Monthly Archives for December 2008

That’s a Wrap!

It’s been such a hectic month that there are lots of things I haven’t had time to post on the blog. One of those things is a huge THANK YOU!!!! to all of my coworkers, friends, and family members who participated in the holiday gift drive for the Pathways Family Shelter. A few weeks ago we had brunch at our house so everyone could drop off their gifts and get everything wrapped. I was overwhelmed with the generosity of everyone involved…I had to go back to the shelter and ask if they had any extra kids because we had so many people willing to be sponsors. The grand total was 32 kids and 14 parents who received gifts and stocking stuffers (small gifts and gift cards for the parents). I sincerely appreciate everyone’s efforts to make this happen.

Some photos from brunch:



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Portland, Maine

After our trip on the Polar Express we drove over to Portland to see Uncle Josh & Auntie Rachael. They had no electricity so they came over to our hotel for a little while and then we went out for Mexican. The next day we went to the Children’s Museum and had Thai take-out at their apartment and visited for a few hours. We drove home that night by way of Petco, where we had to hunt down some pee remover because Norah peed on Auntie Rachael’s couch. Simple Solution pee remover rocks!!

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The Polar Express

A couple of weeks ago we kicked off the holiday season with a trip to the North Pole aboard the Polar Express. It’s really hard to get tickets because it’s such a popular event. I had to send a $10 donation and enter a lottery, and on October 22nd they drew names and called people in the order they were drawn. If you didn’t answer the phone, you lost your chance to buy tickets. I carried my cell phone around all day, and my heart stopped every time it rang. I had Ginny on back-up with a list of preferred dates, ticket quantities, and credit card numbers. When they finally called at 9:15 PM, I had given up hope so I was pleasantly surprised. I was able to get tickets on an evening ride, for us and the Fonsecas. We stayed at the Hampton Inn in North Conway, which has indoor water slides to tire the kids out. Our trip to the North Pole coincided with the ice storm that knocked out power to half of New England, but we were lucky and had fine weather for travelling.

The train ride was as magical as I remembered from my trip with Aliya, Karen, and Vic back in 2005. The kids wore their pjs and the bakers served hot chocolate and chocolates with nougat centers, just like in the Polar Express story. It took about a half hour to get to the North Pole, and we were greeted by about 60-70 elves with their lanterns to help us up the hill to Santa’s amphitheater. The elves sang a few carols and then a guy in his robe in pj’s read the story about when he was a little boy and went on the Polar Express. Santa made an appearance and walked through the crowd of several hundred, greeting the kids and giving hugs. Then he selected a child (a “plant”) from the audience to give the first gift of Christmas. Luckily he didn’t choose Adlani because I don’t think “SPEED RACER!!!” was the gift request he was looking for. If you’re not familiar with the story, the kid asks for a bell from Santa’s sleigh, and if you believe in Christmas you can hear the sound of the bell. All of the kids received bells on the ride home.

We did have one small mishap or almost-mishap…Adlani was sleeping in one room with Karen, Shane, and Ginny, while Ben and I were in the other room with Aliya, Vic, and Norah. Around 5 a.m. I woke up out of a dead sleep because I could hear someone crying “Mommy…Mommy” over and over. Adlani had woken up and left Karen’s room to find me, and he was out in the hall crying outside my door. Oy. All’s well that ends well. And the 50%-off sale on kids’ clothes at LL Bean ensured that all ended well.


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Canine Wanderings

Last week Ben found a beautiful, gigantic, and very gentle greyhound wandering the neighborhood. Her name was Daisy and we called her owner (who was away from home and didn’t know she had escaped) and entertained her until he arrived. That reminded me that Annie has done some wandering of her own lately.
Considering where we live and the busy streets that surround our house, it’s a miracle that Annie has survived her wanderings. Once she ran off and while we were all out looking for her, someone came walking up the street with her on a leash. One morning she squeezed out the front door as I was getting the kids off to school and when I ran after her I asked a woman in the parking lot across the street to hang out with the kids until I came back. Another time she ran across 2 neighbors’ yards, across a busy street, and over to the church before Ben caught up with her. She is extremely fast…she even caught a squirrel the other day. I was amazed. I screamed at her to drop it, and miraculously she did and it limped up a tree.

Back in November I was sound asleep at 6 a.m. and I suddenly jumped up and yelled to Ben because I thought Annie had run off again. He said, “She’s right here…just go back to sleep.” It must have been a premonition because not more than 10 minutes later he was yelling up the stairs that she had run off. I went out looking for her and didn’t see her anywhere, so we drove around looking for what we thought would be a squished dog on the road. We didn’t find her so I called Animal Control and left a message. As soon as the office opened I got a call from the animal control officer and she said, “It looks like your dog made it all the way to Boston this morning.” What??? It turned out that she ran out the end of our dead-end street at the intersection and a guy sitting at the light saw her. He said she ran across Route 30 a couple of times so he followed her and she went right to him. He drove around looking for someone looking for a dog (she had taken the tag off her collar) and didn’t see us, so he took her to work at an elementary school in West Roxbury. She had such a fun adventure that she escaped AGAIN about a week later and was found by a neighbor.

I have since purchased a wireless fence and when the weather improves I’m going to start training her to stay put.
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