Texas T

No, not “Texas Tea”, as in oil, but Texas T as in Thanksgiving. This year’s Lone Star Rally included a special surprise for our family – Thanksgiving. As we experienced the rally and honored Mazha while we were in Galveston, we also took the opportunity to celebrate being together as a family at the beginning of November.

The past three years of the rally have been interesting. Three years ago we got a blizzard in PA that canceled Halloween and almost postponed our trip to Texas, last year we had hurricane Sandy that did postpone Halloween and impeded our travel (shortened our stay to just the weekend), and this year there was, what seemed to have been, a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Okay, maybe not that bad, but enough where we were home-bound for a day with the TV sirens going off. No worries... we ended up playing 6 hours of dominoes and watching the water rise outside of our window. We called it bonding.

With our usual activities taking place on The Strand, Kensington also experienced her first haunted house at the old Mayfield Manor, the former home of Dr. Horace Mayfield, once a respected doctor, upcoming community leader, and son of a prominent physician in Galveston. It’s an 1867 building that served as a morgue after the 1900 Storm – still the deadliest storm in U.S. history having killed an estimated 8,000 Galveston residents. When we entered, Chris told them not to hold back. She insisted that she go through it and loves the thrill of being scared and while we tried to warn her, she’s didn’t want to be babied. So we went through (with a flashlight) and she laughed most of the way through it. When we were done, she wanted to go through it again. It wasn’t worth the admission for the first trip, and we we’re going to even attempt it a second time.

Click here for a photo slideshow

Kensi loved the fact that our beach house was 50 yards away from the ocean. Within a minute, her little feet could be hitting the sand. Besides swimming, burying her feet in the mud and chasing after seagulls, she loved flying her kite with Fazha. Unfortunately, after about 2 minutes of piloting the craft solo, she let go of the string and the kite went soaring up in the air. I tried chasing it and stepping on the spool, even running through the brush and dunes to catch it. I had no luck. There was a huge gust of wind that carried it away. When all hope was lost, I found the spool that went over some power lines and found that the kite had actually landed on the deck of a vacation home. While I shimmied my way up the deck the best that I could, there was no way that I could get it. Cousin Chase also tried working his magic so K-Grace could have her “shark-attack” kite back. Then Daddy came to the rescue when he drove the truck up to the deck and I was able to climb on the rooftop of the cab and un-snag the sails.

We also made our annual trip on the ferry to feed the seagulls. With Chris, Simone and Jordan off at the spa, a group of us (loaves of bread in tow) stepped onto the ship and noticed that K’s throwing skills greatly improved over last year. Mighty impressive. Watch out Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek, this girl may actually beat your record.

CLICK HERE

Zoos Go Blue

Now that we live twelve minutes away from Central Park, I have been looking forward to taking Kensi to go see the penguin exhibit. One of her all-time favorite bedtime stories is “And Tango Makes Three”, which we highlighted back on March 1, 2008 PKG (Pre- Kensington Grace). The book is based on the true story of Roy and Silo, two male Chinstrap Penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo. The book follows the six years of their life when they formed a couple and were given an egg to raise. This egg was obtained from a male-female penguin couple, named Betty and Porkey, who had two eggs and could not care for both at once. Roy and Silo took turns sitting on the egg, and eventually it hatched. The female chick was named "Tango" by the zookeepers. Kensi favorite part of the book is when the little chick breaks out of her shell. When we read it, she makes the chip chip (egg cracking) chirp (baby) sounds J

The weekend we moved here, was the weekend of Hurricane Sandy. Then we traveled to Texas to visit Fazha and the family, then to Disney for Thanksgiving (and Kensington’s Birthday) and then it became too cold. With spring finally here, and me working with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and their member zoos to create a national “Zoos Go Blue” campaign for Autism Speaks, this weekend was the perfect opportunity to bring Kensi along while I went to ‘work’ this weekend. Between this, last week’s Walk Now for Autism Speaks event at Dorney Park that she accompanied me to and ‘Bring You Child To Work Day” earlier this week, she thinks everyday is a party for papa at work.

Sporting her new penguin earrings and decked out in blue (well, we started in blue, until a strawberry milk incident), we headed to go see Tango!

Kensi, being her ever observant self, had to point out all of the puzzle pieces she saw… including the stickers everyone was wearing. Yes, everyone. It’s cute in the beginning. After 10 minutes I was looking for a blue muzzle.

