Filed under: Madeline Pawlbright
All that blogging has left us very, very tired. More to come as the summer stretches on… and after a good nap.
Just before the Fowlkes left town, we found time to visit the Lafferty’s farm with John and Aidan. Carter and Aidan got along swimmingly on the Forth, with Carter insisting on referring to Aidan not by his name but simply as “my friend”. The farm is owned by Kir’s grandfather’s cousin (I’ll let Nell figure out exactly what that makes him in relation to me) and we often go there on nice days to feed the livestock. It was a real treat to get to go there with Carter.
They took a ride on a tractor.
Fed some goats, which Carter was a little unsure about.
Also a little unsure about the ponies.
So we spent some time down by the pond.
Where Carter was quite sure he wanted to put his feet in the water.
And spent his last few moments with his “friend” looking for fish.
Many thanks to John for taking us over there last minute. Hopefully more pics of Carter and his friend will be up on the Fowlkes Family Update when Eli gets back from her business trip. Pressure’s on!
During their trip up for the 4th, Kir and I gave Eli and Thomas some respite from their little one while they poked around Old City. We took Carter to what is quite possibly the perfect place for kids in Philly, the Please Touch Museum. Keep an eye on the Fowlkes Family Update for more pictures from their trip later on in the week.
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- Kir and Carter outside the Museuem
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- Doing a little dance at the ticket counter
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- Great sculpture of Lady Liberty’s hand and torch in the lobby
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- Having a hot dog in the carousel room
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- Some sillyness with Aunt Kir
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- Moving balls with the backhoe
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- Building a flying machine…
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- …hoisting it to the top…
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- …and watching it fly!
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- Picking up a few things at the store
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- Make that a lot of things
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- Putting the groceries away
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- Big boy, little house
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- Watching Kir through the periscope
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- A little piano music
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- Test driving the new Scion
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- Looking at the “skyline”
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- Running off some energy in the hamster wheel
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- Flying the helicycle
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- Stopping by the food cart
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- Eating play food in Please Touch park before heading home
While in New York, Nell and the gang took Kir and I down to Red Hook. No, we weren’t going to Ikea (we have two of those in Philly, thank you very much). There are ballfields there where several Latin and South American communities have recreational soccer and baseball leagues that they take very seriously. They also take their food very seriously, so several top notch vendors set up shop on Sundays. Needless to say, they have developed *quite* a following among foodies and amateur athletes alike.
Choices abound: Colombian, Venezuelan, Dominican, Mexican, Chilean… you get the picture. In case you don’t get the picture, here are several. (Note: this is my first time using the “gallery” feature on wordpress, so if it turns out to be a failure I’ll repost the old fashioned way.)
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- Kir and Maddie navigate the crowds and vendors.
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- Menu on Colombian truck
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- Word of mouth about their ceviches didn’t lie.
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- Some assistance in making selections.
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- Bandeja Tipica: Pork, Chicharrone, Chorizo, Corn cake, fried egg, rice, and beans.
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- Arepa: something like pan-friend cornbread stuffed with cheese.
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- Shrimp ceviche
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- Plantains with sour cream
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- Pupusa: a white corn variation of the arepa with pickled veggies, hot sauce, and sour cream
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- One chicharrone taco and one carnitas taco with salsa verde
Hello all. Prepare yourself for a bounty of fresh posts (well, a handful) from Yours Truly Who Hasn’t Blogged In Forever. In keeping with this theme of not getting anything for a long time and then suddenly having more than you know what to do with, the first post will involve our garden.
You might remember it looking like this:
Now, after an incredibly wet June and tons of recent sun, it looks like this:
And that’s just one of the beds. Here’s some of the pickings.
Guess I’d better get myself into the kitchen before all of this freshness goes to waste.
Yesterday I tried to tweet through the day about some of the things I miss about New York. Unfortunately my new iPhone app for pics was not working so well and only a few things posted so here is my more extensive list:
Bodega coffee
Every cream cheese known to man
Garlic scapes at the farmers market
Bottomless mimosa brunches (not that I partook but I still support it)
Shoes off time in the park
Chinese food picnics
Free concerts from Celebrate Brooklyn
Filed under: Uncategorized
We rung in Memorial Day with a lovely picnic at Resevoir Park with Marty and Taylor.
Patrick made some yummy ciabatta (his best yet!) bruschetta with two of the basil’s from our garden to go along wit the pasta salad, strawberries, hummus, wine and beer.
T and Marty played hide and seek. T was a good counter for hide and seek.
And he learned how to climb a tree. Well, Marty climbed and T watched.
Patrick lulled us into our food coma’s with some guitar.
So this blog is tracking about 2-3 weeks behind real life for reasons unnecessary to list. To keep in that vein, here’s some delightful tidbits from my girls weekend with Libby and Nell.
I treated them to a hearty Saturday breakfast of eggs, pork roll and toast.
Never heard of pork roll you say? It’s sort of like canadian bacon but tangy-er. Please don’t ask what makes it tangy. It’s delicious breakfast meat and we all would prefer not to know. See, Libby, doesn’t want to know. Let her eat in peace.
(Terrible) Bowling ensued…
as did recreating obnoxious hipster photos ala Last Night’s Party, Cobrasnake, et al.
Followed up by pedicures
and capped off with CHIK FIL A!!!
Now if anyone out there doesn’t think that 1-girls don’t eat fast food because they are watching their figure
or
2-that we are the only people making a big deal about a “stupid chicken place”,
you are sorely mistaken.
Saturday night we celebrated Erin’s birthday with yummy margarita’s!
Sunday we were supposed to go to a Phillies game but the beginning of what would turn out to be 9 days of rain (and a major failure of our roof’s part) started and rained us out. Instead we did what any self-respecting Phildelphians do on rainy Sunday afternoons…eat cheesesteaks!
Hopefully this will all be repeated shortly when the girls come back to the rescheduled game. Love you guys!…I mean, girls!
Filed under: Family
A big thank you to Helen for sending me the official Stegall family robe! I finally feel like one of the family!
I can’t tell if I look like I am about to karate chop someone or serve them tea in the moutains of Japan. Either way this robe ups my asian-ness by, like, 10 points. It also ups my shortness by, like, 100.
Filed under: Home
When we moved into our house it had been vacant for at least a year, possibly 2. This led to all sorts of joyous discoveries of things that had not been checked up on, previously chronicled here and here. Additionally, the various gardens and plots and not been tended too and Patrick and I, not being much into flower gardening, had no idea what was growing. The beds in the front were literally spilling over with long green leaves of undetermined origin as well as some really ugly bush things. We pulled out the bushes and cut back all the leaves to the ground. Mind you we had no idea what we were doing or if anything would grow back but we were more concerned with getting it out of there and figured that if it all died them we would dig out all the root systems and start anew with things we liked. The one thing we did leave were the daffodils, the only thing I was able to recognize from the leaves, as they hadn’t bloomed yet. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the daffodils but mere weeks later all those thick green leaves had grown back and for weeks that was all they were. But just last week I noticed a long shoot and a bud and after all the rain we had they miraculously bloomed into this:
Irises!
On the side of the house we also have a rose bush that just started blooming:
And the tree in the front is filling in with ivy and these little beauties:
Anyone know the name of those?
Also if anyone can help we out with naming these it would be much appreciated:
I’m pretty sure these last two are just a trees trying to sprout because they look just like the giant oak and Japanese maple we already have so let me know if I should just pull it.
Next up – Vegetable gardening!
