Happy Groundhog Day!

Hi everyone!

I know I haven't posted in like forever, but I really, really wanted to post about the winter holidays, so let's get down to business.

December 8th or so, my mom and I had a crazy [not like that is unusual] Saturday. So I am going to take it slowly:

First, we went to Habitat for a gingerbread house making workshop where the pastry chef showed us how to use the icing-squeezy-thingy. They pre-made these cute little gingerbread houses that you were supposed to ice and decorate. The cool thing was you didn't have to  bring your own candy! Instead they had a big long table covered in all sorts of delicious candy that you could cover your house with. You might be wondering if we got hungry or not? Well the answer is yes, they probably anticipated this because they had fresh Habitat cookies for us to eat. THANK YOU Sous Chef Agustin Oliva for inviting us - we had a blast!

****  Here is a picture of the gingerbread house adventure ****

Me with my gingerbread house at Habitat, half way done!

 And . . . the finished product at home!

Next, we went to the Matress Factory for Member Appreciation Day (we're members and it is one of our favorite places in Pittsburgh). We were volunteer gift wrappers for the people who purchased gifts in the best museum store in town (where we do a lot of our Holiday shopping). Unfortunately, there wern't many presents to wrap during our shift, but we wrapped our purchases and also Sam's the really nice woman at the shop counter, who is also a great earring maker (my mom LOVES the earrings I gave her for Christmas, Sam, thank you!).

 **** Our Mattress Factory Adventures **** 

Me, at the wrapping station . . .

Me, in the window overlooking Winifred Lutz's garden at the Mattress Factory with beautiful views of the garden below (below) and the Northside neighborhood beyond . . . .

Finally, we got to our last stop, Handmade Arcade at the convention center. Handmade Arcade was founded in Pittsburgh and has been going on for ten years. This year we finally made it after missing the last two years. The Arcade was in this big loud room, packed with people (not like we hadn't expected that). We walked through the Arcade trying to remember the things (crafts, t-shirts, posters, etc.) we wanted to come to and how to get there. After awhile it was just "same old, same old" and we went back to the places we remembered and the others . . . oh well. I bought a Christmas present for my mom, but at the time she didn't know. I also got some Christmas presents for the rest of my family, an ornament for our tree, as well as a note book for me from Kara Skylling, who was one of my art teachers at the museum last summer.

 **** Here are some pictures from the rest of my holiday season ****

 

The Christmas ornament boxes emerge . . .

Me, intently decorating our Christmas cookies . . .

 

Writing my letter to Santa, at my desk on Christmas Eve . . .

Our Christmas tree with Christmas loot . . . .

 Let the Christmas feasting begin!

Me, in my Aunt's sun room in New Jersey, reading Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. Let me tell you, I'm the world's biggest reader and this book is, like, my favorite book! Look it up, get it, read it!

Honey Cake!

Hooray for honey cake!

 

Momma's friend Marian - who is also my friend - makes me honey cake each year usually during the Jewish Holidays in the fall. Because I love it so much she also usually sends some for my Daddy's birthday in the winter but this winter got really busy and she forgot (so did I). Last week, I got a surprise package in the mail and when I opened it, it turned out to be Marian's honey cake!

I love her honey cake so much! When I opened the box, I could smell it and my mouth watered. The honey creates a sticky coating on the top and even though it is a firm cake, it surprisingly melts in your mouth - cool. The ones at the top of the box were a bit more brown and so they tasted a bit more bittersweet. Marian wrote me a note and wondered if the honey cake would taste different in the spring (from the winter or fall). I think that is where the bittersweet comes from, but since we haven't had much winter at all . . . who knows?

As a side note, a few weeks ago we all went to the East End Brewery to give my GranBee a tour (she was here for a week hanging out with me over spring break). Momma and I went across the street to where 'Burgh Bees has their Apiary to peek through the fence to see if the bees were awake yet. And boy were they AWAKE! They were buzzing all over their hives and as a matter of fact a few even chased us into the car where one hid out in my hair and Momma saved the day by getting it out.  Anyway . . . honey and cake - yum - summer is on its way (except 2-4" of snow is forecast for tomorrow, oops)!

Honey cake happiness!

Thanks Marian!

