September and October 2001

 
Walking along our road on a gorgeous afternoon in September, Noel gives Judy a break by carrying both girls at the same time.  What a guy!

 
Sophie visits with her cousin Aleeza and new friend Lila at Croton Point Park.

    
Visiting with our friends the Krstevskys at their home in Hunter, the weekend before Sept 11.  We're almost glad that our kids are too young to understand the terrorist attacks so that we don't have to try to explain it to them.  It's difficult enough to try to explain it to ourselves.  We're still shell-shocked, months later. 

Hanging with dad at home.

 
With friends at Friday night folkdancing.  The blond woman in the picture on the right is Yanka Roupkina, a famous Bulgarian singer.

Sophie eats ice cream with Ally and David Meer at a party at Stacey's house.

In October we flew to Florida (with  a patriotic thumb of the nose to Sept 11) for a combination family visit/vacation.  Noel's sister Julie came in from Israel with her three girls, and we were all able to spend about 4 days together in Orlando at Disney World.  Sophie is a little young for the whole theme park experience, but she got to be with her cousins, which she (and we) thoroughly enjoyed.  Noel's parents also joined us from Massachusetts, and it was great spending some time with them before they leave for Israel again in late November.  While we were in Florida, we also drove up to Jacksonville to visit Judy's grandmothers and other relatives and have them re-connect with Sophie and meet Dalia for the first time.

Orlando highlights.

 
We visited both of Judy's grandmothers in Jacksonville, in addition to quick visits to the beach and zoo. 

We finished off the week with a quickie visit to the Washington, D.C., area for Judy's step-niece Jessica's bat mitzvah. We had a rare opportunity to visit with some old friends from the Washington folk dance community.

At Shirley & Joel's house, hanging with family; at the bat mitzvah party Sophie got to play with the big kids!

Our schedules got a bit off kilter from the trip, but we reimposed bedtimes and nursing schedules, and no one was the worse for wear.  Back at Celeste:

   
Sophie wears her new sparkly sweater with shorts (her choice!) to play down by the lake and enjoy the stunning fall foliage; playing in a pile of leaves by our house.  

The girls hang out at a cider-making party at Risi Saunders' nearby farm.

Sharing a chuckle and a tune with our friend Ildikó Magyar at the October 27 Hungarian táncház in NYC.  Ildi managed to get Sophie to cooperate while she put her hair in pigtails.  So cute!!!

Soph agreed to have her hair played with again.  She was "helping" me pack up summer things and unpack winter things (boxes in background), and then she agreed to smile for the camera.  I think this is one of the cutest pictures that we have of her!

Sophie (still in pigtails) and Dalia hanging out together at home.  Sophie still adores holding Dalia on the couch ("May I please hold Dalia on the couch?") or in one of our big armchairs.

We are adding a master bedroom suite to the south side of our house.  The whole process has been fascinating.  Below are some pictures of the progress, begun in October.

This is a large hole, with the beginnings of the footings just visible.  View from driveway.

Here are the masons, hard at work, putting up the "cinder block" walls.  This section will be the crawl space under our new bedroom.  View from sidewalk, just above construction.

Here are the finished walls and the gravel floor.  View from sidewalk.  Check out the next installment in November!