Selection of Ruby and Eben

There are always just sweet fots of the kids, millions of them. So here's a hodge podge at various locations in NYC. Ruby at our street fair (which is the fete for her new school across the road)

This is just Eben being cute.

And another - he loves the scooter, can be pulled on it for HOURS

No idea where we were going here. Ruby was obviously happy about it though, so who cares. Enjoy!

This was a really great kids art thing at the Met Museum where she made little binoculars.

Ruby at super soccer stars. Thank g-d we only bought a 3 lesson groupon, she refuses to wear anything other than a twirly skirt, and drives the instructors crazy with her moaning. Al returned from today's lesson saying the wasp sting he got on his hand was the highlight. 

She does really enjoy her swimming lessons though with her friend Romy.

Not a party without face painting (Sasha's annual bash next door)

Outside the Natural History museum

So we're still enjoying NYC, raising our ever more mouthy children...ALL GOOD

Except when Al's in charge when things go awry.

But a week is short: Corporate Paula

Having enjoyed the last month at BNPP and my week off, it's time to be serious...below my corporate self. Sideways stance, and pearls....I may look 12 but I can do this job, promise.

Still enjoying having no responsibilites

We celebrated Karen's 40th birthday with a lil barbeque in the garden on the Sunday and a lil Karenoke (Al's brainwave of course) for her. She LOVED it.

But perhaps not as much as Al and I.

See the kids running for their lives inside the flat.

Enjoying having no responsibilities

It wasn't for long...it was just one week off between the two jobs. But it was GREAT. We started out by having a british style garden party (albeit in our concrete nyc yard) for about 40 friends. No fots of the party itself which was brilliant, but a few of the set-up..

I spent some time finding exactly the right bunting and convincing the very kind suzanne crumley at my work to print and cut it - which she did. Definitely worth it.

We raided the London candy company for as many british sweets and chocolate as we could find - flakes, curly wirlys, dib dabs, chupa chups, murray mints, iced gems and then made loads of marmite, cucumber and cheese and pickle sandwiches.  And lovely mum sent over flags and union jack stuff. We introduced a number of people to Pimms that night. No complaints. Below, our kitchen table, britified.

But it wouldn't be a party without a competition. So Al and I divided our unsuspecting guests into 4 teams (indicated by a playing card with their name on it to be collected on arrival). They weren't here to have fun.

First round - an American from each team was to make a Pimms cup and a blind taste test was done by a panel of brits (1 from each team). Second round - a flavour test for 5 different well-known british crisp flavours and 5 different flavours of American popcorn. Third round - guess the random british royal, and last but not least - democrat or republican (determine political allegiance of 4 U.S. celebs)

But Al and I in our ignorance had spent alot of time planning the games but had no idea just how seriously the games would be taken.  There was nothing short of scary and frankly threatening outcry at what people felt like was substandard scoring. We had to do a re-count the next day.

AMAZING NIGHT.

Mexico

As I came to the end of my time at BNPP, we did lots of fun things, including Pennsylvania. The next on the list was Mexico. First time since Ruby was born, Al and I went away for 4 nights, 5 days ALONE. Al's parents looked after Ruby and Eben and we snuck off to a place called La Reve near Playa del Carmen in Mexico. It was amazing, I have one photo of our room which had a little garden with a small hot tub. No other photos..but it was total heaven - lots of great food, breakfast in bed, lots of uninterrupted sleep, lots of reading (read 2 novels!!), swimming, walks on the beach etc. It felt so special to be totally in control of our own time and for the first time in a long long while I didn't feel tired. Incredible.

Pennsylvania part 2

Even though Al burnt the kitchen table during our last visit, we were invited back to Maggie's mum's farmhouse in Pennsylvania. This time there was more swimming and less late night jacuzzi'ing. Al and Tom did manage to spend 3 hours preparing a roast chicken extravaganza - Al at his smuggest for quite some time.

Father and son table tennis:

The farmhouse is truly amazing, with pool, table tennis, hot tub, trampolene and everything anyone could want. Lovely weekend with the Vaughans.

