The Eagles Have Landed

Okay, this isn't officially about the family but exciting for us nonetheless.

Some background - JiaJia attends a pre-school called the River School on the National Conservation Training Center campus (of course now that I think of it, Laura went there too and Vince works on the campus so maybe it is a family thing...) One of the great things about the school is their emphasis on nature, which makes it all the more interesting that there is a bald eagle nest in plain view of the playground.

Some intrepid soul climbed up to the nest and put in a webcam which streams live into the pre-school classroom (it is also on the web at

http://www.fws.gov/nctc/cam/livevideo.html). It can be a bit hair raising to see the eagles in action (one very memorable day we got to see the mother eviscerate a rabbit to feed the babies!) but it is nature at its most basic and the kids really love it. Last spring the general manager of the facility set up the auditorium with the very big screen so the whole class could watch the chicks hatching.

So this year so far our pair of eagles has laid two eggs. There is some speculation that there might be a third but since I don't know much about eagle egg laying habits I can only repeat what I've heard and leave it to Tyler and Jane to tell me if this is even possible.

At any rate, we're all waiting for spring and the new babies, followed by many sightings of the parents teaching their children how to hunt. It is truly a sight to behold but not for the faint of heart.

Happy New Year!

We had a quiet and fun Christmas here in WV. Santa brought everyone a few things they really wanted but otherwise took it easy on the elves this year (a scenario played out in many homes across the country this year, I imagine). Laura got her guitar, JiaJia got her cupcake maker and Vince got his floor jack so there were smiles all around. What did I get, you ask? I got to fix a big breakfast including hominy, my all time favorite breakfast food that nobody in this house likes but me. Yum!

Here's Laura with her guitar. Yes, I know its pink but it was for Laura, remember?
JiaJia, with her cupcake maker and a nail art set that Vince got her (the reason why there are tiny sparkly stickers EVERYWHERE on the first floor of the house - remind me to have a little talk with him about that...)
After she changed her clothes on Christmas morning, JiaJia brought me the ubiquitous leopard satin pajames and said, "Mommy, we have to say goodbye to these. They're too small." All I can say is some prayers get answered.

Last night I fell asleep about 9:30, as is my usual, and the girls woke me up at 11:30 so I could go down and watch the ball drop with them. Everyone had a tiny glass of champagne then we all trooped back up to bed. This was what I found this morning - the lump in the back of the bed is Cecily's daughter Sophie who is staying with us this week (and a darn good thing since it appears that I'm coming down with the same virus that Cecily has been fighting - Sophie is like an older sister to my girls and they will do what she says so it is like having a live in babysitter).

Happy 2009, all! Let's hope it is a good one for all of us.

A visit with Santa

The River School had its Christmas pageant Thursday night and Santa was there! Our friend Matt Poole (WeiWei's dad) was the official photographer for the event and snapped this of the girls.

The rest of the evening is something of a blur puncuated by the memory of young Luke, stepping to the front of the stage to perform his solo, only to projectile vomit about 15 feet (I am NOT kidding) across the room. It really got bad when several of the other kids, upon seeing this, began to gag themselves, in sympathy. They don't put THAT in the parenting manual, my friends.

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season!

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Now if only it wasn't 71 degrees outside! Where the heck is that snow anyway? There's just something wrong with stepping out in flip flops ten days before Christmas.

If you saw a pig fly by your window recently it might be because I relented and let Vince and the girls put up the Christmas tree early. Generally I'm a stickler for waiting until the Sunday before Christmas but this year I couldn't take the noise and told them to go ahead. As a result we've had a fully loaded tree up for a whole week (and, as I knew would happen, the novelty has worn off already for the younger members of the household).

At any rate, they're still enthralled with the Advent Calendar, which in an improbably heathen twist, contains a note from Santa every day. Yes folks, that whirring noise you hear is my sainted mother spinning in her urn at the thought of a lovely Christian tradition being co-opted by the pagans. JiaJia refers to the notes as "fortunes" since her total experience at finding something unexpected inside something else is based on fortune cookies. I guess I need to expand her educational horizons a bit.

Today I start my annual cookie baking marathon, which has greatly increased in scope this year. I have to go to the office on Wednesday to deliver 17 (!) bags of cookies to various coworkers. I'm afraid I set a precedent over the summer when I started baking for our weekly executive briefings because now I can't go to the office in Virginia without being collared by various and sundry people (including the big boss) wanting to know if I've brought goodies with me. Not that I mind, of course, since I'd rather be baking than doing just about anything else.

Speaking of which, I've finally got my other blog going again so come visit me there if you'd like - http://www.myburntofferings.blogspot.com/. Its still under construction as far as its appearance but I'm excited because I've been invited to link to a large food community on the web. In other food related news, my friend the Sneaky Chef (otherwise known as Missy Chase Lapine), is using a quote from me in her new book. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm livin' the dream...

We're planning a quiet but merry Christmas here at the Wolfe Den. Hope yours is equally wonderful!

