Ashley's Dance School Christmas Show

Ashley's Dance School hosted a Christmas Show to show off what the girls have learned.

I can't say that dancing comes easy for Ashley, and being a lefty certainly doesn't help. Every move starts off on her right, and she wants to start off with her left. Plus, since Ashley broke her ankle at the end of September she missed a whole month of classes and had to catch up. Nevertheless, Ashley had improved quite a bit and she likes going to dance because Nana comes to watch her every week and drives her home.

Katelyn loves to dance more than anyone, so I can't wait to sign her up for class next September. I know she's going to love it!

Yet another cake..

My co-worker’s wife is expecting a baby in a month, so today we had a baby shower for them at work. I couldn’t miss this opportunity to make another cake, so I went all out – I made a two tier cake and decorated it with fondant using my newly acquired skills from October’s cake decorating class. The bottom tier was a 12” square yellow cake with Bavarian custard and fresh strawberries. The top 8” round cake was chocolate cake with raspberry mouse filling. I frosted the whole thing in Italian meringue buttercream and covered it with homemade marshmallow fondant. It took more time to make than I’m willing to admit but it was all worth it. Here are a couple of pictures:


Big thanks go to Natalia and Theresa for helping me make this happen, and to Mike for keeping the kids occupied while this was being put together.

Here are some more pictures:

Powder room and family room remodel

While Ellie was visiting us from Germany this summer her and I (with some help from Uncle Dan) remodeled/redecorated our powder room and family room and I just now got around to taking a few pictures (presently with Halloween decorations). It’s been on our to do list for several years and the time has finally come! I repainted our red powder room into more neutral beige with metallic stripes, we updated the vanity, mirror, light fixture and all of the accessories. This project also lead to me painting the front foyer and hallway, and replacing all of the wall plates with oiled bronze ones. I don’t have a before picture, but here’s how it turned out:



For the family room, we repainted beige walls, and replaced burgundy couch and golden oak entertainment center that housed our giant 63” rear projection TV for a more up to date look. I painted the family room and kitchen with Benjamin Moore Rhine River color, and we got everything new from carpet to flat panel TV. I’m super happy with the way it turned out. We now have a lot more seating room, and plenty of storage for kid’s stuff.

Happy Halloween!

This year Halloween was the best! We had a great time Trick or Treating on our street with Natalia and Indira. Ashley was Tinker Bell and Katelyn was Princess Belle from Beauty and the Beast. After we finished our street, the kids didn’t want to stop, so we continued going around with a bunch of our neighbors to the adjacent streets, after which we went to one of our neighbors’ for pizza. Ashley and Katelyn had a blast! It was fun to watch them have fun.

When we got home, Nana, Busenka and Grandpa Chuck were waiting for us. Ashley and Katelyn were thrilled to see them, and where still super hyper from the lollipops that they ate while we were out. Can’t wait for Halloween 2012!

Snow in October !?!?!

This Saturday, October 29th, something unthinkable happened - we had our first snow storm of the season, before Halloween!! Luckily for us, we got only a coating in Monmouth County. Other parts of NJ, including Mom and Chuck’s area got a foot or more! We hope this isn’t a sign of the things to come this winter.

Tinton Falls Solar Farm

I don’t usually write about what Mike is up to, but since Mike is very proud of this project I have to mention it. Mike just hosted a ground breaking ceremony for the Solar Farm that is going to be built in Tinton Falls. It’s going to be one of the largest solar farms in the Northeast boasting 85,000 solar panels that will generate enough energy to power 3,000 homes! Mike lead the effort on this project and is super happy that it’s off to a great start! It's a great accomplishment for him personally and for the borough of Tinton Falls.
http://www.app.com/article/20111028/NJNEWS/310280089/3-000-homes-may-get-solar-farm-electricity
http://eatontown.patch.com/articles/groundbreaking-ceremony-for-solar-farm-in-tinton-falls-on-friday
Here’s a picture from the ground breaking ceremony:

Fondant and Gumpaste Cake Decorating Class

This month I took my third cake decorating class. It was the Wilton’s Fondant and Gumpaste class. I learned how to make different flowers from gumpaste and fondant, including roses, calla lilies, carnations, mums, daisies. We also learned how to make big bows and learn some techniques for working with fondant and gumpaste.It was a fun four week long class. Here are some pictures:




My final project was a pumpkin walnut cake with maple cream cheese frosting. I covered it with homemade white fondant and decorated it with sugar mums and leaves in fall colors. It was delicious!

Fall is my favorite!

The weather this fall has been absolutely awesome. We’ve been taking advantage of what this season has to offer before the winter sets in. On Saturday we went with some friends to Eastmont Orchards one last time to pick what’s left of the apples. We returned to our house for some beef stew. Ashley and Katelyn got to play with Ella and Ethan. It was nice to send them to the basement to play while we enjoyed our wine in the kitchen. It turned out to be a fun night for both the kids and adults.

