P.S.- one funny thing

Today during church someone's cell phone rang (it happens all the time- I hate it!!) Anyway, the ringtone was Alecia Keys' song "No One" - the song I had playing on our blog for way too long! It only rang for about 2 seconds of the song, but right afterwards Zanna started singing the song "no one, no one, no wah-ah-ah-one" and the girls in front of us just started laughing so hard to this little 4-year-old belting out Alecia Keys in Church- it was comical!

tHis iS hOw DaD playS CaRds aFter wOrK...

some of our friends...

The Water
the park
Mom
Ara
Sam
Jonah and Anikah having a berry picnic
Jess, David and Val in Central Park w/ bagels
Q-tip
(one of Zanna's new obsessions and a very sweet puppy)

Maui- our other Maltese obsession
Alley and Emma from gymnastics
Jack from Church
And Jonah!

We had a great day at the Jones Beach last week :)

This is our fun day at the Queens Zoo with our friends Payton, Halle, and Kristen. It is great zoo for little kids and they loved feeding the animals at the petting zoo and feeding themselves cotton candy- yum :)

belated BiRtHdAy post

This is a Belated Post but I had to say how cute Dave was for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. I had to go get a new driver's license in the morning of my b-day and when I got back he had made fancy cornmeal pancakes from scratch with strawberries and powdered sugar! We had a fun relaxing day- the kids and I dug for worms outside and just played while Dave studied, and then that night Dave threw together a pizza/movie party at our friend's place. Ryan (the boy in the picture) and I share the same birthday- he turned 8 and I turned 28 so it was fun to party with him. We watched "Enchanted" in their theater room and ate lots of cake and ice cream- my favorite thing to eat!!! So, thank you Dave for making my birthday a happy one!

your favorite pantry items?

Hello friends-

I was asked to help with a cooking night for our Young Women and for part of the night we will be discussing "stocking your pantry" and what you need as far as basics in a kitchen. Many of the girls are moving away to college and don't have a lot of experience. So, I thought I would ask you experts and get more ideas than just mine. Please let me know your top 10 basic pantry items (you can do more if you want) and a gadget or two that you feel are "must haves" in a kitchen.
I think it will be fun to see what we get!

Thanks much-
Mel

"excuse me"

Tonight at dinner we were discussing manners because Zanna was acting very poorly today. We were at a new friend's house and her Nanny made us lunch and Zanna came to sit down, looked

at the food, pointed and said, "Gross, I don't like that! I'm not eating" and stormed off. I was a little embarrassed, but she was very nice about it turned out fine. So, during our "manners talks" I said you should say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" if people are talking. James looked at me and said, "sometimes you have to say excuse me to your bum." I just laughed and said, "that's right."