Road warrior. Always. Moving. Forward.
As happy as I am that Spain won the Eurocup, the United States of America is my home. 
Happy Fourth of July 2012. God bless America.
For this week’s wordy “Wordless Wednesday” we are bringing you back to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
One of the coolest competitions our school district runs in the lower grades is the “Extreme Reading” competition. The criteria for the competition is that children hand in a photo of themselves reading in an unusual environment, as long as it is not dangerous or illegal. Other than this, the children are only limited by their imaginations and how far their parents are willing to go to support them.
This year’s competition was a lot of fun for us. Our girls came up with some pretty interesting submissions including this one taken at the base of a tank located outside the gates of West Point, and it won a prize.
The one which didn’t win, which was a surprise to us, was this one:
In it our daughter is reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ”with” Washington Irving. It was just after Halloween, on a beautiful fall day, with the barren trees of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery standing stark against the stones. Living in an area steeped with history from this era, we thought it would be a great tribute to this great American author and statesman. And we used it as an opportunity to teach the girls a bit more about our beautiful Hudson Highlands and our country’s history as well. It was not scary. It was not ghoulish. It was taken with respect for this great American. And it was an original extreme reading shot.
In the Hudson Valley of New York there is a beautiful and historic cemetery, The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Yes, that cemetery… of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow fame. More on that in another post.
For today’s Wordless Wednesday I present you with three images of three grave sites found within easy walking distance of each other. They are the graves of Samuel Gompers, Andrew Carnegie and William and John D. Rockefeller. I leave you to ponder the irony of it all.
“Ain’t” American history grand?! (I promise to take you on a tour in the future.)
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Correction, June 22, 2012: The wonderful folks at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery contacted me today with a correction to my post. John D. Rockefeller is buried in Cleveland, Ohio. Despite my gaff I am truly honored that someone from the cemetery actually read my post and commented on it. Thank you very, very much and my apologies to all.
The other day I looked at a playground that I had passed many times, but that I’d never really seen.
It is possibly the most beautiful and artistic play area I have ever visited.
It was a happy, shaded place.
In the center there was what appeared to me to be a large smiling child.
Each extension of the large child in the middle – arm, leg, foot – invited the children to try something else – climb, slide, crawl, explore.
And hidden within the big child were little people, maybe tiny pieces of the whole, each with their own personality and their own spirit of adventure.
I am going to bring my girls here to play. And I will play along with them, as though I were a child as well.
Happy Saturday!
Read more about the “Spanish Soho Mile” here next week!
If you know what this is, you have either studied, worked or spent a lot of time at NYU.
© Mommylogue.com
Fudge. I never used to like it. I’d always thought it was too sweet, too thick and plain boring. If it wasn’t thick chocolate, it was thick chocolate with nuts.
And then we visited the Chatham Candy Manor.
Suddenly fudge became ethereal to me, a thing of art and beauty. No longer was it a chocolate brick, but a cocoa surprise. All of the Candy Manor’s fudge is homemade, and they have many, many flavors from which to choose. My personal favorite? Chocolate marshmallow.
We will be back, Chatham Candy Manor, oh yes we will!
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I was not compensated to write this post. I am simply remembering good times.
Dining at a restaurant takes on a whole new meaning when you have a baby, especially when it is your first baby. When our oldest was born it took us months before we dared take her out to eat with us. Looking back on it I guess there were many reasons why we didn’t.
First, we were concerned about bothering other patrons if our precious one decided to cry. She had quite a set of lungs! Secondly, it was just plain difficult to bring in baby in her carrier and set her down somewhere safe or comfortable. Then came the “what if we have to change a diaper” scenario. Most restaurant bathrooms are not equipped with a changing area, and running in and out of a place to change a diaper or calm baby down was not exactly our idea of a fun evening out. The whole thing was a little stressful both for us as well as her. It’s not fun to be stuck in a carrier, or wedged between a table and mommy for an hour plus. I was always a little jealous of other parents, seemingly so relaxed with their babies in tow.
However, the older she got (and the more experienced we became) we did start to take her out with us. As a result, my earliest memories of taking her out to eat are from Chatham in Cape Cod.
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The first Cape Cod restaurant we took her to was the restaurant within the hotel where we were staying at the time, the Chatham Wayside Inn. It was a nice hotel dining room with friendly local staff and the food was decent and appetizing. We always felt comfortable there with her. In fact, it was there that she had her first “flash flies” otherwise known as french fries. They were homemade and good and it was a nice waitress who told us it was absolutely OK. She took to those flesh flies like flies on… well, you know. Since that time the restaurant was changed a bit, but we still like it. We took the twins there after they were born, and absolutely plan to return. It is now know as the Wild Goose Tavern.
© Mommylogue.com
My second memory of eating out with the little pumpkin was at the The Impudent Oyster. It is a really lovely restaurant, and we enjoyed the food tremendously, once we had it packed up and took it back to the room. She was a little fidgety that evening, and the cozy and intimate dining room was no match for her. We’ve gone back since then, vowing not to be defeated, and always enjoyed it. I always loved the name which hearkened me back to Alice in Wonderland.
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Finally there is The Chatham Squire. We never made it there with ¨número uno¨ alone. However, the five of us have eaten there many a time, thanks to its big tables. It wasn´t easy finding a table in the place due to its popularity and prime location. It always appeared a landmark to us. But it is a great, bustling place with a big half’-tourist/half-local vibe, and well worth the visit. Plus, I love the sign. To me it always seemed the epitome of a Yankee image.
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I was not compensated to write this post. I am simply remembering good times.
It’s a nautical term people.
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I was not compensated to write this post. I am simply remembering good times.