On Sunday we went to Freehold to Battlefield Orchards for a hay ride and to pick our pumpkin for carving. They have a pretty long hay ride for the $2 that they charge, and the scenery from the ride was the best. It was nice to take the time to take it all in. After the ride we picked up one large pumpkin and couple small ones for Ashley and Katelyn.

We stopped at the Battlefield Orchards Country store for some fresh apple cider donuts and other treats. After the sugar boost, I took Ashley to Ellie’s Birthday party, where they baked and ate chocolate chip cookies. Ashley had fun helping to make the cookies. We returned home for some hot pasta fagioli soup with grilled cheese. We took a quick rest and tried to get the kids to nap, which doesn’t always happen on the weekend, we gave up that idea in favor of going for a bike ride. Mike pulled the kids in the trailer behind his bike. The ride knocked them out, so when we got back, Mike and I got to enjoy some hot cocoa while the kids finished napping in the trailer. If that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, we ended the day with Uncle Dan carving our pumpkin, and me making an apple pie and roasting pumpkin seeds. We ended the evening with a slice of hot apple pie with some vanilla ice cream and hot tea. Life is good!

Johnson Park and Rutgers

This Sunday, we ventured to Johnson Park to check out the petting zoo. I haven't been there in a very long time, and I have to say it looks better then ever! After visiting with the goats, pigs, llamas, horses, ducks and more goats, we walked over by the river. I pointed out to Ashley where my dorm was when I was in college and she was really interested! She asked a lot of questions and really wanted to go over and see it. So drove over to College Age and walked around campus. I showed Ashley our Dining Hall, the Student Center, the Grease Trucks, and Scott Hall. Katelyn and Ashley had a blast checking out classrooms and playing hide-n-seek on the Green between the buildings. I doesn't seem that long since I graduated even though it's been 11 years! We'll definitely have to come back again another time.

Fall Cookies

On the weekend Natalia was helping me clean out our basement and we found some Fall cookie cutters, and since it’s officially Fall, we decided to make and decorate some sugar cookies. The girls baked them during the day and in the evening we all sat down to decorate them.

Ashley did a pretty good job with her’s:


Natalia did an excellent job with hers:



Here’s how Katelyn’s cookies came out:

Yes, there are only crumbs left on her board. She ate them as soon as they were decorated.

Even Daddy joined in the fun:


Here's all of them:

Ashley’s First Day of Preschool is Here!

I can’t believe how fast the summer went this year! It feels like we were just at Ashley’s preschool graduation, and now she’s starting her preschool year! On Thursday Mommy and Daddy took Ashley for “Tea Time” with Mrs. Samuels for meet and greet. Last year at this time, Ashley was very nervous, she cried and didn’t want to leave my side, this year is a big girl! She was excited to show Mrs. Samuels her cool boot, and to see her friends from last year. It was nice to see her so confident and comfortable in the preschool setting. She had a great first day! :)

Here are a couple of pictures from the "Tea Time" day:



On first day, when we went to drop off Ashley, Katelyn didn't want to leave. She wanted to stay at the preschool with Ashley, and cried when we had to go. So ironic, because Ashley didn't cry and Katelyn did..

Jack's First Birthday Party and Tinton Falls Community Day

Saturday was a busy day for us, we had Jack's 1st Birthday Party and Tinton Falls Community Day to attend! This made for a busy yet fun-filled day!

Ashley fell asleep on the ride to Jack's party, so she missed out on a good portion of it. It didn't slow down Katelyn. She made friends with all of the kids that were there. It was really cute!


Pictures from the Tinton Falls Community Day:

Cool Spider Web On the Tree In Front of Our House

Ashley’s Ankle

Last Saturday, at the Block Party, Ashley rolled her ankle by stepping from our front lawn off the curb on to the street. She was pretty upset when it happened, and claimed that she couldn’t walk on it. She was pretty tired by then, so we assumed that she was mostly upset because she was tired and wanted attention. It looked swollen, so we wrapped it, but she couldn’t walk on it for the rest of the night, and the whole day Sunday. Monday morning we called Dr. Stankovits, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, for appointment. They told us that he was in surgery at Monmouth Medical and that we should go to the ER there and ask to be seen by him. Ashley was very excited! Both Mommy and Daddy took off from work to take just Ashley, no Katelyn to the Hospital! It was a special treat. She had a couple of X-rays taken and then we saw Dr. Stankovits. He said that Ashley fractured her growth plate fibula, which is the cartilage at the end of the bone where kid’s bones grow. The good news is that she won’t have any long term effects from this injury and she didn’t need a real cast put on, but the bad news was that she has to wear a boot for a few weeks to walk and couldn’t go back to her dance or gymnastics classes for a month and no swimming for at least 2 weeks!



