school 2009 was a success! Outfits looked awesome, friendships were renewed, Tori didn't get lost in her new Middle School, for the most part we had all the right supplies purchased, and we made it to school on time.

Tori started 6th grade, her school is right on our block, so she can walk out the door and be to school in like 3 minutes, all on her own too. Woo hoo! She made it through her first day, getting to all the right places at the right time, managing to unlock her locker each time she needed to. She got placed in French class, we were hoping for Spanish, but are also just really excited that she has the opportunity to begin learning a 2nd language. 5th grade was a stressful time of applications, interviews, auditions, and waiting. But we prayed hard through all of that and Tori is so happy to be in the school she is in! We are so thankful she is there too. An added plus: they have open lunch, so Tori came to Postmark yesterday for lunch with about 7 of her friends, it was fun seeing her midday! Today, though I think she plans to try out a different restaurant in the neighborhood.

Ali is now top dog at her school, 5th grade. She is excited about it, and I guess we are pros now at the whole middle school application/interview process, we have that to look forward to again. Yikes! Ali has the same teacher Tori had last year, Tori loved her and Ali is excited about having her, but already this morning said she hopes she didn't have to hear "Tori this" and "Tori that" all day again today. Ahh, the joys of being the 2nd child. A friend of Ali's from Kindergarten and 1st grade returned to her school this year, she was excited about that, especially since her closest friend from the last 2 years moved to Texas over the summer. Yea 5th grade!

Well, like it or not, here goes another school year. We love how the schools afford us even one more opportunity to be a part of community! There's just something about urban life that lends itself to relationships. So, here we go -- another year of relationships and opportunity!