Athol & Mount Hermon

After bringing this up with Charlie about a year ago, we finally made it happen. I really wanted him to take me to Athol and show me where dad grew up, and also to Mount Hermon as I remember dad talking alot about it as a kid. So about a month and a half ago, Ethan, Charlie and I went on quite a long 4 hour trip to Athol, Massachussets.

Even the journey there was brilliant. Started off with a Lenny's coffee, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel brekkie and Charlie reminiscing about various things, including the car trips they used to take when they were little. Apparently billboards were still relatively new and exciting and they'd take it in turns to read them from a distance. Grandma Bea had such awful eyesight that she'd keep getting it wrong which would send them into hysterics.

Our first stop wasn't actually anything to do with dad - but we had lunch with a friend of Roberta and Charlie's who is a glass artist and does amazing work. He took us on a tour of his workshop, showed us his work which is heavily influenced by space because his wife's an astronaut. He was a really nice and interesting guy. Here's Charlie, Ethan and I with Josh in front of one of the huge machines which is heated at something like 2000 degrees.

So Josh was in Massachussets, about 30 mins away from Athol - we headed there next. I'm annoyed with myself because I should have written this post as soon as I got back, but wanted to spend the proper time on it - so I put it off and wrote notes to myself - only now to have lost them. So I can't actually remember the name of the couple that live in the house now - but they were very very sweet.

Up we rolled to 415 Pleasant Street, Athol:

This isn't what the house looks like now - those are a few pics that the couple gave us of the house a long time ago, I think before the Wantmans lived there. This is what it looks like now:

It was actually beautiful - about 3000 square feet so quite big. And alot nicer than what I expected.Charlie did hasten to tell me it wasn't nearly as nice as that when they lived there and was actually quite decrepid...The couple that lived there now have done an extension which includes a terrace at the back...

And they showed us all around the house. Charlie showed me which one dad's room was. Mum asked me whether it was the smallest and actually it was :).

One thing I remembered dad talking about was the chickens they used to keep. The chicken house isn't there now - but this is where it was...

What really struck me when we were driving around Athol was just what a small sleepy town in the middle of nowhere it is... Compared to where the entire clan ended up and what they all ended up achieving, they came from very smalltown roots and I was imagining what it was like for them to grow up there.
Before we left Athol, we went to see a woman called Pauline Goldman (Jewish). She was apparently a good family friend of Grandma Bea's and Bernie's. Charlie indicated she wouldn't hear a bad word about Bernie (which is funny as Charlie's got plenty negative to say about him). Turns out Bernie was really generous with them. Pauline was quite old, sadly very sick and REALLY happy to have some visitors, and especially to meet me, knowing that I was dad's child. One of the things she remembered was helping Bea to cook for dad's barmitzvah lunch at the house in Athol. Another story she told us was when Charlie came to stay with them in his early teens, and snuck out to the fair when they'd expressly told him not to. When he got back and got caught, Pauline's late husband was so angry with him but thankfully didn't tell Bernie which Charlie remained forever grateful to him for.

After Pauline, we went to Mount Hermon for one of the Wantman State of the World talks which Charlie has endowed in dad and Joan's name. It was amazing to see Mount Hermon. We went into the cottage which dad stayed in.

Unfortunately I couldn't see his actual room as they've changed everything around. But I was told that he was in a single room (most people had a room mate) which may have contributed to dad feeling quite lonely during his time at Mount Hermon. I remember dad saying to me that he would never send his kids to boarding school. Funny thing about his cottage though is it's called London House..

The school's quite posh, and very international. We had dinner with some of the students and then went to the talk - a holocaust survivor talking about her experience at one of the camps. That was quite unbelievable in itself - it's great that the endowment is supporting such a worthy initiative to expose kids to topics like this (another one of these talks I saw by video was on man's interpretation of nature. Seriously interesting).

I had a really really great day. Very special time with Ethan and Charlie and an opportunity to see some of the things that I remember dad talking about. Tragic that dad couldn't take us down memory lane himself but Charlie was definitely the next best thing and I'm very grateful he made time to do this and spend 12 hours in a car over the course of one day. xxx