Tango, unfortunately, went to go visit her cousins in the Bronx Zoo, but we got to see all of her penguin friends, help feed the ducks some baby shrimp, go into the rainforest and see the birds and reptiles as well as play in the waterfall, watch the 4D version of Ice Age, visit the children’s/petting zoo and gorge ourselves in popcorn and dipp’n dots ice cream. Thankfully, she didn't put two-and-two together to realize this zoo is nothing like it's namesame in Madagascar. No zebras wearing rainbow afro's.

 

After watching the sea lions, we headed through the park over to sheep meadow, through the daffodils, over to the band shell, to the bow bridge, around the lake, back down to Chess and Checkers, through Heckscher Park – where we stopped to watch a baseball game between the Revolutions and Hells Kitchen (Kensi was rooting for them so we decided to sit in the bleachers and cheer on the Revolutions. Unfortunately, they weren’t to good and Kensi kept calling out “you missed” and “that didn’t go far”, so we got up and headed over to the Hells Kitchen side. My girl only roots for winners!

We then circled around we found the Friedsam Memorial Carousel (one of the largest in the world), that Donald Trump recently bought. The famed Carousel, with its sweet calliope music and 57 magnificent horses, is the fourth to stand in Central Park since 1871. [Kensi has ridden carousels in PA, NJ, upstate NY, DC, MA, FL, TX, CA, Ontario, Vancouver, and now NYC.] After a full day of excitement, it was time for us to go home. As soon as we exited the park, she was out like a light in the stroller. I couldn’t dare put her on a subway or taxi and wake her, so I walked thirty-six blocks.  

Unlike the other penguin movie that Kensi loves so much (and is currently playing in the background as I type this), papa doesn't have Happy Feet.

"Papa, Kensi turtle is hiding from you..."

 

"Turtle going to come out and give you a kiss..."

"all this work makes my turtle neck hurt"

 

All I want for Christmas...

Right before Thanksgiving, Kensington came home from school and informed us that ‘Christmas’ would be bringing her a pink kitchen. Chris and I chuckled, and thought nothing of it. Santa had already been informed that Kensington should be on his Nice list and was slated for tons of toys, including a green and white kitchen set that came with its own pop-up cottage. Santa had been storing this cottage kitchen set for two years now in his attic, waiting for Kensington to be the right age to use it. Then, on a daily, if not hourly basis we were told that ‘Santa’ would be bringing her a pink kitchen. Sometimes it would be a whisper, sometimes in a normal tone, and once in Texas from a car window came a “I want a pink kitchen, please!!!!” shout when there was a drive-by Santa sighting.

Needless to say, Santa’s elves started working double-time to find the picture-perfect kitchen. Since there wasn’t enough time to make one, they had to search (NY, NJ, PA, TX, MD, VA and D.C.) and found one along the Mid-Atlantic coast.

When Kensington finally had the chance to share this single desire with Old Saint Nicholas, she didn’t waste the opportunity to captivate him with her charm. She leaned into his chest, looked up with her big blue eyes, and told him her wish. With a, “I’ll see what I can do”, and a pat on the back, she knew deep down that she had him where she wanted him. Then, came a quick costume change. You see… this Halloween Chris and I rifled the internet for a flawless costume for our K-Grace . We found one at our favorite boutique, chasing-fireflies.com. We had such a build up for the holiday, with our little lavender fairy ready to go trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, we had snow on Halloween. It was way too cold to go outside and even attempt to collect sugary treats, so we hunkered down at the house and hid candy around the house like it was Easter, sans the cheap plastic eggs.

So, since Santa brought us snow in October, we brought him a fairy in December. With everything we went through to get the costume and all of the accessories, we were going to get full use of it. You should have seen the looks we got while walking around the mall.

Christmas morning came [for us, it happened to be on Dec 26th because we were out of the state on the 25th], Kensington walked down the stairs and entered her play room. With a gasp that seemed to last forever, she reached for her pink apron, opened up her refrigerator, took out her play food and went to work. It was the best Christmas breakfast we’ve ever had. Chris and I were able to get second helpings… regrettably; Fazha was told that he had enough after one serving.