Disney Food Day 1

In early February, my Grandpa Mickey turned 70 and to celebrate he invited me and my cousin Panos (and our parents) to join him at DisneyWorld (what my mom refers to as "The World") for a celebration vacation. The cool thing was that since my Grandpa had been to DisneyWorld many times, he knew exactly where to go and had it all planned out. Ms. Wendy, his wife, is really the one who made all the reservations for the hotel, park tickets, and dinners along the way - he took care of the entertainment and she did the research for the trip and the food. Thank you both for an awesome celebration weekend!

The first day, we spent the morning in the sun, swimming at the pool, and hopped the noon bus to "The World" to begin our adventures at the Magic Kingdom. Other than ice cream we didn't really eat that much that day until dinner. We left the Kingdom and took the monorail to the Grand Floridian, which is a very grand hotel with a surprising number of spa and beauty shops inside, as well as a wonderful six-person jazz ensemble playing music in the lobby.

This was the day that was my grandfather turned 70 and so we had a special dessert plan that would take us back into the Magic Kingdom after dinner. While this was all exciting, it meant our dinner was a bit more rushed than usual. BUT with the excellent service, everything went off perfectly.

Dinner was at Citricos. Because I have a few small food allergies, the chef came out to our table to discuss items that I should avoid (hardly anything). While he was at our table, my mom asked him if he had any particular favorites or recommendations from the menu that night. He replied with such enthusiasm and exciting detail, that we ended up trying all his favorites - between seven people.

A few of us had the braised baby beet salad with lemon-chive goat cheese, balsamic reduction, petite greens, and golden beet coulis (notes from the menu, I'd never be able to remember all that so long after our visit). I love beets and this was a wonderful and unusual treat that was really VERY good (what I'm eating in the picture above), but . . . I still like Habitat's beets more. Maybe it the teeny tiny drizzling of honey in Habitat's preparation . . . . For my main course I couldn't resist their chicken noodle soup because I'm a soup lover. It was really good and I could have eaten another bowl but was trying to save room for dessert and wanted to help my cousin finish his Mickey Mouse head-shaped pasta.

Momma and Auntie both had their own beet salad and then shared the pan seared grouper - they LOVED the grouper! Daddy had the grouper by himself but he RAVED about his starter, which was called arancini with a crispy risotta with cremini mushrooms, asiago, and charred tomato coulis - he said it was mushroom and cheese heaven!

Citricos had a dessert, which was a warm chocolate banana torte that was topped with a chocolate tiara - it looked like a tiara but was made out of chocolate! We saw a server carrying a tiara and saw one of chefs making them, oo la la! I really wanted one but we were saving room for our dessert buffet that came next but before I talk about that, I want to mention that Citricos had the VERY BEST service of any meal on our trip - thank you!

After dinner, we danced a bit in the lobby of the Grand Floridian (the video of our dancing is on my Auntie's blog) then ran for the monorail to get back to the Magic Kingdom, where we sprinted toward the Tommorrowland Terrace for our dessert buffet extravaganza. It was a little hectic on the terrace as everyone was trying to position themselves for the best views of the light and firework show to come, but we ended up with a great spot and headed in shifts for the buffet to figure out how it all worked and what we might like. My favorite desserts were the giant strawberries dipped in chocolate, a small serving of the tiramisu (though I finished Grandpa's and my cousin's), and I liked their brownies too. While we had our dessert a light and fireworks show was happening on Cinderella's Castle and my favorite part was when Tinker Bell flew from a tower in the castle all the way over to where we were having dessert - it was thrilling!

Day 2, 3, & 4 to come soon . . . thanks for sticking with me and my blog - it has been a crazy busy spring.

HABITAT!

Not realizing that it was the one-year anniversary of my blog, we went to one of my favorite restaurants during the Holidays . . . Habitat at the Fairmont Pittsburgh. When mom made the reservation for our dinner, she requested a table with a view of Habitat's open kitchen and let the restaurant know that I was interested in watching the action of the chefs. While the Maitre d' was not sure that they would actually have a table with a view, it turned out that we ended up with front row seats. Just after we sat down, Sous Chef Agustin Oliva visited our table and said that he heard that I liked food. He asked if we would like a tour of the kitchen and very surprised and excited I said, "Yes!"

