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