Category Archives: Family

An Uncommon Lady

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Today’s date is a day that I annually end up thinking a lot about the past.  It’s my Mom’s birthday (out of a sharp sense of self-preservation I won’t mention the year) and it always brings up vivid memories. 

For instance there was the year I was in college and forgot her birthday, as did my brother and everyone else.  I would never have known except a month later she got mad at me for something and ended her yelling at me with, "And you forgot my birthday last month" and burst into tears.  I’ve felt worse, but not many times.

Then I think about how much she did for me and Russ (my brother) over the years.  She and my Dad divorced when I was 10 and Russ was 6 and she somehow managed to shepherd us through middle school, high school and college in an era when divorce was a new thing and when most peoples’ mothers still stayed at home and most people didn’t understand the pressures of single parenthood (many still don’t). 

I can remember her working all day, coming home and fixing dinner, getting us to our various activities and then Russ and I falling asleep to the sound of her typing as she tried to make extra money doing transcriptions on an electric typewriter.  In the beginning money was so tight that we only had meat on Fridays and we kept the temperature in the apartment low enough that we had to wear layers of clothing to bed.  One morning Mom even found her contacts frozen in their solution.  But she largely shielded us from the pressure and I can honestly say I never felt scared.

Within a year Mom had saved enough money that we could afford to move from our rental apartment and buy a townhouse.  That was the year I was in sixth grade and I can remember Mom telling me that she felt I was old enough to look out for me and Russ after school and with the money we saved by not having to hire a babysitter we could probably go to Disney World within a year (she was right).  She had me wear a key on a shoelace tied around my neck and Russ and I officially became the first latch-key kids anyone in our school knew.  She also gave me and Russ our first "honey-do" lists, which meant we were the only kids in the neighborhood who had to clean bathrooms, sweep the kitchen or vacuum the living room and halls. That presented us with our first entrepreneurial opportunity because we soon figured out that we were needed to make up enough kids for a good pick-up football game so we’d talk our friends into helping us so we could get out to play sooner. 

All the while Mom was working her tail off, quickly moving up within the non-profit community on a career track that was truly remarkable.  That didn’t stop her from attending our soccer/basketball/baseball games and making sure we had plenty of other opportunities.  Her selling ability was phenomenal; she convinced me to give up weekend play time to go down to the Smithsonian for classes on nature drawing and black and white photography with a pinhole camera I built myself.  I’m sure there was a certain level of extortion involved but it is something I remember enjoying and not dreading, which is remarkable for a 12 year old boy.

 

Mom also managed to teach us about life through example.  You can only imagine how difficult it is for a woman with teenage boys to meet men and I have to tell you that some of the guys Mom met weren’t exactly winners.  I learned by observation that no matter how old they get some guys never grow up and it was a valuable lesson.

Quick aside: When I was in high school one guy came over to play tennis with Mom.  He was one of those super-competitive a-holes and I watched him take way too much glee in slamming the ball at Mom, so when he challenged me to a set I was only too happy to give him a taste of his own medicine.  At one point I was worried that I might be getting a little too rough on him and took a look over at Mom and was relieved to see that she was enjoying the ass-whooping as much as I was.  That guy never reappeared.

Anyway, it was fascinating for me to see that adults struggled with life, that they didn’t have it all figured out.  We couldn’t help but learn that lesson because Mom assumed we were mature enough to engage in dialog and did so without abdicating her parental responsibilities.  Mom did her fair share of dictating, of saying "You will do this", but she also did a great job of asking for our opinions, of actually listening to our thoughts and explaining to us why they were either valid or total horseshit.  She never pretended to have all the answers and legitimately wanted our input on family matters and in return she earned our respect.  She gave us a lot of rope, much more than most of our friends and for the most part we showed our respect for her by not hanging ourselves too many times.

And of course Mom taught us toughness.  She blazed a lot of new trails in her day, being the first woman to do this or that and never being afraid to make bold decisions if it meant progress whether professional or personal.  A couple of stories exemplify that.

One Sunday Mom had a job interview set up that would really be a boost to her career.  She was reviewing materials, getting ready for the interview when she got a call from my best friend’s mom saying that I’d just been bitten by a dog while my buddy and I were delivering the Sunday paper.  When she saw the wound Mom almost passed out (it was a very bad bite), but she still managed to review her materials in the emergency room, do the interview later that afternoon and then get the job.