While we couldn't go up front where the chefs were working, we were able to all have a tour of the HUGE kitchen behind. We saw big walk-in coolers full of vegetables, an entire cabinet of cooked lobsters, a smoker for salmon, and three HUGE pots for making soup (for like 200 people each)! There was a butchering cooler that freaked me out a little (I wouldn't go in) and a giant kind of chilling machine that could cool an entire pot of soup down REALLY fast. We saw coolers full of dishes prepped for Christmas Eve brunch and dinner and saw how a hotel prepares for room service. It was an amazing beginning to a truly wonderful meal.

A picture of Chef Oliva and me after the tour.

Because our dinner was after an exciting excursion to see Santa, we were hungry and so began with a few appetizers and a salad. Habitat has a tandoor oven where they make their own naan bread that is soooooooo good. My dad told me that they flatten the dough and throw it onto the side wall of the oven to cook and then we saw the chefs do this. The naan was served with house-made apple chutney, raita, and hummus. We saw the beet salad being prepared in the kitchen and ordered that as well - it was amazing! Roasted beets with curly endive and River View Dairy goat cheese and a light drizzle of local wildflower honey with a sprinkling of coriander on top. We liked it so much! We were already planning to have beets with our Christmas dinner and talking about the beets with the chef, he gave mom the recipe and she made her own version. Hers was good but - sorry mom - not as good as Habitat's.

Naan, fresh from . . .


. . . the tandoor (as my dad likes to say).
The walls look kind of like fire bricks for a kiln, or like our cob oven at school.

This is the amazing beet salad before we gobbled it up!

The chef also sent us some ricotta gnocchi with braised oxtail to try. Because the gnocchi was filled with ricotta instead of potatoes, it was so much lighter than usual. Sometimes gnocchi - a kind of pasta filled with potatoes - can load you up fast. The oxtail was really flavorful, though my parents liked it more than I did, it was a little too . . . meaty tasting for me.

Because I knew I would fill up fast (and wanted to save room for dessert), I ordered the chicken noodle soup, which I'd had there before for lunch one time. It was perfect! Warm broth, chunks of chicken, delicious noodles and carrots - warm and comforting for a winter holiday evening, especially with Habitat's delicious hot chocolate, which I love. The chef also sent over the Crab Mac and Cheese in a cool little Le Creuset kind of pot with a lid for me to try. I liked it okay but was getting too full already to taste very much. My dad had it for lunch on Christmas Eve and said it was terrific - he's a big Mac and Cheese fan too.

My parents both ordered fish and loved their dinners. My dad ordered the pan-seared Lake Erie walleye - he always likes to order something that he probably can't make at home (how would he get fish from Lake Erie?). My mom ordered the pan-roasted Laurel Hill golden trout (she'll order anything that has capers and brown butter). She was "over the moon" with her fish and almost wouldn't offer dad a taste. He liked the walleye but thought mom's was more flavorful. Next time, we all want to try the mushroom tart - it looked fabulous!

Next up . . . the desserts:

I ordered the Raspberry Sorbet, which was topped with a fan that was a wafer cookie. It may have seemed like the least fancy of the desserts but it suited me just fine because I love raspberries (we are growing them in our backyard) and Habitat knows how to make even a bowl of ice cream fan-cy.


My mom is a big gingerbread fan and ordered Habiat's Warm Gingerbread for dessert that had a hot brandy sauce, some warm apple chunks, and was served with lemon ice cream. She thought the dessert was perfect and didn't want to spoil hers by trying anyone elses (but she did try). She thought that the lemon ice cream was the perfect balance with the different kinds of sweets and spice of the gingerbread.

Dad ordered a dessert called Apple A Day because A) he loves apple anything, and B) because it was made with apples from Kistaco Farms and we know Tim Kistaco who grows the apples because he sells his apples at our farmer's market! That is another thing about Habitat that is really cool, they try to use as many fresh, local, and organic ingredients that they can manage (even in a Pittsburgh winter when there isn't much growing). It is awesome to go to a restaurant and have a dessert made with apples purchased from an apple grower that you also buy apples from at the farmer's market . . . makes everything seem really friendly, really close. It is cool, and important, to know your farmers and to know where your food comes from too, that is what I love about going to the farmer's market every Saturday morning.

The Apple A Day had Kistaco Farm apples, sour cream pound cake, caramel apples, crisp streusel, Gala apple chips, and Kistaco Farms apple cider sorbet. I think dad ordered it without the streusel. (We drink a 1/2 gallon of Kistaco apple cider every week, anything with that cider in it is good.)


