The Story Of Us

Hello everyone.. hope you are all enjoying your July so far. Ours has been super busy. We are officially into our third week of summer and it has either been scorching hot or raining. We have not done many.. or in fact any summer activities. We have had a full house.. my in laws are here, my parents are here, my sis in law and family are flying in later this week. Plus I have a dozen more family members flying in. They will be staying at my great aunt's house..best aunt ever! Why you ask?  Well just like a Jewish bar mitzvah we too have a ceremony marking a child's man or womanhood once they reach puberty. And well D is now a man. So everyone is coming to celebrate. We are having two parties.. one of a more religious nature and one will be held in our backyard.. pray we don't get rain.. it has been quite rainy.  So I have been in full planning mode. I will post pics afterwards..  In other news M's finger is healing nicely. He has started pl...

I don't think I have done a lately post in a long while.. all my travel and book posts are done for now so what else has been happening? Lets see..  D is getting ready to wrap up 10th grade. Just a little under a month to go. AP exams done and then finals in less that a month. His Honors American Lit class read The Great Gatsby earlier in the year and last week they went to go watch Gatsby on Broadway. He said it was better than the book. lol After joining high school and not allowed to participate in any contact sports he decided to take up bowling. In the past two years and after a lot of practice he is showing great improvement. In fact on Friday he entered his first tournament. He started with a ranking 21 among 24 fellow competitors and ended up in 3rd place. He even won some scholarship money!  H on the other hand played in his spring concert. He is also practicing and preparing to audition for the 7th grade wind ensemble. He is struggling a little.. his hands are too sm...

Welcome to present day.. we have put all our December travel posts behind us but if you follow me on Instagram I still have loads of videos to share.. More exciting is that spring break is coming up and we have another adventure planned. Today in our 18th day of fasting. And honestly the last 17 days went by quiet quickly. Life gets very busy during Ramadan.. each days starts to blur into the next. D is not fasting this year but H has fasted for 9 days so far.  Speaking of D, we are officially on month 9 of his treatment. For those not in the know I posted about his condition here . While it has been a long road we have made progress. We are currently in a medication reduction phase of treatment. Every two weeks we are lessening the dosage of his eye drops and so far we have seen no regression so yay! He is also doing well.. in fact he was awarded student of the month.  Reading has been slow.. mainly because I am stuck in a series. I have started the final book but I am not l...

I have been in a bit of a book funk.. the last three books I read have been not so great. I am currently reading The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle .. I am a couple of chapters in but it seems promising.  We have started reading the third Harry Potter book, the Prisoned of Azkaban. The kids are enthralled by the series and try to negotiate extending their bedtime every night just to be able to hear a bit more.  Ever heard of an agamograph? Well the kids were bored over the weekend and I found this little activity for them to do. H made this one. You can find the template here D made the one below. You can find the template here We have been working on redoing M's office space..  we had redone it when we had moved in over seven years ago and thought it needed a refresh. You can see how we redid it the first time here .  This is the before.. the after is not done just yet..  We are also sprucing up the guest bedroom which for all these years has always been a ...

Where do we start.. the world, common sense, basic kindness, humanity.. everything is just falling apart, we are seeing a lot of peoples true colors and they are not pretty. The news, social media everything is veering to push one over the edge and into a downward spiral. I wonder which dystopian fictional world will be our reality? Too much negativity.. I know.. gotta try to keep things a little positive..  Our quarantine world has opened up a little. We hit the tennis courts a couple of times a week.. sometimes M and I.. sometimes M and D. We have been biking around the neighborhood.. we started to venture out onto a semi main road. The kids and I have taken up jogging in the mornings before breakfast.. we don't get much far.. turns out none of us have much stamina.. something we are working on. Hopefully we'll all come of this quarantine a little bit healthier.  We have also taken up golf.. well at least attempting to. M occasionally plays golf, the rest of us have only eve...

It has been busy.. the boys had two days off for the New Jersey teachers convention and now they have the next four days of half days which I loath.. by the time they leave it's just time for them to come back again.. Many moons ago I had mentioned a powder room remodel.. I never got around to sharing the after pictures with you.. the bathroom is very narrow and taking decent pictures was such a challenge.  the before I hand painted the floor.. you can read about it here A few of the poorly shot afters.. the bathroom shelves are still a little bare.. but I don't want to just go to Home Goods and buy a bunch of stuff.. we like it when the things in our home mean something.. have a story. The faucet we bought in Morocco. The frames on the wall are two of my own photographs.. Frustration and Laughing The little glass bottle on the top shelf was bought in Venice as was the mask.. the little turtles we got in Mexico and the dried citrus wreath w...

We are currently toward the tail end of the holy month of Ramadan.. as of today we have one week of fasting left. For those of you not aware of what Ramadan is, well it is a month where we fast from dawn to dusk.. so at present approximately beginning around 4 am and ending around 8:30 pm. During the fast no food of any kind is permitted. And while I know the hours seem long it's not really all that hard.. it takes a day or two to get used to it and then you can hardly tell.. I personally miss food just because food is awesome but there is not a lot of I'm too hungry to function type of scenarios. We are also celebrating a birthday this month.. D turned the 6 on Thursday :) Since we were all fasting.. minus the kids of course.. we will be taking a rain check on the family celebrations.. but the big boy started his day off with some whip cream covered MnM pancakes. And D continued the celebrations with an ice cream party at school. Friday was D's last day of sc...