A couple of years later, I was 15, we were living in another townhouse and one Friday night I was at home with Russ when there was a knock on the door.  When I looked out the window I saw a young lady who lived in the townhouse next to ours bleeding profusely on our stoop and begging me to let her in to call the police.  I let her in and about 30 seconds later there was another knock and this time it was a guy in a suit.  He asked to talk to the young lady and convinced her to not call the police.  It ends up the girls that lived next door were call girls and the guy was a "client."  I was quite enthralled by the situation but like an idiot I told Mom about it and within a month we’d moved.  Like I said, she made bold moves.

Then there was Mom’s attempt to do the "facts of life" talk with me.  Unfortunately for her she was a year or two too late, and she was miserable during the whole conversation, but I appreciated the effort.  Now that I have a 12-year old daughter I’m horrified at the prospect of having that same conversation and can truly appreciate the guts Mom had.

Mom has now graduated to Gram status and she is unabashedly adored by my kids even as they enter their teenage years.  Heck, they think she’s cool which is better than I’m doing.  An even greater testament to her is that our household doesn’t suffer from mother-in-law-itis.  Celeste loves her and our only stress is the same we experience whenever we have anyone visit; we’re moderate slobs, our kids are massive slobs and cleaning up the palace can be excruciating. (For what it’s worth I think the world of Celeste’s mom too so we truly are free of mother-in-law-itis here).

Most people who know Mom know about her academic success (graduated 1st in her class from Wake Forest and earned a Masters from NC State) and her professional success (first woman to run a very high profile non-profit with a member base that at the time was 99% male) and I’m sure they suspect she did as well in her personal life.  Well, I want everyone to know that as far as I’m concerned her job with me and Russ was her finest accomplishment and I only hope that I can live up to the standard she’s set. 

Thankfully I’ve had as many years with Mom as an adult as I had as a child.  Of course I have always loved her, but it has only been over the last 15 years that I’ve been able realize what a remarkable person she is.  Now my love and respect for her is beyond my ability to describe it so I’ll simply say thanks for everything Mom and Happy Birthday.

Our Own Soldier Back in Country

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My brother Dave is back in country from Iraq and he was in town on Wednesday and Thursday night last week.  He was just off of three weeks at Special Forces tryouts, for lack of a better description, and had to report back to Ft. Eustis on Friday morning. To say he was a little wiped-out would be an understatement.

We had a get-together with our grandmother, otherwise known as GG, my Aunt Lynn, Uncle Frank, Aunt Angie my cousin Chris and his significant other Angie and my whole brood.  Everyone was happy to see him and we did our best to help him regain the 15 pounds he lost in the last three weeks.  It was great to see him again.  Here he is with GG:
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Whiplash Parenting

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One of the things that isn’t covered in the old parenting manual, not that I’ve read a parenting manual, is the speed at which you have to adjust to your childrens’ varying travails and triumphs. It’s enought to give you whiplash. That’s particularly true now that the two oldest aliens, I mean children, living in our house have entered the hormone zone.  One minute you’re laughing and the next minute you’re repairing the hinges on your daughters bedroom door after she slammed it because you had the temerity to inform her that "vegetable" is NOT spelled with a "d".

Anyway, what brings me to write about this are the events of the last 24 hours, plus or minus a few hours.  It all began yesterday morning when I was mowing our lawn and almost had my leg removed at the knee when I ran over an empty soda can and it shot out from underneath the mower at a remarkable velocity.  It being Sunday I limited my cursing to three or four f-bombs and stooped to pick up the can.  That’s when I saw the other four cans in close proximity to the mower and took a closer look at them.  All of them were empty of soda, yet still had sealed tops.  They also had several holes in the side and BBs inside which meant my genius 13 year old son had decided to take target practice with full cans and hadn’t even bothered to cover up what he’d done.  He’d managed to pull off the trifecta of almost killing me, leaving trash in the yard and wasting five perfectly good sodas.  I didn’t bother to restrain my cussing at that point.

So I finished cutting the lawn and went inside to get a drink.  There I found a trashed kitchen and my two other children biding their time, watching TV and waiting to go to the pool.  At this point I let forth a vituperative outburst worthy of the oldest, saltiest sailor while conveniently forgetting that my youngest son had a friend visiting. The poor kid was a little shocked and scurried off to play some video games while our semi-retarded dog found his favorite hiding place under one of the kids’ beds.   Celeste got me to go back outside and finish working on the yard while she informed the kids there would be no trip to the pool and there would be housecleaning.  I love that woman.

