Happy Turkey Day 2007

Today is Turkey Day 2007. The family and I are down at the parents in North Carolina. We had driven down on Tuesday night late. We left at 7:00 and got down to their house at 3:00. A perfect eight hour trip. Hopefully the trip back will be as good. We hung out at the house on Wednesday and did a bunch of different things. The kids went out on the boat with Pops and tried out his new 25 hp outboard. It’s even got push button electric start. The kids still needed to row to get back. It never hurts working a little bit. We rested up after the trip down and then went into town to meet Great Nanny for a little Chinese food near her house. She has decorated for Christmas and it looks great. We have helped Nancy get things ready for today’s Turkey day. At least with the Artichoke hearts and the Asparagus. I did some prep work and cooking in that area. We had Kate and Rob and Peter and his wife Jane and Dick, all neighbors from around their house. This took away the feeling that Mike and Liz were not with us this year. We ate a little after 3:00 and everything was great. Pops said Grace and we got to it. We had more than enough of everything. Turkey and Ham as the main with Smashed Potatoes, Yams, String Beans, Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce. There was Quiche and rolls, and Asparagus and Artichoke Hearts. And I am sure I'm missing things. We ate like piLgRIMs. But that is the holiday. After Dinner we took the mandatory time off to utter those age old words, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." Well we did.

Dessert was just as good. There was Pumpkin, Apple and Lemon Morang pies. We also had some home made Chocolate chip cookies and other cookies and treats. Very very good! Now thouroughly stuffed we found out Green Bay won and Dallas is killing the Jets. Our plan for tonight, once everyone leaves is to play Scrabble and watch Ratatouille. I might even have a snack later on, we'll see. The Birthday Cake was a belated gift to Pops from the kids. And of course, a holiday with Great Nanny cannot be complete without a height check. Looks like Quinn is solidly over the limit. Hope is next.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us. We had a good Day, We hope you did also. See you soon.

First Day of School 2007

Quinn and Hope both started school a couple of weeks ago. Quinn was psyched to be starting fifth grad in a new school. Hope is beginning second grade this year. In the picture with Quinn are our neighbors, Konstantino and Irene. Quinn's waking up at 6:30. Kind of a shock for him.

A very Family Weekend

A couple of weeks ago we all went and had a very fun family filled weekend. I had mentioned how Mike and family were back in NJ. Well, we went to visit. He’s got a really nice place, up in Denville. It was great to see the girls, Jenna and Mia. We spent the day there and did a little fishing. The next day we went over to Liz and Chris’s house to celebrate Nathan’s third birthday. It was supposed to be small. Chris’s parents were to be there and Mike and Bree and family. Well we got a small surprise when we got there. It seems like Eddie and Nancy drove up for it to. It was a great surprise when we got there and saw Eddie’s truck in the driveway. Very cool. It was odd seeing them there. They were just 2 days or so away from their Nova Scotia trip. I’ll post more about their trip later. Mr. and Mrs. Selgrath also brought Billy, Chris’s nephew. We had a good time running around. The kids loved the new trampoline. We all had fun. We had a nice meal and then sang Happy B-day to Nate. We all had a blast.

It was special having all of these guys together for the first time in years.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE!!!

A Trip to the Marco Island Summer Camp

Lesley and the kids just got back from a trip to Florida. They and Lesley’s mom Joan went to Marco Island and Tampa. This trip had been planned a while ago. Instead of paying about $100 per kid for day care(camps) for the week, we took advantage of Southwest’s $45 each way fare. They got down there on a Wednesday and the next day they took a ride up to Tampa to see Lesley’s friend Kathy and her family. Quinn and Hope got along so well with Kathy’s kids, Tyler, Kelsey and Trey. After a couple days they headed back to Marco and went to the beach and the Marriott hotel’s pool. One day they went to Joan’s friends in Naples place. Margie and Johnny have a nice Condo. They have one of those moving river pools that is about 20 feet wide and winds back and forth through the pool area like a river. They also went to a very cool water park on another day also in Naples. The last adventure that they all had was a Catamaran cruise to a small island and back. They had an awesome trip. They were the only ones on the boat. After all of there fun was over they were on there way back to the real world. They had an awesome trip. Very rested and relaxed for all of their running around.

