Looking Back

On Thursday, Colin and I had dinner with an old friend in the city. We met Jeff when Colin attended Duke.

I often look back on our brief time in North Carolina as a wonderful time. We were a year or so into our marriage when we moved to Durham. We drove a big moving van towing my dilapidated VW across the country. I was so far from where I started. Then we met wonderful strangers who became friends. There were five couples in our group. Jeff was part of that group. We had dinners at each other homes, celebrated birthdays, pregnancy and births together and endured basketball camp outs. The boys were busy studying and securing jobs. The girls were equally busy in raising family, with jobs and keeping the home. These friends were family.

Then more than 10 years forward. Some of us divorced, some still with our mates. All of us with children. We all live far from each other. But in some way, we still connect either by phone, email, Christmas cards or occasional dinners. It's nice to know that with time, changes and distance, we can still call each other friends.

How to Wash the Car

Child Labor? You bet!











.

Cake In Flames or Just Too Many Candles

We did not travel this year for my birthday. We stayed home. We had just gotten back (and recovering) from our trip to LA and will be travelling in July. It didn't make sense to go away. I woke up early but promptly went back to sleep since it was Saturday after all. Then we went to get a new prescription snorkling mask for Lauren(to Lauren's delight) and fins for Emma followed by lunch at a sushi place (soooo fuuuulllll).

Here is Lauren working on my birthday cake. She made a Tres Leche cake from her Emeril cookbook. Bless her! So worth the calories (note to self: get on that treadmill!).














Here is the cake before it was set on fire.










And here is the aftermath (another note to self: red wine no matter how good - and it was very, very good- doesn't really go with Tres Leche cake - better drink it by itself or eat cake by itself but not together).









.

Bleary Eyed

Boarding the plane this morning in LA was very hard. Hard because we slept for only 3 hours. We are back in Boston after a 5 hour flight. One cannot efficiently sleep on the plane even if one sorely needs it.

It is nice to be home but we had a great time during our brief stay in Los Angeles.

Road-Tasting

We road-"tasted" the kitchen. Lauren and Emma are thrilled to make home-made tortillas again. There are just a few things to be done. The shades on the pendant lights over the island for one thing. But we are almost there.