Happy Halloween

We lucked out yet again this year and the weather was absolutely gorgeous for Halloween. So nice, in fact, that the girls didn't even have to wear jackets over their costumes, a fashion don't that they find simply unacceptable. Mom, ever the killjoy, carried jackets for them in case the temps dropped while we were out but amazingly, we never needed them.

JiaJia was Ariel, the Little Mermaid, kindly recycling a costume that Laura wore two years ago and Laura was a genie, a repeat of her last year's costume. An amazing event in that for once it didn't cost me a dime.

We don't have trick or treating in our neighborhood so we went into the historic district in Shepherdstown, where it seems the whole county congregates. Most of the old houses have big front porches so the adults gather there, often in costume, to sip cocktails and admire the various witches and goblins and princesses. The one thing that really struck me this year is how few houses participated as opposed to in years past. I guess the economic downturn is being felt everywhere.

It didn't really matter to the girls, though, as they still amassed a mighty haul of candy, which I am attempting to dole out in small doses, hoping to keep the sugar insanity to a minimum (I know, fat chance).

The day after Halloween was a quiet one but Sunday we spent the day at Jane and Ken's for a pizza feast to celebrate Barbara AND Thom, Sam and Aunt Cay being in town. It was, as always, a loud, crazy, fun time with conversational groups forming and reforming like amoebas. We were all stuffed and happy by the time we piled into our cars to head home.

I had the special treat of having Jane and Barbara come up here today to take me out to lunch for my birthday. Jane has the knack for bringing perfect weather with her when she visits so we had lunch (although not at our favorite restaurant, Stone Soup Bistro, which was closed for cleaning) and strolled through town. We paid our traditional visit to the Herb Lady and ended the day with me forcing Jane and Barbara to take a big loaf of homemade bread with them for dinner tonight. In return they forced me to take a bottle of wine from them. It was a struggle but ultimately they overcame my resistance. Now I'm basking in the afterglow and wondering what to fix for dinner.

Random Pictures from Our Random Summer

I have been a very bad blogger this year but wanted to post a few pictures from late spring and summer since I know the only reason anyone looks at this is to see pictures of my children.
This is an unusual pic because they are actually posing together and they look reasonably happy.

I don't know about you but I always wear leopard print satin pajamas and fluffy mules when I water my tomato plants...

Okay, not a picture of the kids but I was pretty happy with my tomatoes this summer.

Auntie M. took us to the Catoctin zoo. A good time was had by all but am I the only one who finds it a bit ironic to see deer in a zoo?

This is JiaJia and her best friend, WeiWei, plus their dads. This was the River School graduation but since JiaJia missed the cutoff for kindergarten by two weeks, we'll be graduating again next year.

Best Wedding Ever (or at least recently...)

Yesterday my niece, Katherine, (John Hugh's daughter) got married on a boat in the Baltimore harbor. The weather was simply glorious, the bride was lovely, the groom handsome, and most important of all, the food at the reception was delicious.

The actual wedding ceremony took place dockside then the boat (a big paddle steamboat called the Black Eyed Susan, of the kind that used to traverse the Mississippi river) left for four hours cruising around the harbor. The scenery was fascinating - from the French Quarter type party of Fells Point to the Inner Harbor to the working port of Baltimore - and the sunset was gorgeous. There was dancing on the upper deck (Yes, I did my crazy aunt thing and made all the girls do a conga line to "Dancing Queen" because it threatened to be an all wallflowers reception. I had to take action) and the bar and food on the lower deck.

There's no such thing as too much crab for me so I was thrilled to see backfin crab cakes as the centerpiece of the dinner. They were fantastic - just big lumps of crab with a little something to hold them together but no bread and nothing weird like wasabi or coriander. Can you tell I'm a crab cake snob? At any rate, I was really surprised they were able to turn out such a good meal from what had to be a very small galley kitchen but the crew did a great job.

Larry and Justin made it up from New Orleans so I had a lot of fun reconnecting with them. It seems incredible that we haven't seen in each in the flesh since Mom died in 1997 but it was just as if no time had passed at all (except for the grey hairs we all seem to be sporting these days). Many fences were mended in both the bride's and groom's families and everyone seemed to get along swimmingly. I even found myself with a tear in my eye as John Hugh and Katherine had their father-daughter dance to "Mack the Knife," not your typical wedding number but they really did quite a rug cutting routine. When we finally disembarked after four hours cruising, John Russell (John Hugh's son) handed us each a tiny gold box with two delicious truffles in it as a favor to savor on the way home.

All in all, it was the happiest afternoon/evening I've spent in a long time. I didn't even get a parking ticket even though I was over on my meter by an hour so obviously the universe was watching out for us wedding goers. I was so relieved I gave my truffles to a homeless man so someone else could enjoy a tiny piece of our wonderful day.

Sadly, none of my pictures turned out particularly well so I'll add some illustrations once I get a few from the thousands of other photographers who were snapping away.