Lesley's Company Picnic at Hershey

Every year Lesley’s company has their employee picnic at the Hershey amusement park. They run such a great deal, I think we’ve gone the last 8 years in a row. For about $15.00 less than a normal single day adult ticket we get Friday entry from 6 to closing and free parking, Saturday entry to the park all day and free parking. And a free catered lunch that runs from 12-6. And, we get another ticket to come back to the park at another time that year which we almost always do. If not, we either give them away or sell them cheap. This year we stayed at a local hotel and got in Friday afternoon. We went swimming at the hotel and then went to the park. Usually Friday night is my night to hit the coasters since the park is not that crowded. Saturday I do what the kids want. This was the first year the we went to the water park. Very Fun. We spent most of the morning and early afternoon at the water park. It was huge. We had a super fun time. And are looking to go back soon.

Quinn's Cub Scout Weekend 2007

Last weekend, Quinn and I went on his Cub Scout Weekend. We went to a local Camp called Delmont about 45 minutes away from our house. We rode up on Friday and got up there around 4:30. We got our tent assignment and un-packed. Dinner was at 6:00 so we made the trek to the Dining hall. “Lids off in the Dining Hall, please” was the call we heard as we sat down to dinner. I think it was Pot Roast, very good. After Dinner we had a Campfire down by the lake. The boys were introduced to the Evil Dr. Lizardo. The Cubs have been gathered to fight his evil by making tools and living the Green way. After the campfire there was an astronomy demonstration and then back to the campsite. There were 5 other boys and dads staying with our pack. We shared a site with another pack that had 4 boys.
The next morning some of us got up for the Polar Bear 6:30 swim. We did not, which we both agreed on. After breakfast we swam and traveled around the camp. Quinn was able to work on his requirements for a number of Cub Scout achievements. When I asked him, his favorite was the BB gun and Bow and Arrow. He also had a good time at the wood working hut.
We had a fun weekend. Kinda bittersweet. Saturday night Quinn turned to me at the fire and reminded me that this was the last year he will be going to Cub Scout camp because he graduates up to Boy Scouts this year. Wow, where did the time go? It was sure was fun.

Hope's Ballet Class

Here is a link to my photobucket site with pictures from Hope's Ballet class. She has just started an seems to like it a lot. Sorry about the qualty of the pictures and videos. We are not allowed in the room and they have a one way mirror which these pictures were taken through.

This was the first time I took Hope to class and in a classic Dad style forgot her hair tie.

I'll update when she has her show.

Fossil Hunting in Aurora, N.C.

This past weekend we went down to Ed and Nancy’s place in New Bern, NC. We were picking the kids up from a week’s stay at the grandparents. They had a blast. While we were down there we took a nice little side trip to the Aurora Fossil Museum. This is a small storefront museum in a town that is close to a Phosphate mine. In a nutshell, a million or so years ago, most of North Carolina was covered with sea water. At this time in history, Sharks were the dominate species in the water. So naturally a lot of them dying for whatever reason left them to be covered by layers of ocean bottom. The only things that remains from a shark are it’s teeth. Flash forward to today. A phosphate mine in NC needs to dig through a lot of waste material to get to their phosphates. That waste material is loaded with fossils, mostly sharks teeth.
Across the street from the museum is an empty lot where they dump truck loads of the waste material for the fossil hunters to paw through. We’ve gone a bunch of times. To the left is our haul for this past visit. The picture on the right is our best find ever. This was last Thanksgiving(06) where we found a 3-4 inch Great White tooth and some others.

Here’s a link to the Aurura Museum web site. And a link to some more pictures from our Fossil Hunting. Enjoy.

