Pictures

Sometimes a relatively quiet weekend can be especially wonderful. We drove up to Sharon on Friday. Dinner was just the two of us at our apartment. In the morning we stopped by to visit Julia and her family on our way to synagogue, and we all walked there together. We had made plans to have Eliana join us for lunch after services. Her parents were having guests who have much younger children, so it was a perfect opportunity for us to have some alone time with her. We had our lunch and then went outside. The management of our Sharon apartment building has done some work on the grounds, including putting in some benches. Barry and Eliana took a bat and some balls and had a lot of fun playing while I watched and provided commentary. She ran herself ragged but he was admittedly making it pretty easy for her to hit the balls. We all enjoyed it. We came back inside, played a couple of games, and then headed back to her house to spend some time with Maya.

On Sunday morning we took Eliana and Maya to a local bowling alley and then over to a relatively new place called “16 Handles.” The name is a play on the title of a 1980s movie called “16 Candles.” The “handles” are the levers on the 16 flavors of frozen yogurt and the countless toppings, all self-serve. I think the yogurt is supposed to be fairly low in fat, but of course many of the toppings are not. So at the end of the day it is probably not all that much healthier than a sundae at PJ Licks, but it induces a lot less guilt because it has that word “yogurt” in it.

We arrived back in time for Eliana, Joshua, and Ella to go to a youth program at the synagogue in preparation to Israel Independence Day (which is today). Barry had some work to do so he went back to our apartment and I hung out with Julia. Julia is a smart little girl, and she has already figured out how to get someone to hold her much of the time. She still likes to curl up into the position that was familiar to her for those nine months in utero. It is just so sweet.

We had dinner with Dina and family and then headed back to the apartment to get some sleep. Our plan was to leave around 9 am on Monday morning so that we could make a stop at a place called The Camera Company that some friends had recommended. We have 27 rolls of Super 8 movie film from a sound movie camera we bought during Simmie’s first year. At the time, that camera was a very big deal, although now it seems practically prehistoric. In any case, we no longer have any sort of projector on which to watch the tapes, so we have long wanted to transfer them to DVDs. At the same time, although we knew that Costco offered such a service, we were nervous about just sending them off somewhere and wanted to find a reputable local place that does the work on site themselves. So we started asking around and some Sharon friends told us they had done this with their old film. I think the children will really get a kick out of seeing their mothers as little girls.  Unfortunately, only about half of the tapes are labelled, which means we have no way of putting them all in order, but we should be able to address that once they are on DVDs.

Meanwhile, I spent the rest of yesterday working on another visual arts project of sorts. When I posted the first pictures of Julia at the end of March, I mentioned that I had similar pictures of me holding each of the children during their first days. Unfortunately, I only have the electronic versions of Maya and Julia. I may have mentioned, try valiantly as I might, I have not been able to find the memory card(s) from before 2007. So I scanned in hard copies of the other three children, and put together a collage. I have ordered a print of this and want to see how it will come out before I continue on this project of recreating albums from those first few years of grandparenthood. Here are the five pictures: can you name the babies? Hint: look at my hair. 

We are hoping to squeeze in a quick visit to the NY Botanical Garden this week if there is a day without too much rain. Otherwise it is a quiet week back in Riverdale for me, and a very hectic week at Mount Sinai for Barry.

Be well, all.

Love,

Rebecca