Classical Sunday

Musical Miss G. has season tickets to the Harrisburg Symphony's Master Series. Once a month she dresses in her most girlie girl finery and heads for the forum. Kera and Chris alternate accompanying her to the classical Sunday afternoon concert series. This past Sunday Grandma was tickled to have the opportunity to go with G. She dressed up in her new Easter dress, white heels, pearls, and dangly earrings. A beauty for sure!

Typically there is something for the kids about 45 minutes before the concert begins. This particular Sunday was all about the violin. The kids had the opportunity to decorate white foam core violins. Then, a very accomplished violinist showed the kids her electric violin and all the sounds that could be coaxed from it. The kids were all really into it and she did a great job. She kindly autographed the kid's violins at the end.

The orchestra seats were wonderful. G. suggested we snuggle up and take a pictue of ourselves and I was more than happy to document our great day at the symphony.

At intermission G. has a tough decision to make: to stay for the second half or to scoot out at intermission. I was impressed that she managed to sit still for an hour and a half so we buzzed out at intermission.

I think I an safely say that both Grandma and Miss G. thoroughly enjoyed themselves on our classical Sunday.

Wine Tasting

Several months ago my Dad asked Brent if he would conduct a wine tasting for a friend of his. This friend goes rock hunting with my Dad and is a radio personality here in Central PA. We were excited to meet this man and his wife, so we agreed to not only do the tasting but then follow up the tasting with a dinner and wine pairings.

As with so many of our dinners, it becomes a family affair. Brent selected the six wines (3 white and 3 red) for the tasting. Some wines had to be purchased, but a few came from our cellar and that of my Dad. I worked on the menu and Brent selected wines to pair with the meal. Rick also made his world famous steamed shrimp and secret "I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you" cocktail sauce. This appetizer was paired with a vintage champagne and served in the living room so we could change the dining room over for dinner. My Mom poached the eggs that are served over top of the salad. I know it sounds strange, but it is so yummylicious. The rest of the meal came together like a dream. My brother and I work really great together in the kitchen. In fact, I'm not sure we could do a big dinner without him.

Because I'm not a great early morning person, I missed the radio discussion on Monday morning. Apparently Dad's friend made the comment that the dinner he had rivaled anything that he's ever had at Hershey's Circular Dining Room. Very high praise indeed. The important thing was that he and his lovely wife learned a lot about wines, learned how wine paired with food can enhance a dining experience, and discovered wines that they liked and could order when dining out. RJ and Bonnie Harris were enthusiastic guests and wonderful down to earth people. We truly enjoyed our evening and our 5 minutes of fame!

Forgetfulness and Age

I read a book last year called Still Alice. This book is about a brilliant, internationally recognized Harvard professor who has early onset of Alzheimers. The book was heartbreaking as Alice battled this terrible disease until, over a very short period of time, she doesn't remember much of anything.

Why am I mentioning this? I find that in normal conversations I often cannot remember very simple things. They are things that I can fully describe, but just cannot come up with the word. A shallot is a perfect example. Sometimes I just cannot remember this word, but I can tell you that is similar to a miniature onion although not as strong. They are often sold 2-3 in a webbed package. But do you think I can remember that word? Absolutely not. I was trying to remember the band ZZ Top the other night. I described the long-haired guitar playing dudes with the loooonnnng beards who sang about cheap sunglasses and a sharp dressed man and copied John Lee Hooker's ahowhowhow. Could I remember the name ZZ Top? Absolutely not.

While I don't think I necessarily have Alzheimers, I certainly do find this trend disturbing and frustrating. I prefer to think it's just an age thing but who knows. For right now, tonight, I can remember the word shallot and the name of the band ZZ Top and that will just have to be good enough.

Horse Crazy

Meet Elmer's Gypsy Rose. Elmer belongs to Ubet Racing and can be seen at Penn National racing her little heart out. Below are the two Jasons who make up Ubet Racing: Jason Eisenhower (aka Ike) and my friend Jason Batz.

Kylie has been into horses for some time. In fact Christmas shopping involved a lot of searching for horses, dolls who ride horses, books about horses, and puzzles depicting horses! Gwen has suddenly developed an interest in horses too. Kera mentioned taking her to Penn National when the weather is better to see Jason's horse run. I asked Jason if we could take the girls to the barn at the track to see Elmer. As it turned out, Elmer and a yearling simply called "Baby" were at a farm outside Lebanon.

We found a date/time that worked for everyone, loaded up the van, and headed to the farm. The girls had plenty of carrots and when Gypsy and Baby ween't interested in that, there was plenty of hay to keep them interested in eating.

The girls were very brave about feeding the horses and petting them. They learned to keep their hands flat so the horses could nuzzle their palms to grab the little carrot nuggets. They giggled about feeling the horses whiskers tickling their palms.

They each got a handful of oats mixed with molasses and who knows what else and had the opportunity to feed the horses something they really wanted to eat. The fact that their hands were left sticky didn't seem to bother them as they used a little hay to wipe off the worst of it.