Mommy was more upset about missing the classes then Ashley was, I just paid for her activities for the next three months and now had to call everyone and figure out how to handle this! Sigh..

After the hospital we stopped by Surf Taco for lunch and then got some ice cream, which of course made Ashley feel much better!

2nd Annual Shea Lane Block Party

I can’t be more thankful for our great neighborhood. We enjoy our little get-togethers. Last week we had our 2nd Annual Shea Lane Block Party. A lot of effort went into organizing this, and last minute we were seriously concerned that we were going to get rained out, but luck was on our side and it turned out into a great day/night!

Daddy's Girls

Indira has left our nest..

Indira came when Katelyn was only four months old and Ashley not even three, and since then has become a member of our family and person extremely dear to me. I’m sad to say that after almost two years of being by my side almost every day, Indira has moved out of our house to start her new life here as a student! Luckily for us, she’s only living 20-25 minutes away, and is taking classes at Brookdale, so we hope to see her often! We’ve shared some awesome times with Indira, and she’s had such a tremendous impact on Ashley and Katelyn. I’m grateful to have her in our lives!

Our 11th Annual Wedding Anniversary BBQ

Every year we have big BBQ to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Even though our real anniversary was on June 17th, we delayed our BBQ until September this year. In June we celebrated Katelyn’s birthday, we didn’t want to make it too big, we wanted it to be about Katelyn and I think we accomplished that!

Here we are in September, first time ever having a BBQ. And I think we kind of liked it! Saturday was a very mild day, it was about 68F and partly sunny. I took Thursday and Friday off from work to prepare, the list of things to get done before hand was enormous - we power-washed, weeded, planted trees, mulched, painted, and decorated the back with Christmas lights! With a lot of help from some awesome people we did it! And everything looked great!

This year we had the largest turn out of all, 110 people in all, about 80 adults and 30 kids, that’ s more than we had at our wedding! We knew we’d have to plan everything out ahead of time and that’s what we did. I had a detailed to do list for everyone for every day leading up to the party and for the day of. We had to borrow tables and chairs and set everything up so that people can spread out and not be crammed in one area. Dan wired the backyard with speakers, so we can play music all day, and I have to say he did an excellent job with that!

Since we cook all of the food ourselves, it was important to have a schedule and stick to it, for feeding that large of a crowd is no easy task and I didn’t want to simply have burgers and hot dogs. It’s too boring and people are sick of it by the end of summer. So, here’s the menu that we prepared:

~~ Appetizers ~~
Chips/Pretzels/Corn Chips with Mango Salsa
Plantain Chips with Guacamole, Veggies with Ranch Dip, Cheese with crackers
Bruschetta on Garlic Toasts
Grilled shrimp with outback's dipping sauce
Chicken Satay with Peanut Dipping Sauce
Mini Swedish meatballs

~~ Cold Sides ~~
Autumn Salad (Romaine, Dried Cranberries, Fresh Apples, Gorgonzola Cheese, Roasted Walnuts and Balsamic Dressing)
Cole Slaw, Pasta Salad, Olivie (Russian potato salad)

~~ Hot Sides ~~
Oven roasted potatoes, Mac n cheese

~~ Main Entrees (catered by Attilios) ~~
Baked Ziti
Penne with Vodka Sauce
Meatballs
Chicken Francese

~~ On the Grill (Uncle Dan’s Task) ~~
BBQ Chicken drum sticks
Russian chicken kabobs
Hot dogs

~~ Dessert ~~
Fruit salad
Chocolate chip cookies, Rugalas, Brownie Bites, Cream puffs
S'mores

~~ Drinks ~~
Juice boxes, Water, Soda
Beer/Wine
Peach Iced Tea
White and Red Sangria
Mango Martinis (Mango vodka & mango nectar, garnished with strawberry)
Apple Martinis garnished with cherries

It was really great to see everyone, old friends and new. We had a bouncy house set up for kids, and volleyball and cornhole toss game for adults. Ice King even made us a luge ice sculpture to do shots! It was pretty cool! And in the evening we lit up the firepit and sat around roasting marshmallows. The Christmas lights around the deck and tiki torches made it look very festive.

It was a day full of excitement and fun, and definitely one we’ll remember for years to come! Happy 11th Anniversary to Us!

A visit to Uncle Dan's new place

A couple of weeks ago, Dan moved from a condo to a townhouse. It's a much bigger place, where he can have a few people over if he wants. He finally bought some living room couches, so he had a little couch celebration with a frew friends. I took all of my girls (Katelyn, Ashley, Natalia and Indira) over to his place to check it out.