Native American Camping Weekend

Hope, Quinn and I went camping a couple of weekends ago. Quinn’s cub scout pack was having a campout at the County Cub Scout reservation. There are 4 campsites at this camp. Pirates where you sleep in a Large Wooden Pirate boat. Cowboys Staying in Fort Akela, Knights staying at the Castle complex and we stayed in the Native American Teepees. Our campsite consisted of a Long House which had the mess hall/kitchen and the bathrooms. There were 10 teepees. All had beds, some with two and some with three bunk-beds. Each wood bed had a mattress also. We had a teepee with two beds that we slid together and shared the sleeping bags. First thing into camp we made Tomahawks and Head Bands. We also colored on sand paper to make iron on warrior shirts. After lunch we went for a hike. We did not see much. After the hike, we went down to visit the Pirates and set up a Capture the Flag Game. It was very fun with prisoners, ambushes and all out Banzai charges. We won after a couple of hours. Then came Dinner prep. At least for the adults. This camp had a great Kitchen. Refrigerator, stove, lunch line severing. It was awesome. We made Foil Wrap meals with Chicken for the boys and Sausage with pepper and onions for the adults. I had one of the cub meals and it was pretty tasty. At about this time we were on full alert for an attack from the Cowboys staying at Fort Akela. All of our Braves and Maidens were dressed in their Indian gear and had their water pistols and water balloons ready to go. But no attack. After a little while we made a truce with the Pirates and attacked the Castle. Did I say attacked? I meant stormed and drenched the castle. The battle went on for an hour. I wonder if all that re-filling of the water pistols caused the camp well to fail that night leaving us with no water.
No running water on a camp out is usually no problem. However, we did not bring water in with us from the cars, a half mile away. And some of the families only came because there were flush facilities. Well it seems that all of the pirates left during the night and we lost three families from our Tribe. We survived the camp-out. The kids and I are closer for it and I can’t wait until our next camp-out. Maybe Kenobels in the fall?
We’ll see.

Hope's Rookie Softball Season Ends

We finished up our first year of softball. Hope had a great season playing on the River Dogs. So did the team. The girls on the team with only a couple exceptions were good hitters. Those that started the season having trouble at the plate were hitting like champs toward the end of the season. Two memories from he season stand out. The first is when we played the Norristown team. These girls looked to be about 10-11 year olds while we had 6-7-8 year olds. I was in the outfield when we were on Defense in the top of the first and all I heard was our team’s comments about how big the other team was and how we did not have a chance. Well we kept them to three runs and when we were up we scored 5 runs, every girl got a hit and onto base. In the field for the second inning the girls were all smiles and no worries anymore. It was such a night and day change in attitude that made it stand-out. (And to finish the thought, not that we keep score in our games, but we scored 4 more runs then they did in that game)
The second outstanding memory from our year was the Hair Time-out. Until I had coached Softball this year, I had not heard of this. Well, when you have 3-6 girls in the field, gloves off, adjusting their hair at the same time, you gotta call Time-out or risk one of them getting hit by the ball. It was a ‘There’s no Crying in Baseball’ type of moment. We had a great season. With the help of Coach M, Coach Matt, and Coach Quinn we were able to at least teach each girl something to help them improve their game.
I’ll be back if Hope is next year.

Lesley's Little Side Trip

Lesley had a great surprise this past Sunday. She went to Disneyland Paris. To back-track a little. She was sent to England for business. While there she connected with her friend Rosaba and her family. Rosaba and Family were going to Paris and Lesley went along. On the way they decided to take an extra day and go to Disneyland Paris. Here is a link to some pictures for now. I'll try to get some kind of trip report out of her to post. Here is a link to some pictures.
http://s128.photobucket.com/albums/p196/Maz2468/Disney%20Paris/

Piano Recital 2007

The kids had their Piano recital just recently. They both did very well. I have posted some videos of them at Photobucket. There are links below. Quinn has been taking lessons for about 4 years and Hope for about two. They both have showed enough talent on their own to make lessons the next logical step. We started Quinn at the municipal center with a very nice lady that would come in once a week and give lessons. We them switched him to his present teacher. She is a very good teacher and the one thing that Quinn loves the best is that she lets him play what ever music he brings to her as long as she feels he can do it. Wheather he heard it on TV or in a movie or even from a game, if we could find the sheet music, she would teach him.
I am not sure if Hope wanted to play on her own or played because she saw Quinn, but now she is enjoying herself. She likes to play and is improving week by week. She opened the recital with the Star Spangled Banner. Quinn played Ode to Joy. Enjoy the music and they do take requests. Use your back button to return.
Quinn

The Exile is Over!!!

