Mack and cheese

Ken and Ava were at the airport traveling home from Cincinnati after Thanksgiving. They sat down to eat with Mimi and GranTed. There was nothing Ava wanted on the menu. Ken, good dad that he is, took Ava to three restaurants before finding one that she was happy with. All she wanted was mac & cheese.
They sat down to dinner at Max and Erma's and Ava ordered her mac & cheese. Dinner arrives, along with a side of fruit. She devours the fruit. The mac & cheese is getting cold.
Ken: "Ava, please eat your mac & cheese."
Ava (dramatically, in tears): "I don't like mac & cheese!!"
Ken: "You made me go to three different restaurants to find mac & cheese! You LOVE mac & cheese!"
Ava: "I DON'T like mac & cheese! I don't like to eat mac & cheese!
Ken: "But it's your favorite!"
Ava: "Daddy, I don't like to EAT mac & cheese. (devilish grin appears)...I like to ORDER mac & cheese..."

"Just the cookie, nice man."

I have been looking for pictures for our holiday cards and came across the 'cookie series' which reminds me of this funny story.
Ava and I drove out to Long Island to have dinner at the Gold Coast Diner with Gommy and Ava started to chat up our waiter, Leo. We order, we eat, Leo comes to tell Ava about her dessert options.
Leo: "You can have jello..."
Ava: (interrupting) "Ew..."
Leo: "a cookie..."
Ava: Ooh!!
Leo: "or ice cream..."
Ava (interrupting, while waving him off, not even giving him eye contact): "Just the cookie, nice man."
In an instant, he is nameless. Just a man with access to a cookie.

Beauty and the Beast

Ava: The Beast scares me!
Mom: He is scary, but he has a really good heart.
Ava: Yeah, but he doesn't have a really good face.






Thanksgiving was wonderful... spent in Cincinnati with the Macks and Silbersteins. Ava had a lot of quality time with Cousin Eli and everyone else. It really is such a wonderful holiday. No religious undertones (or overtones) to cloud the message of just being grateful for all of the abundance we have. A little touch of that gratitude daily could do wonders.

I had to add these pictures of Ava & Tyler from her birthday party!

Ava's 3rd Birthday Party

We had Ava's 3rd birthday party on Saturday at Stew Leonard's. Wow the Cow was a big hit and I was especially fond since I'm a sucker for any kind of puppet. Ava had a fantastic time seeing all of her friends in one place, which we rarely get to do anymore. People traveled from far and wide to have fun with all of us and we were extremely grateful.

We came back to the house with Gommy & Jerry for a relaxing afternoon. We're sitting upstairs and I'm trying to convince Ava of the benefits of eating peas.
"Ava, eat your peas. You'll become big and strong."
"Why do I have to be big and strong?"
"Because (pause, pause... time to think...) otherwise the world will stomp on you."
"Let the world stomp on me."
I kid you not.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween

Wow... blogging is tough to keep up with! Isn't it enough that I upload my pictures to kodakgallery.com super-fast? Now I have also burdened myself with the task of uploading them here? We'll see how long I can keep up with both. For now, it's still fun for me, so I'll continue. We've had a good few weeks since Halloween, when Ava dressed up as her favorite princess, Cinderella. She continues to make us laugh when we least expect it.

One of her latest:
"Mommy, I'm feewing (pronouncing "L" is not her favorite thing) nervous."
"Why, honey?"
"My stepsisters make me nervous."
"Oh baby, you're in character. Don't let them make you nervous, Cinderella. Good always prevails."
"They tore my dress." (I look closely and notice her arm is not in the correct armhole).
"Sweetie, good always wins."
Ends with a hug.

Today is the first day...

...of the rest of our blog.

We have started this blog to help me (Laura) with my ongoing loss of short-term memory, by writing down stories as they happen so that we can continue to laugh about them for many years to come.

A little background... our family of three lives in Bedford Hills in Northern Westchester county, NY. It's been a dramatically different experience than the one we shared for the 13 years prior, having moved up from the city, where we both lived separately and subsequently together since the early 90's. It's really lovely up here in Canada... and we are so happy to have landed in a place that we would have chosen had we known more about it when we were looking to move. (Big whew).

Ava turns three in early December and it's been a whirlwind three years. Maybe at some point I'll have the extra time to publish old photos to this but for now, it's purely a future-forward blog.

The picture attached to this posting is from the Sheep and Wool Festival that Gommy, Ava and I went to last weekend. It was a wonderful day. The drive up was spectacular... the Taconic is one of the prettiest roads I've ever been on and this time of year it is just spectacular. We went on almost all of the rides with Ava. Such a memorable day.