Ashley and Katelyn danced their little tails off all evening! And Dan's friend Dave even joined them for a bit! It was very cute :)

Cake for Mom & Chuck's 15th Wedding Anniversary

On Labor Day weekend Mom and Chuck celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary with a BBQ party at their house. Per my mom’s request I made them a special wedding anniversary cake. I made a 16” round butter cake with raspberry mouse filling and almond flavored Italian meringue buttercream.

The plan was to decorate the cake with stargazer oriental lilies like the ones my mom had in her wedding bouquet, little did I know that those flowers are not that easy to find. I went all over town looking for them, and when I was almost ready to give up, I found a few in an arrangement on display at Foodtown. The florist was not for the day, so I had to convince the store manager to take apart the arrangement and sell me the flowers. Luckily they agreed, and I was home free!

Summer Fun 2011

First earthquake and now a hurricane!?!

As if the Earthquake, on August 23rd, wasn’t enough excitement, we were now in the path of the Hurricane Irene, heading straight for Monmouth County, with expected arrival of early Sunday morning, on August 28th! It was a very serious threat to our area. Haven’t seen how other parts of the country have gotten devastated by hurricanes in the last five years, we wanted to make sure that we were prepared. With two little kids at home, we didn’t want to take any chances.

On Thursday, we stocked up on food, water, flashlights, batteries and candles. Every supermarket was packed with people buying everything and anything! All of the water and bread shelves were empty! It was craziness, much worse then what we see before a snow storm. We purchased plastic in case a window gets blown out and we need to seal it. We also got a backup battery powered sump pump for the basement. If we lost power, our regular pump wouldn’t work, and our basement could flood. We bought two car batteries to power the backup pump in case we needed to.

On Friday, Indira spent the whole afternoon at Lowes waiting for a generator delivery. We don’t have one, and if we lost power for a week or more, all of the food in our two fridges would not survive for more than a couple of days max. A thousand dollars later, we had a generator in the garage, along with 15 gallons of gasoline. We didn’t open up the box, hoping that if the generator doesn’t get used, we’d return it back to the store.

Also, on Friday we made sure to secure everything outside, here’s some picture of the stuff on our deck:




We put as much stuff in the shed as we could fit, some stuff in the garage and the rest we had to tie down with rope. One of our neighbors was away on vacation, so we got together and secured their front and backyard as well. The concern was that if we get a 100 mile an hour wind gust it could blow a heavy object into someone’s house window, door or even knock out a wall.

Saturday we woke up to an overcast sky, and by afternoon the rain started coming down. Mike was busy working with the town’s emergency team to make sure everything ready. He brought home an SUV to use for the weekend, in case the streets got flooded and he needed to get to borough hall. He also brought home a police two-way radio so that he could communicate with the police if power went out. Everyone was concerned about what was to come, lucky for us though, we have great neighbors, so Saturday night we went next door for a hurricane party! Everyone brought something to eat/drink, and we had a good old time, cheering all the tornado warnings that appeared on TV and drinking Hurricane cocktails. Being occupied and having fun totally took the mind off the hurricane situation outside. We stayed until 10pm, and then had to return home so that the kids could get to bed. We had a full house of people, Joan and David were staying over, Indira and Natalia were here, as well as Dan. We figured, there’s safety in numbers, and being all in one place would be better in case an emergency happened.

After kids went to bed, it got a little scary, you could hear the winds gusting outside, and the power was flickering. Mike was at the townhall and reported that north and south of us there was no power, so it was inevitable that were going to be next. The tornado warnings kept flashing on TV, and that was the scariest part of all, would we hear it coming and have enough time to get to the basement? And Mike wasn’t even home! Finally around 1 am, Mike got back home. All of the emergency personnel and police were spending the night at the borough hall. The plan was that no one was to go out on the streets until the storm was over. It wasn’t safe, since tree branches were breaking and power lines were all over the streets. It was a night from hell, but when the morning came, we realized we didn’t even lose power! Our garbage fence fell over as well as a few trees in the back, but that was it! We were very lucky! There was no flooding on our street and looked like everything was just fine! So, what are we to do? The answer was simple, have an after hurricane party! Since we stocked up on bread and cold cuts, I invited our neighbors over to our house for a grilled cheese party! We spent the afternoon and evening drinking sangrias and eating grilled cheese with turkey, ham and tomato. Everyone stayed for dinner, and we were able to free our grill of rope and grill some hot dogs and burgers! It was another awesome night!

Ashley took some pictures..






The month of August brought three times the amount of rain we usually get. Because the water levels are so high, not everyone was as lucky as we were. Many people didn’t have power for a week and some even longer. People in other parts of the state had major flooding. Luckily all of our family and friends got away with minor damage and short power outage periods!

I think we got lucky because we were very prepared for whatever was to come. Some way say that we overreacted, but I disagree, you can never be too prepared for something like this!