The chef ALSO brought over their Chocolate Oreo Tart for us to try. Oh my gosh, we were about to explode but each managed to have a little bite. The green part was minty and the chocolate was really light. I especially liked all the little nibs on the bottom.

In seeing the restaurant reviews each week in the paper, and knowing how important service is to my mom, since she worked in restaurants for awhile through school, it seems important to talk about other things I like about Habitat too. I was glad to see that Raj was still working there. He was the waiter last year that helped us turn a slow start into a really good dinner experience. Nathaniel was our waiter this time and whenever we had a question, he knew the answer. He seemed really comfortable, even when a really big party of guests came in toward the end of our dinner.

I also like the vibe of Habitat: the dishes (the square plates, cool mugs, and glasses), the sea glass candle on the table (my mom says it is Riverside Design, a local glass company), the lamps in the dining room, and the Andy Warhol prints (yes, I do know who he is, my parents are artists and I live in Pittsburgh after all). I especially like the dining room that has the view of the open kitchen - the two other dining areas are nice but this one has all the action. As we were sitting for awhile after dessert we got to watch the kitchen take on two really big orders (maybe 16-20 plates each) and it was very much like a show, watching the different chefs buzz around, mixing salads, plating dinners, all of the attention to detail that makes this such a special restaurant. From our table it was a real treat to get to see it all.

And . . . everyone is soooooo nice too! From the house manager to the Maitre d', from Nathaniel to Chef Oliva, and it wasn't just because they knew I liked food - it has been that way EVERY time we've been to Habitat. With such nice people and such great food, it kind of feels like home, but mom and dad get a rest, and we get to try great food from one of my favorite restaurants.

Thank you Habitat for a wonderful dinner out during the Holidays!

Happy New Year to everyone!

Chef Oliva plating the Halibut.

Coming soon . . . our lunch at Marian's . . . !

The Muffin Girls (plus)!

I realize I'm about to have my one year anniversary for this blog but haven't posted in 3 1/2 months, so better get busy! There is way too much to ever catch up on since the last post so I thought we'd start with the most recent events . . . THE MUFFIN GIRLS!

Mom and I baked 60 muffins on Thursday night for the 3rd grade muffin sale to raise money for our spring farm trip - each family takes a week to bake muffins. We made 1 dozen gluten and dairy free banana muffins and then 4 dozen regular banana muffins, using our friend Ann's famous banana bread recipe (thanks Ann!).


We weren't sure exactly how many ripe bananas we would need, so after piano lesson we picked up a few more. After making the first 3 batches we started to get nervous if we'd have enough to finish our muffins. One of my main jobs was mashing the bananas. For our first two regular recipe batches, we had to use 6 bananas to get 2 mashed cups. For our second two regular batches we only had 4 bananas left and they were pretty small - this is what made us worried . . . ! After I mashed those 4 smaller bananas I was surprised that we had a little more than 2 mashed cups and I realized it was like . . . THE CHANUKAH MIRACLE!



A few more things from this past fall. My Grandpa Mickey and Ms. Wendy came to our house for Thanksgiving. On Friday after, we went downtown to ice skate . . .



and see some of the Christmas displays. This creche is the only one modeled after the one at the Vatican and is the largest one in the United States.

We had lunch at Habitat, where this blog started, and dinner at DISH, which I've already written about as one of my favorite restaurants in Pittsburgh. At DISH, I had the Gnocchi with Wild Boar for dinner and I've never had anything like that before. I have to say that it was SOOOOO good (and Daddy agreed by eating my leftovers the next day for lunch). We're headed back to Habitat over the holidays and really like sitting where we can see the kitchens best. (And we'll also go back to DISH soon too because our friends just gave us some gift certificates - THANK YOU Marian and Jim!)

Back in October I helped Mom bake her famous carrot birthday cake (her favorite baking ordeal of the year) . . .


and then delivered with birthday song and fork at the ready!


Make a wish Mom!


You can see that there are pieces already taken out of the cake because after two days of working each night to make this cake, Mom decided she wanted to have her cake for her birthday breakfast - let's just EAT IT!

Notes from New Hampshire

I love vacation!

It has been a long time since any posts from me and there is so much to catch up on. First, since it is most recent, I want to talk about New Hampshire. We returned last week from an amazing 10 days on Squam Lake in Holderness, NH. The picture above is from Rattlesnake, a hike we like to do that gives us a great view of Squam Lake and, through the binoculars, Camp Arcadie.