Mike and Bree are moving back East!!! We just heard from Mike and he has gotten a transfer within his company and will be reporting into Secaucus, NJ starting in about a month. In case you did not know, Mike and Family have been exiled to Arkansas for about three years. Sorry we did not make it out there Bud. Give him a call and let him know we are looking forward to having his family back in the neighborhood.

Father Daughter Dance 2007

This past weekend, Hope and I attended her Girl Scout Father Daughter Dance. This is an annual event that we were able to attend last year also. This year it was held at the new middle school building. We arrived at 7:00 and were given our book of tickets once we checked in. Two tickets for the crafts, One ticket for our photograph and one ticket for a Favor.
The school cafeteria was set up with tables around the edges. There was also a refreshment table with a lot of snacks. On the far side of he room were two DJ's and their table with a dance floor in front of them.

Hope and her friends have been talking about and planning for this for weeks. So now that the night had finally arrived, the evening was fun and the girls had a blast. Hope and the rest of the girls were whirlwinds. At one point I corralled her and we were able to work on one of her two crafts. A small glass Candle Holder. The other craft was a choice between and alligator, monkey or elephant door knob hanger. Hope chose the monkey. We have yet to get to actually putting the monkey together, but the candle holder came out nice. Happy Mothers day Lesley.

This was a very fun event. Hope and I even got to dance a couple of times. While she was not running around that is. Can't wait until next year. Here is a picture of Hope and her girlfriends.

We have had a Very Educational Week

Leonardo Divinci, Ben Franklin and King Tut, Oh My! What do these guys have in common? Well us of course. Did you read the title of the this Blog?
Last Saturday we were up Allentown way. We had won a set of tickets to the Davinci Science Center from the school Quinn and Hope go to. I was not expecting much, never hearing of this place before. Their Web site was not immpressive either. Although looking at it again, there is a lot to do on the site. Well the Science Center was really nice. It was small when you think of a Philly Museum, but everything worked. Let m explain. Most of the times when you go to a museum in Philly, the exhibit will look great, but if it is older than year, more than likely, it would be broke and not work right. Not this place. A very nice modern building with two floors and a theatre. The first floor was broken up into sections. From 'What Hurts', an exhibit on he hospital room and all of the machines and devices used to help you get well. To 'La Laguna' a Please Touch Pol with Sea Urchins, Crabs, and other sea creatures. There were about a dozen more exhibits. What held he kids attention the most was the TV Weather Studio. The Blue Screen was super fun. You can pick a weather background. They had a blue coat to go with the blue screen. Here is Hope wearing the coat in a snow storm. Upstairs they had a paper plane exhibit and a very cool Dinosaur made from a Auto Assembly Plant Robot. There were also a couple rooms for Birthdays. On the way out, we passed through theirsnack area. Two observations, first, they had an Ice machine of the future that used almost no electricity and a Pizza vending machine that took the pizza from the freezer into the Micorwave, out the chute. we didn't get one, but thought it was cool. This is the type of machine that would have always have been empty if we had one in college. Here's a couple more pics: Water Cyrstalizing and the Dinosaur robot.
Later on that week we met Lesley's cousin Jeanette and kids in Philly to go to the King Tut Exhibit in the Ben Franklin Institute. Everyone knows the story of the discovery of King Tut. Or better yet, King Tutankhamun. The exhibit is by reservation only. We have a membership and still paid $20 per adult and $11 per kid. When it was our time we lined up near the entrance to the exhibit. Heavy Security and a long queue line. I got the audio tour also, $7. Omar Sharrif telling me all about Egypt and it's rulers. Is Omar Egyptian? I know he played one in a movie. Anyway the exhibit started out with a short movie and then onto the first gallery. There were 5 or 6 galleries in all. We were educated to the ancestry of King Tut. From his Great Grandfather, Amenhotep II, to Tut himself. There were many carvings of wood and stone. Many gods and gooddesses. There were also little statues know as Shabtis. These are suppose re-animate when the mummy in the tomb reachesd the after life. Shabtis' have a spell written on them as an instruction as to what they will do. There was also a lot of ceramic fruit and everyday items all suppose to come back to help out the dead in the after-life. There were many samples of chairs and tables from each of the tombs of these mummies. There were also about 3-4 scale boats. We were not allowed to take pictures. I would have taken a lot. The last two galleries were Tut and Tut only artifacts. All items taken from his tomb. A lot of gold. Not the main head peice shown above, but almost everything else. Knives, Chest plates, and and jewlery. One of the most impressive things I noticed was that in all of the wood work there was incredible inlay and detail. The other strong thought throughout the exhibit was knowing that someone 3500 years ago made all of these items. Is there anything closer to imortality than this? After the last gallerie you are escorted into a gift store and then exit out by the Sport Extreme room. In the little ante-room after the store is some phorensics on the way Tut might have died. Also a very life like bust created from the dimensions of his skull. This is the same procedure used in re-creating a face from a skull in a Jane/John Doe. After seeing the pictures of the un-wrapped mummy and seeing the jewelry and items buried with the king, this bust reminds us that he was just a boy. A boy king who brought back the gods to Egypt, but a boy non-the-less.

