Christmas Eve...Jew Style

I am Jewish...big shock, i know! So as a litle jew growing up in a world of christmas, there was never anything to do on christmas day. So all the jews go to the movies and for chinese food (those are the only things open on christmas day!). So afting marrying chris, and embrassing real christmas, i began to miss my jewish christmas!! So we turned christmas eve into a jewish christmas!

So last night i am happy to say, we went to the movies and saw the new National Treasure movie. It wasnt' bad and we had popcorn! (i love popcorn!!) then after the movie we went over to the best chinese food place ever!! it is a very over the top resturant with fish tanks, a gold ceiling and little chinese guys in tuxedos! the food was so bad for you and so good!!!

hope you are all enjoying your christmas traditions and see you in the new year!!

The Blogmaster speaks

"Let's do a blog Chris...just like Brad and Lauren...it is such a good idea...people can keep track of our lives....it will be so great....i will do all the posting.....omg i am sooo excited..."

That's the story of our blog
Here's the reality

"Chris i dont know how to upload the photos.....Chris the photos you uploaded, fixed and resized in another program wont "work" for me....Chris i wasnt really listening when you were trying to teach me how to do it myself.......Chris can you just put the photos up.....Chris can you also do the blog cause it doesnt seem to work when i do it."

So, after finally getting a moment to upload, resize etc and post here it is..... No thanks to Dani. Although she is in the latest photos so i guess she should get some credit for sitting there and looking beautiful and drinking wine and eating cake etc. etc.

Birthday Wishes!

I know we have been a little slack lately with the blog, so even though i haven't downloaded the pictures yet, i wanted to put up a posting!

I had a fantastic birthday last weekend thanks to efforts of Christopher! He arranged a wonderful dinner filled with all the things i love that i don't eat because they aren't good for me! He was able to get home before me and set the dining room table with my favorite wine and candles (which means we ate at a table and not on our laps in front of the TV like we do every other night!). He brought in my favorite Italian food and i am embarrassed to say i ate it all! He got a fantastic cake...my favorite kind- butter cream icing, white cake and strawberry filling!! YUMMY!!!! We caught up with Kristy and Sean for a bit and then had a early night! If the dinner and friends weren't enough, i had a great a day at school too... it was dress down day, there were presents and brownies with my students, and more presents and pudding pie with the girls (and guy) i work with! Kristy went above and beyond and got me a beautiful Swaroski bracelet, Kathy got me my favorite wine, my sister got me a super soft sweater that i love, my mommy promised to take me shopping and Chris got me a huge mirror for our room (which I've been asking for!) and the wine glasses i wanted from pier one!!! He also had beautiful flowers sent to school and took care of all the dishes and cleaning that weekend! The celebration continued Saturday with another great meal out with my parents and then Sunday it snowed and i didn't have to teach Hebrew school!

All and all a fantastic birthday filled with loved ones, super presents and great food! What more could i want?

Recent Events

Well, a lot has happened since our last blog.....Thanksgiving, Our good friends Lauren and Brad finally had their baby and Dani's mom's birthday.
So first things first a big congrats to Our Okie friends Lauren and B-rad for bringing Ben into the world. It was nice of them to bring him in 9 days after Chris' bday and 11 days before Dani's so that his birthday will fall almost exactly between both of us.
Also, a great thanksgiving followed by Dani's moms birthday celebrations. It should be noted that Cooper spent much of his time during these festivities in his Uconn sweater by the window, ferociously guarding us so we wouldnt be disturbed!
Below are a few happy snaps for you to enjoy from the above mentioned festivities.

Coopers new favorite sweater Bday Celebration

Thanksgiving with Grandma/pa

The best guard dog ever

Chris' Birthday!

Chris also celebrated a birthday a few days ago! We haven't done birthday presents in years because we have always been saving up to do something (trips to Australia, buying a house...you know...) but this year we said "Screw It!" and decided to go all out on the presents. Cooper and i surprised Chris with a home theater for his big TV. We also made him double chocolate fudge brownies!

Halloween

Listen people....things have been very busy...I know we aren't having a baby like some people, but we still have a lot going on in good old New Jersey!! I guess basically what it comes down to is Chris is the one who knows how to download the pictures onto our computer, resize them and put them on the blog (i sort of know how to but i really have to think hard and no one likes having to do that....). And it is now college basketball season and let me honest, that is more important than the blog!

