Three Grandsons Visit

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.

Culinary Capers

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!

Birthday Surprise

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!