October 2008

We became annual members of the Storm King Art Center. It is about ten miles from our house. The center has 500 acres of land and many large sculptures throughout the Center. We love to hike around or ride the tram to explore the grounds. We each make up a name for the sculpture as we approach it and then see what the name on the plaque is - we have never guessed right -I guess artists have to be creative with names of their pieces. But where did they come up with Geox #7? On Saturdays the Center does live music from classical, jazz, blues, Broadway. It is lovely to sit outside and enjoy the music.

This is Dagny and Tessa at our front door.

This is our back patio. We ate most of our dinners and several weekend breakfasts on the patio. The summer days rarely got over 85 degrees, so it was great for eating outside. It is amazing how well the flower pots survive when the weather is under 100 degrees with a bit of rain each day. The flower pots were planted by grandma Becky during her visit in early July and they still look great in October. The girls claim our success to the AquaGlobe - as seen on TV.

Our backyard overlooks the woods. The Fall colors are amazing - so many brilliant colors! We are enjoying the beauty of the Hudson River Valley. In the summer we enjoyed watching the Fire Flies as we ate dinner on the patio in these woods. Pixie, our cat, is always stocking the strange animals in the woods from the windows. We have seen deer, groundhogs, squirrels, blue jays and tons of other birds. It reminds me of being at the cabin near Yellowstone.

During the weekends at the Van Courtlandt manor on the Hudson River (Croton-on-the-Hudson) has the "Blaze" festival. They have over 5,000 carved pumpkins all illuminated. It is amazing to see. They have several themes from dinosaurs, spiders (with a giant web), garden flowers, fairies, undersea world, pirates, bats, owls and traditional pumpkins.

The weekend after we went to Blaze we went to Sleepy Hallow (who knew it was a real place) and went to the "Legends" Festival at the Philipsburg Manor. They have story tellers and music around open pit fires, telling about area Legends, then the characters of the Legends come to life. Yes - we saw the real Headless Horseman - very well done!

Halloween 2008

Dagny and Tessa got into the Wizard of Oz theme this year for Halloween. They selected their costumes two months prior to the holiday and often would watch the movie in costume. There were many days in the costumes, but we tried to keep them clean for Halloween. Mommy did not allow Tessa to clean the bathroom in the pink gown - yes, she asked...

They were disappointed that their new school, did not allow costumes to be worn at school. They still enjoyed parties to celebrate the holiday at school, then came home for tick or treats. Our neighborhood is perfect for trick or treating with a gated community of about 200 townhomes. We went thourgh five bags of candy, but the trick or treaters were early and done by 7pm - our girls were home and in pajamas by 7pm too. The weather was perfect - the girls did not even have to wear coats.

No I am not under arrest for being in public in a silly costume... Erick and Nestor work in the breakfast - they all dressed millitary for Halloween. It was very confusing for our guests since most of them were from Europe at the hotel for the NYC Marathon which was on Sunday. I had a lot of people laugh at me - then I explained Halloween (some in charades as their English was not the best) and then they would take their picture with us. We had trouble explaining to the International guests that the "solders" were our associates and not at the hotel for high security...