Surprise Papa Joe!

On February 2, 2008, Mary and Aunt Patsy organized a fabulous surprise party for Papa Joe's 70th. Special guests included Aunt PJ from San Diego, Phil H. with Libby and Seamus from St. Louis, Uncle Tom from Boston, and many other friends and family.

Papa Joe was very surprised and the party was a roaring success!

Picture is a bit fuzzy but it captured the moment he came in...

Heritage Day

Friday, February 1st was Heritage Day at Zachary's school for the pre-schoolers. All week they had been learning about different family traditions, cultures, and backgrounds. The week culminated in a presentation with a reading of "Fiesta" and a party where the children (and family) were invited to bring a favorite cultural/heritage dish.

Zachary wanted me to bring nuggets and although technically not part of his Irish/Italian/English heritage, I did pause seriously considering the request. As it is one of the 4 menu items Zachary will eat, perhaps nuggets are part of HIS heritage. His second request was to bring Skittles.

Originally, I was planning to make Irish soda bread as Zachary is mostly of Irish descent. But then I heard from another mother "oh, you are bringing soda bread too?", I decided against it. I wracked my brain to figure out another Irish dish but neither boiled potatoes, corned beef, nor cabbage sounded all that appealing. So I went to the Italian side and decided to bring double chocolate biscotti... Zack's class enjoyed them, he wouldn't try them, of course, but the others liked them....I tried to explain to Zachary that due to his mother's and father's obsession with chocolate, and the fact that I ate chocolate every day when pregnant with him, technically chocolate is his heritage. He wasn't buying it...

To represent the Irish and English heritage, we brought Grandma Edie... Here she is pictured with Zachary. Please note the look on his face as he wouldn't try a single bite of anything whereas Grandma ate everything we gave her and put it in her hollow leg...

California Dreamin'

On January 4, 2008 the FitzGerald Four hopped a 6:40 am flight from Newark to LA. Armed with our new portable DVD player, we thought we were all set for a manageable flight. Sadly, the DVD player did not work and Tom and I spent the next 5 1/2 hours doing everything we could to entertain the monsters (one of whom had a double ear infection and the other with pink eye). Somehow we survived. A transcontinental flight really can test not only your parenting skills but your marriage as well as I completely blamed Tom for the DVD player fiasco (only to discover days later that the machine was broken) since it was the ONLY thing he was responsible for packing, maybe he could have figured out it was broken before we got on the flight?

We landed to rain! RAIN! It was 63 that day in NJ because of some freak warm spell and 55 and raining in LA. Hmmmm... not cool. Luckily we had a fun place to go. Our very generous and wonderful friends, the McIlhargeys (see pic), put us up for the next few nights. They live in a great little area of LA whose name escapes me right now in a big beautiful house. We hung out and let all 4 kids run around like mad, ate, drank, and even took in the Car Museum (see pic) which was a major hit with our Hot Wheels fanatics.

At the end of the weekend, we drove to visit our friends the MacDonalds and meet their new beautiful baby, Sydney (see pic). What a little peanut. Unfortunately, too short of a visit but we were happy to see all 3 of them.

On to Anaheim! Spent two nights in a hotel right outside Disney. And finally, the rain stopped! Just in time for our big day at Disneyland (see pic). We rode all sorts of rides including a somewhat scary (for Mommy and Zack) roller coaster ("again" was all Ben said about it). And stayed into the night to see the fireworks display - "too loud" but very cool.

On to San Diego! So excited to see our cousins and their new pad. FAB-U-LOUS house. Seriously, fantastic. Not only did we have so much fun hanging out with the Zirkles but we got to be the first to stay in their great new place. Highlights of our San Diego portion of the vacation included SeaWorld where Zack fed the dolphins (see pic), the San Diego Zoo, fish tacos in OB, a day of farm fun for cousin Gwen's birthday (see pic), lunch at the Hotel Del Coronado with Aunt PJ, and meeting up with lots of friends.

All in all, a great vacation... way too short and now we miss San Diego..... guess we'll just have to be content with our California dreamin' until we get there again!