Monday Musings

Officially, it’s the last day of winter although you’d hardly know it by looking out my window. It’s a bright, sunny day but our yard is still blanketed by nearly a foot of snow. It’s been way too cold for the snow to melt from most lawns. Given that tomorrow is the first day of spring, I must get the last two photos up for the Winter Scavenger Hunt—the two I neglected to take in Morocco, but fortunately, captured at The Container Store in Chicago before we left.

Number 6 was “wrapping paper” and #15 was bow. The Container Store always has a wonderful selection of wrapping paper.

This giant bow was on sale after the Christmas rush.

Tracy’s birthday celebration turned out more festive than we anticipated. Betsy’s sister from Boston, as well as her niece, joined us for the birthday dinner. I couldn’t get everyone in the iPhoto picture so I popped the two into a digital template.

His cake was his favorite, a chocolate raspberry torte from the neighborhood Jewish bakery.

Of course, he had help blowing out the candles. (Actually, he did it twice—once with Skylar and once with Ella. No one captured the second one.

We had planned a quiet day at home for his actual birthday on St. Patrick’s Day. But I got an email a couple of days prior from one of our favorite wineries on Seneca Lake announcing Customer Appreciation Day. It was another bright, sunny day so we headed down to the Finger Lakes late in the afternoon.

Silver Thread is an (almost) organic winery we’ve been visiting for many years. They have a gorgeous setting overlooking the lake.

We had a little time before our dinner reservations, so we stopped at another winery—one we hadn’t visited in years. We had a fun time at the tasting bar, and ended up taking home some wine from both wineries. As you can see in both photos, they have a lot less snow than we do. We get a lot of our snow from a phenomenon called “lake effect” being just east of Lake Erie and right on Lake Ontario.

I’d made reservations at Dano’s on Seneca Lake. It had been highly recommended by friends of ours years ago, but we’d never been. It was a charming place—great views and even better food!

We both had Irish bangers and mash. It’s one of our favorite dishes at an Irish pub in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, but this was the best bangers and mash we’d ever had. 

When we got home we had a great FaceTime call with Sarah and her family with lots of birthday singing on the part of the six year old. All in all, a fine way to celebrate a big birthday.