We all took a walk in the Congaree Swamp, except for Fred and David, who stayed home and cooked and set up for Thanksgiving dinner. For the first time, we served Thanksgiving dinner buffet-style, which made for a less stressful experience at the dinner table. Nana contributed cranberry sauce, Colleen pies, and I made the sweet potatoes. Later on in the afternoon, almost everybody player Settlers of Catan. And Colleen made cappuccino for all who wanted it. Yum!!
Marina moved out yesterday. She and some college friends are renting a house in the five points area of Columbia. The house has five bedrooms, of which hers is the smallest - her choice. I think Marina must have the gift of peacemaking.
David spent a week working on the Hughey farm, learning about barrel-ponics and doing things like helping build fish ponds and washing out a zillion veggie oil barrels. In case you haven't heard about barrel-ponics - we hadn't until Colleen told us about it - it is aquaponics implemented with barrels, using fish and the nitrogen cycle to grow fruits and vegetables in a small space and with limited water. Travis Hughey invented barrel-ponics and is targeting it at third-world countries. For more information, see this explanation. When David left, Travis gave him some barrels and other parts to build a system at home, so Fred and David have a project now!
Julia is five-years old today. We had a "Moon Landing" and celebrated with a family birthday party at our house. Julia looks so much like her mother.
"Papa" really likes babies! He's holding Silas here, who is 10-months old.
We drove to Princeton, NJ, for the 30th PCD Anniversary. This is the day after Marina's birthday. She was born the Monday after the 10th PCD Anniversary celebration, at which, needless to say, I didn't do a lot of dancing. Ten years ago, we went to the 20th anniversary dance -- hope we'll make it to the 40th!
Colleen and Shelby went to Hendersonville, NC for a vacation. They took along Silas, Julia stayed with a friend, and the other three boys stayed with us. What a treat! Fred and I took the boys to the zoo and got totally tired out. Elias did, too. We parked at the botanical gardens and waited a long time, and then when the tram finally came, it was full, so we decided to walk to the zoo rather than wait for the next tram. Elias, recently turned two years old, was a good trooper and walked as far as he could before we had to carry him.
Did I mention that Eric has become quite the cook? David and Fred and I have been away from home at dinnertime altogether too often in the past couple of months and Eric's often had to "fend for himself" for dinner. He's decided that he really doesn't like meat very much, so recently he made Shrimp-Fried Rice and Fish Stew. In the process, he learned how to clean fresh shrimp and cook fish that's not been fileted. His culinary inspirations tend to come from You Tube videos, and he usually finds out he needs to alter the recipe because we don't have some of the ingredients on hand. The picture here is the birthday "cake" Eric made for me - we didn't have any cake mix left, so he improvised with chocolate-chip muffins!
Wednesday was Fred's birthday. It was one of those "special" decade birthdays. Didn't do much to celebrate it then, since we're planning to celebrate all the family's February birthdays - Fred's, mine, and Elias's - next Saturday at Colleen's house. But we did pull off a surprise last night at the contra dance (www.contracola.org). Unbeknownst (how's that for an archaic word?) to Fred, I baked a Red Velvet/Chocolate cake downstairs in Nana's apartment yesterday afternoon. While we were at the dance, David brought Marina back from USC to the house, where she decorated the cake, and then Marina, David, and Eric drove to the dance with the cake, paper plates, and napkins, arriving about 5 seconds after the dancers had started singing Happy Birthday to Fred. The timing couldn't have been better! The kids did a great job!
This has been a rather uncommon day. We knew the day was going to be special because of the Presidential inauguration, and because it is my mother's 88th birthday. What we didn't know was that it was going to SNOW and that the offices at work would be closed - read that, "I had a day off" - and the schools would be closed, too. Now, remember, we live in South Carolina, so snow, even a little, tends to be taken as a serious threat. The picture here shows the snow in our front yard after it had finished snowing and just before it started to melt.
We (that is, Cabin Fever! - Fred, Woody, me) played for the Columbia contra dance tonight. It was the first time that this hammer dulcimer was played publicly. A couple of weeks ago, Beth and I drove up to Black Mountain with it to have a microphone (actually two of them - treble and bass) installed. Although I had verified at home that I knew how the hammered dulcimer's internal mics should be hooked up to a sound system, we were unable to get it work at the dance and we had to use an external mic instead. We suspect a weak battery in the pre-amplifier.
You might not be able to tell from this picture, taken just before the concert, but Eric (on the right) was quite excited to be seeing Joshua Bell in concert. This was our Christmas present to Eric.
Today we celebrated New Year's day in a way that comes close to being a family tradition -- we've celebrated this way not every year but definitely many years. We're visiting Barbara, my college roommate, and her family. Last night - New Year's Eve - we watched (on TV) the ball drop in Times Square. Today we went for a walk in John Bryant park, then stopped by Young's Dairy to eat ice-cream and feed the goats. Back at the house, Barbara served up a slew of hor d'ouevres, and then served the traditional meal of pork and sauerkraut with mashed potatoes, apple sauce, and peas. Yum.
Spread cream cheese in 9-inch pie pan. Cook chili (microwave for ~6 minutes), then spread over cream cheese. Add shredded cheese and microwave to melt the cheese. Serve with tortilla scoops or chips.