There are three NH food highlights that I want to share and the first is the person who makes the most amazing blueberry waffles on the planet . . . my Gampa! (This picture shows me and Gampa having a great conversation out on the dock before dinner. If you can find the rocks on the mountain right above my head . . . that is Rattlesnake, where I was standing in the first picture!)


Gampa's waffles are perfectly crisped on the outside and still soft inside. They aren't too sweet, and they have just the right balance of blueberries to enjoy the fruit flavor without being soggy and overdone, or purple. The recipe he has tested for years is made even better, once cooked, with a bit of butter on top (some people like more than I do) and the best maple syrup, made almost next door in NH at Burleigh Farms - this is REAL maple syrup from maple trees, not maple-flavored high-fructose corn syrup made from an ear of sweet corn from Iowa.

Gampa's tools are also part of the secret to his blue ribbon waffles and these tools are his waffle iron and timer. While most waffles have large-holes, called Belgian waffles, Gampa's waffle iron has small holes, which helps keep the waffles crisp because they are not as fat as the Belgian ones - this also helps with holding the butter and syrup in just the right amount when they're done too. The waffle iron's timer - beep beep beep beep beep - let's Gampa know when the iron is hot enough to pour on another batch; his own kitchen timer (I think it is set for four minutes) let's him know when the waffles are actually ready (he doesn't trust the waffle iron timer for this).

Everyone in the family tries to match his recipe and timing, even searching out the proper waffle iron, which is hard to find and extra expensive because it isn't as popular as the Belgian waffle irons - no one's waffles so far, that I've tried, even come close. Daddy has promised to give it another go over Labor Day weekend. Even if they aren't as good as Gampa's, it is worth the try, and I'm sure they'll still be "Dee-lish!"

On a day trip to Portsmouth to visit this cool town, have a day at the beach, and a lobster dinner (for my parents), I began my NH clam chowder tour. I'll rank them first:

1. Old Ferry Landing in Portsmouth, NH has the best
2. Squam Lake Inn in Holderness, NH was second best
   
3. Ray's Seafood Restaurant in Rye, NH was third
   

We started with lunch at the Old Ferry Landing in Portsmouth overlooking the harbor. This is our second year to eat lunch there, sitting out on the deck and watching the boat traffic, the drawbridge that goes up to let the big boats through, and to see Maine on the other side. This year Auntie Holly and my cousin Karla came with us. This chowder that I liked the best was the most thin without being runny, had paprika sprinkles on top that turned it kind of pink-ish, and because the flavor was the most like ocean - like when you first arrive at the coast and the smell is so strong you can taste it too - salty-ish, fishy-ish, yummy . . . Dee-lish.

View from our patio table at the Old Ferry Landing - the drawbridge is in the up position and the red boat with big antennas is about to go under.

We were down at the beach in Rye, NH at the end of our beach day and had dinner at Ray's, where we've been many times before. Mom and Dad like to get lobsters there for dinner and I really don't like breaking them apart and seeing their little eyes - it freaks me out. So I ordered clam chowder once again and it was good, but not as good, really it was only so-so in my book, though Auntie Holly liked it better. What I didn't like as much was that it was too thick for my taste and was just too creamy tasting - where's the ocean? Even though I could see the ocean there was no ocean flavor.

Back at the lake a few days later, we all had lunch at the Squam Lake Inn in Holderness. Last year, my Auntie and Uncle had a really nice anniversary party at the Inn and it is really a great place (they have great homemade cookies and homemade ice cream sandwiches with those cookies too). For lunch that day I had a half turkey sandwich and bowl of clam chowder. It was a bit thicker and creamier than Old Ferry Landing with nice big chunks of potatoes and clams. The only thing that puts it second on the list is that it didn't remind me so much of the ocean. More ocean taste than Ray's but not enough to match the deliciousness of my favorite at the Old Ferry Landing.



These are my two cousins who live in California. The top picture is Purna - she was my roommate last year - and the bottom is with Emerson, we are sharing the wind board that we turned into a stand up paddle board. It was great to see them! If we weren't swimming, paddling, hiking, or singing, we might have been dreaming about Campground Ice Cream. Although that isn't really the name, just the name we all call it, they have the very best Peppermint Stick ice cream, in fact the only Peppermint Stick ice cream, that I've ever had! It is a really pretty pink color and this year, cousin Karla had the great idea to put hot fudge on top!

