Halloween Parade

For Halloween we dressed Calvin up as a monkey. When we first bought the costume we had Calvin try it on to make sure it fit before we cut the tags off. He was super excited when we first put it on him. He kept trying to eat the banana attached to his wrist or grab his tail.


The weekend of Halloween we met up with Maddy and Van for a Halloween parade they were having downtown. It wasn't really a formal parade - just a place for kids to go and get candy and show off their costumes. Different stores and banks had little tables setup in a few of the parking lots off of Main Street to give out candy to the kids. We didn't let Calvin take any of the candy though.


Van was dressed as a fireman (just like his daddy), and Maddy was dressed up as Uma Thurman from Kill Bill - complete with samurai sword!


Calvin and Van got the best seats. They could probably see the whole parade from there.


They even had a guy there making balloon animals - actually more like balloon swords or heads on a stick...


Calvin was very happy with his balloon. He loved it so much he kept trying to steal everyone else's too.

That was the first annual Halloween parade. Hopefully they have it again next year. Maybe next year we'll even let Calvin actually eat the candy, but I guess he'll have to fight Phil for it...

Mom's Birthday at Fujiyama Mama

For my mom's birthday we went out to the Japanese restaurant Fujiyama Mama in Westfield since she loves Japanese food. Grandma posing with her grandkids, all dressed up for grandma's birthday.

We had hibachi, but we also ordered some special sushi dishes for my mom. I forget which one this was, but it had some tuna I think, topped with fish eggs. It was a little spicy, but surprisingly good (especially considering I don't eat sushi, but something that pretty you can't help but try it!).

My sister also ordered another sushi. I think this one was called dragon eye? It was sushi wrapped in avocado slices. This one was also pretty good.

And of course we ordered the standard california rolls.

Our chef was actually Fukanese. I don't think I've ever been to a hibachi where the chef was actually Japanese...


Maddy and Calvin got to see their first onion volcano. Calvin got pretty scared.

After lunch we went to Target with my mom. I know, nothing really exciting about going to Target, but it was the first time we let Calvin sit in one of those shopping carts. He looks like such a big boy sitting in the cart. He loved it so much he didn't want to get out when it was time to go.

Maddy's 1st Birthday Party

Jersey Diary has been on a bit of a hiatus. I blame it on Calvin...

I'm going to be trying to do some back-posting of some older posts I've been meaning to publish, and then we'll get back to what our little monster has been up to more recently.


Back in October we had gone to a farm to do apple picking for Maddy's 1st birthday. It was very hot and sunny that day and there were a lot of people there. Luckily my sister had booked a private party tent for us so we didn't have to fight with lines. Phil was extra excited about that because that meant no fighting people in line for the bathroom.
Our tent was the bunny tent.

The farm provided little pumpkins as party favors. It was so hot outside that one of the pumpkins spontaneously combusted from the heat.

My sister with the birthday girl.

Maddy is finally ok with Phil holding her, but she has to be holding his ear. She does that to everyone - like her version of a security blanket.

The 2 cousins hanging out at the party. Calvin was sleeping in the car, so he had just woken up when this picture was taken. As you can tell he was all kinds of confused. He just kept looking at Maddy, and then he would look at us like "what's going on?"

"Help?"

My mom was super happy to spend time with her 2 grandkids. She tried to dance a little bit with Calvin to get him to relax a little bit. Dancing always seems to help.

Once Calvin got a little more comfortable around everyone he started exploring. He got to see his first pumpkin. I think he's trying to figure out if this is something he can eat, and how. He's always thinking about food -just like his dad.

Calvin's good friend, Van, showed up a little later. He looks so handsome with his new haircut. He finally started getting some teeth. He had his 2 front teeth - 1 was a lot bigger than the other and he looked so adorable. We kept trying to ge him to smile for the camera and show his new teeth.

Of course, being boys, they went straight to playing with the sticks and woodchips on the ground. We're lucky they didn't accidentally start poking each other in the eyes with them. They settled for beating the poles holding up the tent.

After hanging out at the tent for a little bit it was time to take the hayride to go apple picking. While we were waiting I took Calvin to pet the donkeys. Surprisingly, he wasn't scared at all.