My genius 13 year old son was at a friend’s house so he wasn’t around to see Hurricane Dad hit land.  As luck would have it my college roommate and his family came over for dinner so I had the chance to cool my jets, which was a God-send for my genius 13 year old son (and everyone else).  After our guests left I was asked by my daughter to check the website of the soccer team she just tried out for the day before to see if she’d made the cut.  Unfortunately she didn’t (she’s a very good athlete and this is the first time she’s ever tasted failure) so we had to do a little bucking up and encouragement before bed time.   Also, we had to remind her that she’d just shown us interim reports that indicated she has a great chance of ending the year with straight As for all four quarters.  You win some, you lose some.

Meanwhile my genius 13 year old son had a science project due that involved designing and building a thing-a-ma-jig that utilized two simple machines that would allow 200 grams to pick up 600 grams.  Before I go on let me remind you that I was an English Lit major…I don’t do engineering, or metrics.  Let me also mention that he was part of a group of kids on this project and somehow he got stuck having to provide all the materials with the exception of a coat-hanger that one of his group members kindly donated.  Guess whose parents ended up at the craft store buying dowels, spools and other junk?  Remind me to never let my genius 13 year old son negotiate on my behalf.

So anyway there we are at 9:00 on a Sunday night trying to drill holes in wood and create a contraption that uses a pully and wheel and axle combination to lift some piece of metric crap with another piece of metric crap.  It did not go well, but we muddled through and created something that looked like it was built by a Cub Scout on acid.  I will say that my genius 13 year old son did know how to calculate how much load his machine could take, which is a heck of a lot more than I ever learned so I was pleased to see that.

Oh, and Celeste helped us even while she prepared pasta salad and cole slaw for our youngest son’s field day that was to be held the next day.  I don’t know how she does it, but I’m happy to report she can be as vituperative as me when things like this are going on.  Hell, sometimes she makes me blush.  She’s a miracle worker.

Cut to this morning, the first day of the last week of school.  No one got up on time and our two boys missed their buses.  Our genius 13 year old son discovered that someone had tried to flush paper towels down his toilet and thus had to deal with a clogged toilet.  This marked a landmark moment in our household as it was the first time that it wasn’t me, The Turd Man of Alcatraz, who caught the floater.  My youngest looked like a refugee who’d be keel-hauled so Celeste made him take a shower before she drove him to school.  I drove my genius 13 year old son to his school and weathered the only traffic jam that occurs anywhere in this whole damn city and it’s right in his school’s parking lot.  I was thinking, "It’s gonna be a great day."

Back at the house I went up to my office and did a little work (felt like vacation) before Celeste and I headed over to the youngest boy’s fourth grade picnic being held in Shallowford Square.  When we got there we were almost immediately accosted by the PTA-supermom-from-hell, all 2 feet 4 inches of her with short blond hair and massive SUV.  She was in charge and letting everyone know it, and I flew to the other side of the square before I lost control and stuffed her in a high chair and stuck a pacifier in her mouth. 

After a few minutes the kids walked over from the school and the festivities began. All the kids ate and then the teachers took each of their classes and did a little awards ceremony.  I’m proud to report that our boy got the award for reading more books than any other fourth grader (not just his class) and he got a $25 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble.  He was also voted by his classmates the most "Courageous" kid in the class which was great.  On top of all that the mother of the friend that my genius 13 year old son had been with when I almost severed my leg told Celeste that he was the most respectful, well-behaved boy and she loved having him around as an example for her boys.   (Her daughter is in our youngest’s class). Suddenly it was hard to remember how mad we were just a few hours earlier.

We took the young’un home from school and not long after that the other two got home on their bus.  The afternoon was peaceful and I was able to get a lot of work done and Celeste and the kids went off to swim practice.  Things were definitely improving, but I was a little worried about dinner because that was when I’d decided to "fire" the kids.

You see the night before, after much discussion, Celeste and I had decided that
our "Freakonomics"-inspired system of allowance/chores for the kids
just wasn’t working.  The way the system worked we started out each week "owing" the kids $10, but as the week went on we would assign each kid points for things they didn’t do (homework, chores) or did do (talking back, fighting, arguing, etc.).  Each point was worth fifty cents and at the end of the week we would tally up the points, multiply by 50 cents and deduct the total from the original $10.