My FAVORITE ice cream of the whole NH trip this year though was at Annabelle's Ice Cream in Portsmouth. After our lunch at the Old Ferry Landing, we walked on this really cool street and in Annabelle's I had the very best chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream - EVER. Really! The chunks of dough seemed like they were about to make real cookies, the dough was so fresh and soft (in a good way). They had nice BIG chunks too, which was my favorite part.

This is a picture of our fire pit on the end of the dock watching the full moon rise over Squam Lake - picture perfect vacation!

Mom here posting for Lila. I'm in Wyoming and she's in Pittsburgh and we've been chatting about "the next post" since before I left. Last post, Lila mentioned wanting to write about all of the wonderful things that happened the last week of school . . . here are the highlights:

• A Tuesday tie dye extravaganza where each child in the grades tie dyed their own Waldorf School shirt.
• An end of the year Fiesta on Wednesday with their Spanish teacher where they broke open the pinata they made and had chips, salsa, and guacamole! Ole!
  
• Thursday was a field trip and picnic - all the children wore their tie dye t-shirts. Then Lila's class went on a hike into the woods with their teacher and were surprised to find that the Gnomes they had spent so much time knitting throughout the spring, had made it to the forest to surprise them! Lila's had climbed a small tree and she had to ask for help to get her down. The children had a kind of watermelon treat tea-party with their Gnomes, children and Gnomes together (can't wait to see and post the photo of this, the knitted gnomes are amazing!).
  
• On Friday they cleaned their classroom and desks and then moved all of their gear to the third grade classroom - Pebbles their turtle will spend the summer with their teacher.

What a wonderful 2nd Grade year!

Lila's last day of school was a half day, followed by an all-school picnic. After the picnic we came home and began working on our first batch of homemade ice cream for the summer, beginning our ice cream experiments with mint chocolate chip in icy blue . . . . It took awhile of churning and the ice cream still needed to freeze up some in the freezer but it was pretty tasty! (We've since made pumpkin ice cream trying to replicate that of Campground Ice Cream in Holderness, NH . . . ours was rich, but still not quite as good, we're sad to report . . . .)


The next week was "Mom Camp" and while we both had so much fun and did so many cool things, turns out we can hardly remember them all . . . . On Wednesday we went to the Mattress Factory to volunteer and help the museum get ready for a big party they had coming up that weekend. We worked together in a team (Andy says, "You can't have (fill in the blank) without T-E-A-M!") to put tags on 300 pair of sunglasses - whew! We celebrated with some lunch at their delicious cafe that has food by M Catering (our neighbor). And get this . . . for dessert, we had gingersnaps with Nutella - WHOA! Try it!

After the Mattress Factory we went to the bike trail on the South Side (our bikes were handy in the truck) and rode the trail from REI to almost where Andy parks downtown. Lila put her brakes on every other mulberry tree and proceeded to gather a good amount of mulberries in her basket. Then she ate them, and then later . . . she didn't feel so well because of eating so many (but the Nutella might have played a roll in this too, I see now).

Lila also worked on some very important clay sculptures, one a replica of Princess Kate and Prince Williams' wedding cake. While we don't, unfortunately, have images of that cake before packaging it up to send to them, I did scan the front and back of the envelope that contained Lila's letter to the Princess, now Duchess . . . (decided to only show back, the front was gorgeous but has just too much personal information to share here).


Since Mom camp, Lila has enjoyed the Science of Sports at the Science Center and last week she had Comics and Cartoons at the Art Museum with the good fortune of having one of her former Waldorf teachers lead the class. They even had an art opening in the museum on Friday! (She's made the museum before me - bah!) Dream House, an architecture camp, is this week after the holiday festivities, and she will end her week with fanfare by celebrating her 9th birthday! Next week she and her dad join me in Wyoming - can't wait!

We always attempt to ease the sadness at parting, when one of us will be gone for a period of time, by taking Polaroid photos - one for each person - so we can have them at home and during travels. Lila mentioned how much she likes this ritual - as I became more and more behind schedule in my leave taking - and you know what . . . I like it too.

Perhaps some Wyoming adventures next? Or some birthday pictures? Stay tuned . . . !