Even though we are well past Halloween, i am going to share some of the photos from our school Halloween Parade. Last year Kristi and I purchased bumble bee outfits because they were the ones we could find that were school appropriate. Apparently, that isn't a problem any more because no one worries about being school appropriate! We actually had three students who we had to cover up because their costumes were so inappropriate! When I was in 5th grade, I was a baby and I wore a giant one-piece with feet!!! What is wrong with America?!? Why do 10 year olds need to dress as Evil Devil fairies with corsets, fishnets and their butts hanging out??? To top that, we had two teens at the house that night that were trick-or-treating without costumes and smoking!!! I told them that if they were old enough to smoke (which they weren't) then they were too old to go trick-or-treating....and his response "I'm younger than I look!"...Jerk!

Enough of my ranting...here are the photos from school and one of cooper with the little pumpkin he likes to carry around the house!

Wedding Photos

As Promised here are the photos from the wedding.

Saturday's photos on the way!

Saturday was Lex and Josh's wedding!!!! For those of you that don't know, Lex is my roommate from college and Josh is a good friend from high school.
It was beautiful! Even though it had been raining for two days straight it stopped at about 2:00, the sun came out and they were able to do the ceremony outside! Everyone looked amazing (as you will soon see), the flowers were great and they had really cool mood lighting! Cocktail hour was an hour and a half with a raw bar and tons of great food. Being the picky eater that I am, I stuck with the cheese, crackers, bruchetta and pizza, but everyone else went nuts over all the seafood. The centerpieces were enormous and gorgeous and ballroom was huge! They had a very cute cupcake cake and a great band (with an elvis!) We got see some people from Monmouth that I hadn't seen in ages and lots of people from high school. While dinner was good, the hour of desserts was the best!!! Chris made himself a sundae but I headed straight to the strawberry and cream cake!! It was all way too good and I'll be very surprised if my pants fit tomorrow!

All and all a wonderful evening filled with love and lots of beautiful people!!!
Pictures coming very very soon!!

A special thanks to ....Glen for making me looking amazing, Kristy for playing dress up with me and most importantly Chris for not getting mad when I didn't introduce him to people whose names I forgot! It is because of you that i am here today... :o)

The Big 22!

Mouse came home from UCONN this weekend to spend her birthday in P-town. Even though she was quite ill we had a great time catching up, going out to eat and having a fantastic ice cream cake/pie thing! Thanks to the handy timer on the camera we finally got a good picture of the whole family!

Fall is here!

Last week we finally started getting some real fall weather! There was one particularly cool day, so i was a big baby and took out the space heater. Cooper (who LOVES the space heater) was very excited. He grabbed one of his favorite toys, got good and close to the heater, and took a nap! Too cute...

Alexa's Lingerie Party

Friday night was the surprise lingerie party for my friend Alexa. Her bridal party did an amazing job and Alexa was totally surprised. There was tons of food and drinks, crazy gifts and best of all a penis cake! I didn't even know they made cakes like that! The bridal party planned three days of bachelorette festivities starting with the surprise lingerie party Friday, a night in NY Saturday and a spa day on Sunday! Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to Saturday or Sundays events but I’m sure the girls managed to have fun without me!

Here are some of the sexy ladies from Friday. An of course the cake...

Our House

I know some of you wanted to see pics of our place so here they are. These were taken about a month after we bought the place.

AFL Grand Final

Well it was a record breaking Grand Final. For those that dont know already, the Power who were being supported by Gary, myself, Kristy and Dani set a new record by being beaten by the largest margin in AFL history. Junior was happy though as he was supporting the Cats who obviously cheated and won (All the emotion can be seen in the following photos!)












A big thank you to Dani and Kristy for supporting the Power and wearing the right colors on the night, as seen here












Thanks also to Danielle who slept through the whole game. In her defense the game did start at about 12:30am and go till 4 in the morning! The girls may not have enjoyed the game but apparently the wine was good.

Opening Day

For those of you that don't know (and i think that would be most of you) i am the co-chair of Chester's Corner Store. CCS (as people in know refer to it) is a highly lucrative operation which specializes in pencil sharpeners, fuzzy pencil grips, multi-point pens, and other totally awesome school supplies. The store is staffed by the finest 5th graders NJ has to offer and caters to students aged 5 to 11. This is our second year in operation, and my co-chair (the fabulous Kristy) and i are pleased to announce that opening day went off with a bang! While sales where not at their highest, our new items were a big hit and word spread quickly through the halls! I am sure that tomorrow will bring record sales!