A Year Of Mourning

Dear Lois,

Over the past twelve months, I have become more in-tune to my spiritual beliefs – that is to say, I didn’t become religious or spiritual in light of the recent misfortunes in our lives, but I have reconnected with by base beliefs. Being the only one in our family that wasn’t christened in the Catholic faith (long story…), I’ve been a so-called member of many of the Christian denominations out there. Baptized Southern Baptist at the age of 9, I stayed in that faith until my early teens, then switched between the Lutheran and the Methodist churched until I was about 15. Then when I entered a four year relationship with, what would become my fiancé, my high school/early-college sweet-heart, I dabbled in the LDS (Mormon) religion. Since meeting Chris, I’ve gone to two reformed protestant churches; the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ.

Since then, I have exposed myself to one of the original faiths, Judaism. Judaism, with its long history of dealing with the soul of man, its intimate knowledge of man's achievements and foibles, his grandeur and his weakness, has wisely devised a system of graduated mourning periods. During this time, the mourner may express his or her grief and release, with calculated regularity, the built-up tensions caused by bereavement.

The Jewish religion provides a beautifully structured approach to mourning which is divided into five stages. Aninut, Lamentation, Shivah, Sheloshim and a Year of Mourning.

The fifth stage is the twelve-month period during which things return to normal, and business once again becomes routine, but the inner feelings of the mourner are still wounded by the rupture of relationship with the loved one.

The observance that most affects the daily life of the mourner during the twelve-month period is the complete abstention from parties and festivities, both public and private. Participation in these gatherings is simply not consonant with the depression and contrition that the mourner experiences.



This was not meant to look like a shrine,
I just moved the candles
closer for the picture.



It borders on the absurd for the mourner to dance gleefully while his parent lies dead in a fresh grave (or in our case, separated into several boxes and thrown in the ocean, hanging from a necklace, buried with her father, sitting on a shelf, and in my house, hanging out in a Japanese Urn on the liquor cabinet - exactly where she would have wanted to be).

At the close of this last stage, the bereaved is not expected to continue his mourning. So with that being said, No More Sadness. Period. [I so wish it was as easy as typing the words and the actions will follow. Unfortunately, it's not. I don't know how one can expect it to go away.]

While today is a day to remember Mazha’s life that passed away a year ago today, it’s also time to celebrate the new life that came into the world today. Kensi’s uncle Kyle and Auntie Cathy had a baby girl today - Kayla. While I have pictures of her in the hospital nursery, I’ll ‘allow’ the newbie parents to post the first photos of their princess before I do so. I will also let them share the story of Cathy falling asleep during labor (that woman falls asleep at the drop of the hat), and how what she desired the most was to have her eye lashes curled (if people were going to take pictures, she wanted to look flawless). It’s not my place to tell that story, or share with you the uncomfortable conversation I witnessed where Kyle stood in the hallway with his mother-in-law discussing her daughter’s cervix. It’s just not my place. Sorry folks :)

In honor of Mazha’s life, I wanted to share the video that we played at her funeral. It had to be split up into two videos because of YouTubes time limit on video uploads.

Part 1



Part 2

Post 9/11 Foundation Ride For Heroes

The ‘Follow The Flag” campaign began at Ground Zero on September 11, 2010 with the raising of several flags by the actual heroes of 9/11 over the fallen World Trade Center Towers. The same flags have flown over several battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and all of the major military academies. These flags will be on tour of across the country from one year, returning to its final resting place at the National 9/11 Museum on the 10 year anniversary of the attack.

Fazha (with Mazha in tow), along with cousins Billy & Marla (their bikes can be seen below), followed the flags and the NAVY New Orleans Full Steam Brass Band, from the beach, through The Strand and down to Pier 21.

Looking for sand dollars

This past November, we traveled down to Galveston to take part in the 2010 Lone Star Bike Rally. Not only was this a chance to get the family together, but it was time to have the third memorial for Mazha and to spread her ashes in the Gulf.

The riding around the Lone Star motorcycle rally is one of the attractions. Going over the Causeway that gets you over the water to Galveston Island lets you see the water, riding along the beach once on the island, and riding on Strand Street through the middle of the rally are all part of the Galveston TX motorcycle experience. Fazha built a special holder that allowed for her urn to sit, one last time, in their trike, Dragon’s Breath, so she could experience these things one last time.

Here are a couple of the pages from a scrapbook that I put together from our trip.

Kensington loved walking the beach, which was right off from where our hotel was stationed, looking for sand dollars and seashells. Her auntie Simone and cousin Jordan were the lucky ones, finding prized possessions on the beach. I wasn't so lucky :(