What I did on my summer vacation

Some pictures from our trip up the east coast. We went from SC to NH and even inadvertently crossed the border into Maine - I was on the cell phone, my bad. Yeshi and I figure we should just drive on down through Georgia and Florida and call it a day. This is coming up through NC, for some reason it makes me think of Europe. Not sure why...
Pretty clouds in NC.

Crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. A good day for boating.

Dead trees on the eastern shore of VA.

Foot to the sky. Looks like my foot but it's about 33 years younger and a size 13. Yikes. He may actually grow into these paws.


After hours on the road, trying to get a self-portrait in sunglasses is great entertainment.

NJ turnpike was pretty congested so I relied on my gps-back-up (Yeshi) to find an alternate route. Here he uses one of the rubberbands from his braces to track our position.

When you can snatch the pebble from my hand...

This is a rite of passage for our children. No one is allowed to move out unless they can make the enchiladas....how would they live? This is Yeshi's first attempt at dipping. We ladies do all the preps - chopping onions, shredding cheese (or foraging for it at the grocery in its shredded and bagged state) and making the sauce. We also layer the onions and cheese during the building process. The actual dipping of the tortillas into the sauce is, however, the male's domain. As is the preparation of properly poached eggs to top off the masterpiece. These skills require finesse and timing (the female responsibilities in enchilada-making do not) and thusly the learning process must begin at an earlier age for boys. The tortillas have to be in the sauce long enough to soften and be completely coated but if they are in too long they fall apart. Similarly the eggs must have cooked whites and runny yokes. Yeshi did a fine job for his first attempt - only a few ripped tortillas. Once he is 100 percent on his dipping we'll move on to egg-poaching. Well done son - I look forward to the day when you and your sister whip up a plate for me, *sniff* !

A reward for their labors

After clearing the brush out of a large area in the backyard, Danny and Yeshi cut down a small tree and put up a hammock. Since it's back by the airfield there is actually a bit of a breeze there. They bagged all the brush and hauled it to the curb, then Yeshi got a coke and kicked back for a few hours back there. We lit a couple "Off" lanterns and that kept the bugs at bay. The hammock will probably see a lot more use this fall - it is HUMID here.

Come up a cloud

 We do get some great thunderstorms here in SC. We've had a couple that shook the walls and yesterday we even had one that set off our smoke detectors. I don't know how that works....but it was impressive. About a week ago we had one that brought in some swirling clouds (shown here).  It was really odd - looked like it would form a tornado but lucky for us it just brought some rain.

 

The boys are getting tall. Poor Jim (far right) he's now the shortest guy..... Yeshi still has a little ways to go to pass Danny but it probably won't be long...

Independence Day pt. II - More Manly Endeavors

Ok, commercial break for some of our successful fireworks.....


And now back to our heroes - here we find Yeshi scaling the fence to the airfield after calling the fire department. We managed to get two hoses hooked together and Yeshi grabbed a couple old towels to throw over the barbed wire, then went over the fence with a little help from Dad. It took him about 5 minutes to put the fire out and the fire truck showed up just after he finished. They came over and had a look at it, shone their flashlights around and then asked Yeshi if he'd be willing to go back over and give the ground a good soaking. Apparently they had bigger fish to fry than our little grass fire. They were really nice guys - I was concerned we would be in trouble but they were actually glad we called. After they left and Yehsi finished soaking the ground we went back to our fireworks. This time just the more reliable stuff though! This is Yeshi scaling the fence the second time to wet the grass down. Nope, I didn't get any pictures of the fire - I had to help with hoses....seemed like the better idea...

Independence Day - A day of Manly Endeavors

It all began with a trip to Lowe's where we purchased an amped-up hedge-trimmer. Naturally, Yeshi wanted to be the first to dig into the shrubs in our back yard - which he did with gusto. Once he worked up a good sweat he turned it over to Dad so he could have some fun too. It looks really nice and open back there now. We plan to put up a hammock back there in the trees and I've been looking at some NICE plants to replace the undergrowth. Probably some hydrangeas and some sweetgrass and papyrus (yes! real papyrus! how cool is that?!!)

Later on we grilled burgers...a bit of non-traditional fare for Shabbat but it is the 4th after alll...

And then the fireworks! Which are legal here! (G-d bless the Great State of South Carolina!) Unfortunately a few of ours went awry....

Most of them were pretty good though and it was great fun to be setting them off in the comfort of our own backyard. Gloria and I sat on the patio and the boys fired them off. After a little while Danny informed us there was a fire. I thought he meant like off in the distance. But no, it seems one of our errant explosives had set the marsh grass on fire behind the house on the airfield. While it might have helped illumine the runway we felt it best to try and put it out. So Danny hooked up the hose while Yeshi called the FD on his cell phone (we were all pretty, um, excited by now). Well, the hose wouldn't reach so we had to disconnect and add another hose in ...flames were going pretty good now and smoke was rolling into the neighbors back yard. Stay tuned for part II...

Father's Day Frisbee

In which Danny shows Yeshi the finer points frisbee tossing...

Yeshi of the Glorious Hair

State Track Meet pt. 2 - State Champions!

At Monday night's practice we found out the team won the State Championship and the coaches passed out the ribbons. These are a few shots from the meet "aftermath". Yeshi put on his superman jammies over his track shorts - the ladies thought this was cool.

This is our setup at the meet. It's a long day (in this case weekend - the meet started Friday and ended Sunday) so everyone just camps out. Those are my feet on the cooler and that's Yeshi's practice discus. It was in the mid-90's and humid. You have to shift your chair around as the day wears on to stay in the shade. Danny was out in the sun all day. He volunteered to help with discus so he just got a break for lunch and that was it.

And this is hauling all the stuff back to the car...then a 3 hour drive home. Quite a difference from football season when we spent a mere 2 or 3 hours at the field!

South Carolina State Track Meet pt. 1

Here's Yeshi and his buddy Liam running the 1500. Yeshi did great, knocked 20 seconds off his time and got a 5:42. 

He placed 7th in discus....only the top 5 advance to regionals however, one of the kids has dropped out and if one more drops he will get to go. His technique is looking really good and he's really added some distance in the past two weeks. We got him a discus to practice with at home (track practice is 3 times a week) and he's been out there every day working on it. 

Here he is with some of his buddies in the  Mount Pleasant Track Club.

All Hail

Once again, woefully behind on the blog....this is hail from a thunderstorm we had while Atalya was here. Yeshi, Atalya, Ray and I were on our way back from the store when a decent storm blew up. Something hit the road and then I thought a rock hit the windshield. Next thing we knew, little balls of ice were hitting us. It was like being shot! Really loud and we tried to find someplace under the trees....hoping it would protect us from the hail. No such luck. It wasn't as bad under the trees but it still seemed like rocks were just raining down on us. Fortunately we were ok and the car was intact. Danny saved some of the hail for pictures. Oh, the other weird thing was after the hail stopped, the heat caused fog to come up over the hail-strewn yards. So it's hot out, there's hail all over the place (like spotty snow) and a low fog hanging over it all. Strange....