After this great experience, the girls love horses even more than they did going into this adventure. For Grandma, the day just doesn't get any better than having the opportunity to snuggle up to these two little girls.

The Tooth Fairy Is Busy

Every time I see Gwen she's lost another tooth. Last week she lost one on the top right, and this weekend she lost one on the top left. That tooth fairy is definitely visiting a lot this winter!

In addition to showing off those gaps in here teeth, Gwen takes every opportunity to be a princess!

Lunch Surprise

Every now and then I get a great lunch time surprise. Travis was bringing Kylie to the museum so lucky grandma had visitors for lunch.



I think Ky ate more ketchup than she did pizza or french fries!

Cabela's

We finally made it to Cabela's. We've often talked about it and every time we've gone to Allentown for the surgeon visits, we point and, "oh yeah, we need to go in there some day." We had some extra time in February, so we popped in just to check out all the sights.

There's a huge walk through aquarium that's pretty interesting. But, the animals are really awesome. We walked through the African area which included impala, an elephant, and a bunch of other African plains animals.

I liked the North American animals, especially the big horn sheep. I've always said if I went on some big game hunting trip I'd want to go for sheep. A few years ago when we were heading from Vail back to the Denver airport, we saw a bunch of big horns on the rock ledges along the road.

All the deer seemed to hold different world recods. Quite impressive.

We didn't spend a lot of time. Just sort of wandered around and took in the sights. Very interesting and I can see where kids would love this.

Great Days on the Slopes

I ran a bunch of errands and then had a brilliant idea to go see Gwen ski. I called my Mom and asked if she'd like to go along. My Mom's always ready for a little adventure, so I picked her up and we headed for Roundtop. Gwen was all smiles when we met so I snapped this quick picture before she and Grandpa headed for the lift.

They made several runs and Mom and I were totally impressed. She's making turns, going over bumps, and now and then, she's catching a little air. She tried to let Grandpa be the leader in a little game of follow the leader, but Grandpa just doesn't go quite fast enough. About half way down the slope, Gwen was once again in the lead.

A little snack seemed fitting after such a long tiring day. Gwen selected curly fries and got this long worm-like monster fry. Another great day on the slopes!

Kylie at Roundtop

A lesson at Ski Roundtop was one of Kylie's 2010 Christmas presents. Coordinating schedules was tough, but we finally managed to find a date in February that would work. We lucked out because it was actually a pretty nice day.


We started out with an expensive little lunch. It alway amazes me how much food costs at Roundtop. As I recall, it's not all that different from any other ski slope, but $38 for chicken fingers with fries, 3 slices of pizza, 1 fry, 3 waters and 1 small soda just seems like a lot of $$ to me. What really matters though is that Kylie consumed more at one sitting than I've ever seen her eat. Of course, ketchup covered everything!I felt the same frustration with Kylie's Snow Ranger class that I used to feel when Gwen took a class. Too many kids, too few instructos. At one point (see above), Kylie was on the ground all by herself and her instructor and the other 4 kids in his class were clear on the other side of the training area. Kevin, the instructor, had no idea he was even missing her.

Considering how little instruction she actually got, Kylie did pretty darn good. I think a little more time reminding her to keep her hands out in front of her (to keep her weight over the front of the skis) instead of leaning back into the mountain which would insure a fall, would have increased Kylie's enjoyment and decreased my utter frustration with the whole thing, I think next year we've either got to put her into Mountain Explorers or I just can't go because it's too hard to keep my mouth shut!

The really important part of this whole thing was to expose Kylie to skiing and hope she had a good time. I think in that regard, it was a success.

Next year I will make sure she has some ski socks that stay up on her little leg!

So Many Books...So Little Time

Ok, 7 books for January, 9 books in February. I'm on a roll!

Wanna Talk About #1

One thing I've missed over the last year has been yoga. I loved going every Monday night and was making a lot of progress in flexibility and balance. Then the knees gave out.

Kera told me about a new 8 week yoga class at the West Shore Y where the instructor has a lot of experience teaching people with ailments like fibromyalgia, other disabilities, and old people. No, I'm not putting myself in the "old people" category! I spoke with my yogi, Cindy, as she thought it was a good idea to give a class like this a try. I think I've come along enough in my rehab that I was anxious to give a yoga class like this a try.

I was very pleased with how things went tonight. The instructor did a bunch of breathing stuff, a few things in the chair (which I didn't like), some standing balance things, and then some stuff on the floor. I was able to go from tree into airplane without holding onto the chair. Ok, I probably don't look anywhere near this good, but hey, it's the effort that counts!

I couldn't do dancer before, and I still can't, but was happy with using my strap.

I was able to sink into the warrior poses (Warrior 1 and Warrior 2) without too much trouble.

I love triangle. The hand on the floor should really be behind the foot, but I was a little unsteady so I put my hand in front like this picture.

I've always liked happy baby which is still a great stretch.

Definitely some problems crossing my legs, but with a block under each knee it was doable.

All in all, I was thrilled with how the night went and I can't wait until next Tuesday night to do it all over again!