We had a couple of problems with the system: the kids had figured out that even if they had a bad week they generally made $5 AND we were horrible about being consistent with the point assignments. Through our poor management and their lack of motivation we had a broken system. So even though it was both a management and labor foul-up we decided that as managers we needed to "fire" the labor and go into reorganization; hey if it’s good for United it’s good for us.  Besides I was still kind of pissed about almost losing my leg.

When we sat down for dinner, chicken nuggets and potato salad since I was "cooking," everyone was in a good mood.  I let that go for a while and then I dropped the bomb.  Of course they were a little surprised when I said "You’re all officially fired," but they handled it well (I worry they might be pacifists after all) and they didn’t even flinch when I told the older two that if they wanted some cash they would have to get some babysitting and lawn mowing gigs.  The youngest immediately recognized his lack of money-making opportunities and offered to apprentice himself to his older siblings. They also took it well when I told them that they would still have to do all their chores, but without the opportunity to make money.   

At this point Celeste caved slightly and suggested that as part of our reorganization we might come up with a different compensation system, perhaps a pay-for-performance model.  I was a little disappointed because I was really enjoying watching them squirm, but Celeste long ago proved to be the wiser of us so I guess she was right.

Despite all that we had a great dinner, with lots of laughing and no slammed doors or arguments. Celeste and I left to go pick some furniture up from my aunt and when we got back we found a clean kitchen, and my genius 13 year old son had left a note asking us to evaluate a marketing flyer he’d developed for his mowing service.  He’d also emailed me a PowerPoint slide about North Korea he’d created and needed me to print for him to turn in tomorrow.  Did I tell you that my genius 13 year old son is sharp as a tack, knows more about the economy of North Korea than most college students and does a heck of a job mowing a lawn?  He’s also pretty good on a computer.  Let me know if you need any work done as he’s definitely a little hungry for it at this point.

Like I said, it’s whiplash parenting.  It’s also a lot like the weather in Florida; if you don’t like it just wait fifteen minutes.

Happy Birthday J

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Our youngest, Justin, turns 10 today.  He’s an avid reader, a video game fanatic and a wonderful soul.  That’s him on the left sporting the George Mason U NCAA Regional Champs hat.

Thankfully he’s not yet a lady-killer but I don’t think we have long to wait.

I can’t believe we’re already out of the single digits for all of our kids.

About Disney

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Stephen Levitt of Freakonomics fame recently posted about his family’s experience at Disney.  He makes some valid points about the “Disney experience” i.e. you end up spending a lot of time standing in line and it’s expensive.  As I posted before we just did the Disney thing last week and although we didn’t experience many long lines, the benefit of visiting at a non-peak time of year and early in the week, I can definitely vouch that it IS expensive.

Levitt also asks two questions:

1) Why is demand for Disneyworld so great?

2) Why do they make you stick your fingers into some machine when entering Disneyworld? What is the point?

My take is that although Disneyworld is expensive and puts you through a lot of waiting they do the basics well:  the place is much cleaner than your average theme park, the staff tends to be more pleasant than at your average theme park, the food is definitely better than at other theme parks and they offer more than roller coasters and spinning rides with their “multimedia” experiences.  They also have an inherent marketing advantage with their cartoons, movies, networks, etc.

Yet with all that I don’t think we’ll go back until it’s time for the grandkids.  There really isn’t a lot of stuff for the kids once they get into the teen years (my oldest two definitely found the shows to be a little cheesey on this trip and they’re just 12 and 13) and as an adult I have to say you tend to suffer through the experience for the sake of the kids.

As for the finger thing I found out the hard way that they use the finger scanner to tie you to a specific access card.  I don’t know if they use fingerprints or some other biometric but I know it definitely works since I mixed up my daughter’s card with mine and they had to re-code my card to let me in.

The paranoid part of my brain also thinks maybe the Bush administration has something to do with it…nah.

Stuff, Lots and Lots of Stuff

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Having taken a rather long reading and writing sabbatical due to a very busy work schedule I haven’t had the chance to keep up with much of what’s going on in the world or to share some goings-on from my teenie little corner of the universe.  So I have a few observations to share:

We Americans can be some goofy MFers.  I mean this whole brouhaha about the Star Spangled Banner being sung in Spanish is really kind of funny.  After all as far back as 1919 it was done in Spanish and the State Department currently has four Spanish versions on its website. Oh and in 1861 it was translated into German and into Yiddish in 1947.  But forget that, does singing it in Spanish, or any other language for that matter, change its meaning?