Since we were part of a party we got our own private hayride. The hayride was a first for Calvin and me.


The apple picking was not what I remembered from when I was younger. There were no ladders to get to the top. The trees were pretty short, but it was still tough to reach the nice apples at the top unless you had someone tall, like Van's dad, Michael. Everyone was limited to 3 apples a person. I guess they didn't want everyone picking all the apples. I tried to let Calvin walk around so he could pick some applies from the lower branches, but he just wanted to play with the squished and bruised applies on the ground.

Thanh had to shelter Van from the sun on the hayride back, it was so hot.

When we got back from the apple picking we had pie instead of birthday cake. They had all different kinds of pies - apple, peach, blueberry, cherry. All the pies were homemad by the farm, with fresh fruits from the farm. Maddy got to blow out her birthday candle on a blueberry pie.

Even Calvin was clapping for the birthday girl (even if it was 2 minutes after everybody had already stopped clapping...).

Before we left Calvin and Van went to pick their pumpkins to take home. You can tell Calvin is eyeing that open pumpkin, just waiting to make a mess.

Wedding Shower at City Tavern

A friend of ours, Ghimel, is getting married in December. Her mom and sister-in-law threw her a wedding shower in the city at a place called City Tavern. The downstairs is just a bar and actually looks a little dinky, but the upstairs is the restaurant area and looks much nicer. I was a little worried I was in the wrong place when I first arrived, but I could see the pink and white streamers from the full length windows on the 2nd floor.


They had decorated the tables with roses and butterfly and heart shape confetti.

There were little butterfly bookmarks on each placemate as favors. At least I'm pretty sure it's a bookmark...

Here is the happy couple, Ernest and Ghimel. They knew each other in college, and actually dated once before.

Ernest is in the army, and they decorated one of his army hats for Ghimel to wear at the shower.

Her sister-in-law, Rhina, and her mom, Nora, gave a lovely toast to the couple.

I was worried that it would be awkward because I wouldn't know anyone there (Ghimel is one of Phil's coworkers, so we don't have many mutual friends), but one of their other old coworkers, Tejal, was there too. She works for Bazooka now and brought everyone ring pops ^__^

For lunch I had their house salad. From the description it sounded like it would be good, but it was really bitter. The artichoke hearts were the only good thing about it.

For the main dish I ordered a dish called Cavatelli. It was some kind of not-quite shell shaped pasta with a tomato based sauce. It was actually decent.

The dessert was the best part. It was a coffee chip and vanilla mouse with strawberries and blueberries.

After lunch it was time to open presents. Ghimel got enough appliances and other things to furnish her entire kitchen. Which I guess is the point. Plus some nice stuff for the honeymoon ^__~

As much as I love Calvin it was definitely nice to do something non-baby related.

X.O.

The weekend after I got back from Asia, Phil's cousins, Lea and Lydia, and Lea's husband, Wally, were in town for a wedding. We went out to NYC to meet up with them for lunch. Summer is slowly coming to an end and it's starting to get a little chillier outside, so we had to bust out Calvin's windbreaker. He looks so puffy, but cute.


For lunch we headed to a restaurant called X.O. There are actually 2 locations I think. The one we went to was the newer location that opened not too long ago. It looks like it must be new because everything is so nicely designed and clean inside.

Lea, Wally and Kevin endulging me with my crazy picture taking ^__^

There was a decent number of us, but the parents seemed to order a lot of food - it just kept coming. As soon as I thought they'd brought the last dish another one would show up a few minutes later. I thought the food was really good. We even let Calvin eat some.

Calvin was very excited for some reason. He was showing off his "flying" skills.

After he finished eating we let Calvin run around a little bit. He was surprisingly social. He even got up the nerve to hold hands with a random girl at the next table over (who incidentally ended up being not that random since Phil's mom apparently knew her mom somehow...). Oh, Calvin. Going for the older women already...

After lunch a few of us walked back to Lucia's apartment. Calvin was very out of it - clearly having inherited Phil's post-lunch napping tendencies.