Here is your Ancient Egypt lesson for today: We all know that King Tut is short for King Tutankhamen. What you might not know is that he was not born with this name. King Tut was originally short for Tutankhaton. The ...aton at the end of his name was in tribute to Aton the sun god whom Tut's father had tried to make the sole god of Egypt and failed. Tut later changed the ...aton to ...amen in tribute to his bringing back the gods during his reign.

So, we all now feel pretty well educated for the week. If you would like more details about the above, send me an email.

Mark Melicia and the Parlor Mob

Lesley's nephew Mark has been in a band for the last couple of years. What about Frank was the name of the band and they played a lot around the Jersey Shore and on a couple of Tours. Through the family grapevine we heard they even opened up for Cheap Trick. Here is a link from YouTube from a review:

Planet Verge Review

Since, they have changed their name to the Parlor Mob which is a lot better than the Parlor Boys, which Lesley keeps saying. I've listened to a lot of what they have and I gotta tell you it's really good. Every time I hear something from them for the first time, I hear music from the long past 60 and 70's. It sounds weird, but it is almost refreshing to hear music like this.
Check them out and don't be surprised to see them make it big.

Bullet

The Philly Food Guys have Launched their Site

A close friend of mine, Bill, from the Atlantic City days, has just opened his new Website and Podcast called The Philly Food Guys. Bill and his friend Tushar in their own words about their idea:

"PhillyFoodGuys searches out and presents great, but lesser-known, food places in and around Philadelphia, PA. Whether you’re an area resident or visitor, our goal is to entertain and inform you about some excellent local restaurants, markets and shops that most might miss."

When you take a look at their site you'll see that they are just starting out. But the potential for this idea is limitless so check back often. It was fun to hear Patty, Bill's wife, on their second review. We can only hope that Patty, who had filled in for Tush, and did a great job will be on the show often. She had some great insight on the restaurant they had eaten at. The guys encourage your reviews as well. I totally have been inspired to take Lesley out to somewhere different in Philly as soon as we can go.

So, Bill and Tushar, Good Luck and may all of the doors to the little know eateries, whether they are neon yellow and barred or not, always be there waiting for your reviews.

THE PHILLY FOOD GUYS

Welcome

Hello and Welcome to the Maz Family Blog. This is the first post. Stay tuned for more soon.