I am sorry to announce that we no longer take pre-orders, so if you are interested in purchasing some of our reasonably priced items and supporting the 5th grade, you are going to need to line up Wednesday and Thursday mornings like everyone else. And for those of you that were worried about our string of thefts last year, the new staff has been properly trained to identify, apprehend and prosecute said offenders (Sean did i use the right terms?)

Aussie Rules Grand Final

A big shout out to all my Port Power supporters (Australian Rules Football team) as they will be facing a tough challenge this week in the Grand Final against the Geelong Cats. If anyone is in the neighborhood and wants to drop by, we will be having a little Grand Final party. Game coverage starts at 11:20pm Friday evening and it should be a ripper of a game. There may be a little tension at the GF party though with Gary and myself supporting the Power and Junior supporting against the Power with a passion. I will post some photos of the night on the weekend.

Stay tuned for the results of the best game of the season.

Lauren, you guys are always welcome to come and work with us at camp, or ship the kid/s off when they are old enough.

Our First Summer at Harbor Hills

Several of you have asked how our first summer at the new camp was... so i'm going to give you all a little update!

Harbor Hills is a beautiful camp about 15 minutes from our house. It is a day camp unlike the last one which was a sleep away camp. They have campers aged 3-15 with a special Kiddie Village for the littlest ones and a teen tour program for the oldest one! The camp caters to North Jersey with beautiful landscaping, great activities, meals and transportation and a wonderful staff (that's us!). Chris has a very similar job to the one he had at the last camp by interviewing and hiring all staff and working on advertising. In addition to that however he is also in charge of the teen travel program (this is a huge job- he organizes activities, transportation and food for 90 kids every day!). Needless to say he had lots of very long nights leading up to camp but the camp season ran wonderfully and he left at 6am and was home most nights by 9pm! A huge change from the last camp were he rolled into the cabin at 2 a.m. Plus now no one radios us at all hours of the nights with different issues, we have a real bed, hot shower, don't have to eat camp food breakfast, lunch and dinner and we have weekends!!!! Needless to say, Chris enjoyed the summer and loves the new job!

As for me, this summer i was a division leader. I was in charge of 44 third grade girls and seven counselors. I had a great group of kids and my counselors were wonderful too. I really enjoyed being outside and not stuck in a program room all summer! i got a tan, actually made some friends (yes some people like me!) and went swimming! Can't wait to do it again next summer!!!

the website for the camp is listed to the right. there aren't a lot of pictures of the camp but you can still check it out!

Lex's Bridal Shower

Last weekend was Alexa's bridal shower. Lex was my roommate in college and i am super excited for her to get married in a little over a month. Plus, the guy she is marrying is one of my good friends from High School. We cant wait for the wedding and the only issue for us will be to work out who is driving that night! And, to convince Chris that i need another new dress for the wedding.

This is Kasey (groom's sister), Me and Lex Me as a toilet paper bride....i was nominated to do this!

Cooper's play date

Also wanted to share some pics of Coopers new friend Hudson. Hudson's mom and dad (Lex and Josh) came over for a "puppy play-date" as Dani calls it. They are good friends and spent 4 hours chasing each other around - not Lex and Josh, Cooper and Hudson that is. We brought out 4 tennis balls for them to play with and Cooper was not a gracious host as he proceeded to take all 4 and place them strategically around himself so he could keep them all for himself. He is just like his mother, and needs to work on sharing.

Hebrew School

I am trying to make up for not writing anything for a while, so i thought id let you know about Dani's new level of "Jewy". She is now teaching at Hebrew school on Sunday mornings and Tuesday nights. I am hoping that this will score us some points with the big man upstairs. She enjoys it, as it is a change of pace from teaching and she is really good at what she does, so i am sure the kids will benefit from her being there.

1st Real Post - hooray (Dani made me do it)

So that i am not just teasing Lauren by never updating i thought we should add a post. We went to Ocean City the week after camp, and although it rained most of the time we were able to relax on the beach for a while, which was a nice change of pace. Dani is not happy about some of these photos being published for anyone to see, but hey she doesnt know how to update/edit the blog yet, so i guess i can put up whatever i want.

Popping the blog cherry

We thought it was about time to get with the times and create our own blog site. Not that we have too much going on in our lives right now, but we will soon!!!