Of course the roots of this are in the debate about immigrants making the effort to assimilate into the "English" speaking culture of America.  I agree that the effort needs to be made, but we need to keep in mind that this problem is as old as America.  First generation Italian immigrants went throught the same process a couple of generations back and what happened?  Their children all spoke English because they needed to in order to succeed.  I can almost guarantee the same will happen with the current wave of Hispanic immigrants.

And what about this whole oil thing?  Are we dense or just stupid? Gas is expensive now and everyone is jumping on some kind of reactionary bandwagon.  Windfall taxes?  So you want to penalize someone for doing their job and that will fix things how?  Will it reduce the price of gas?  Doubt it.  Will it make someone look good for the election?  Maybe, but I doubt it.  We Americans may be goofy but we can spot a pandering a-hole from a mile away.

Finally, the recent issue about American students not being able to find Louisiana is such a non-news item.  American students have always been bad with geography and just because a state was almost wiped from the map doesn’t mean they will know where it is.  Just watch Leno’s man-on-the-street items and you’ll see all the evidence you need.

If Disney World is any indication we Americans can be an incredibly lazy lot.  While I was visiting various Disney properties with the family earlier this week I noticed that lots of people who were perfectly capable of walking were renting those little electric scooter things.  I literally saw whole groups of people convoying on those things and I swear there were scooter jams all over the place.  Mix them with the strollers and legitimate wheelchairs and you had more traffic than the DC beltway.  No wonder we’re much less healthy than the British even though we spend more on healthcare than they do.

Working with unions sucks.  I was in Disney working a conference last week and as a result I was interacting on a limited basis with some union folks and I have to tell you that I find them harder to give instruction to than my pre-teens.  I mean if you don’t give these folks explicit instructions they can’t, or won’t, tie their own shoes.  I’d rather deal with middle-schoolers and those little monsters scare the bejeesus out of me.  Next year the conference will be in New York so I’m betting I’m gonna have all kinds of fun.

And before you accuse me of basing my opinion on a sole occurence I have to tell you that I had similar experiences at conferences in Chicago and Boston and in my earlier life I regularly worked with members of the postal workers’ unions.  The members themselves weren’t all bad, but they were a pain in the ass to deal with because of the union rules they had to follow.  Basically they can’t think for themselves and that’s antithetical to good business.

Sleeping in a hotel for 10 days sucks.  I don’t care how nice (or not) a room is, there’s nothing good about staying there 1 1/2 weeks.  I was never happier to get home than after my business trip/family vacation to Disney.

After being cut off from my online reading for a couple of weeks I now realize how much cool crap I find via blogs. Here’s just a few items I found in less than 10 minutes of reading my blog reader:

I’m sure there’s a lot more there, but I haven’t had time to find it and that ought to do it for this post.

Work Then Play

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Well, I’m officially coming off my longest break since starting this ol’ blog.  Last week was my client’s annual conference and I was responsible for the exhibit hall which meant I was responsible for all things related to the 50+ exhibitors and sponsors.  It was really my first time managing an exhibit/sponsor operation of this scale from end-to-end (I’ve done the sales side but not the logistics side before) and I have to send a big shout out to Michael Ferenc at Freeman Company who really helped me out.  If he hadn’t done such a good job my life would have been hell.  As it was I was literally buried for the last month and I’m just now coming up for air.

The conference was held at the Disney Coronado Springs resort so I had Celeste and the family fly down on Friday (my work ended on Saturday afternoon) and we did four Disney parks on Sunday and Monday.  Sunday was Animal Kingdom and Epcot and Monday was MGM and Magic Kingdom.  I turned off the phone and didn’t boot up the computer after Saturday so it was a great catch-up time with the family.  I’m sure I’ll have lots to write about but for now here’s a pic of everyone at Animal Kingdom:

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Sport As It Should Be

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Last night I went over to Miller Park in Winston-Salem and watched my wife, Celeste, play in her first-ever tennis match.  She was a nervous wreck for days before the match and was really concerned with how she was going to play, whether or not she would be able to remember the rules, how to score, etc.  Well, she and her partner won 6-2 and 6-4 and I’m damn proud of how she played.

The experience was great for more reasons than her play and her winning.  The league she’s in is a USTA 2.0 women’s league which is a pretty rare species.  The USTA ranks players so that, at least in concept, you can play against a bunch of people of similar ability.  Since 2.0 is for raw beginners you don’t find people playing it for more than one season so it’s hard to get enough people together to play.  The ladies that continue playing out of this league will all be in at least a 2.5 league by next year. 

What made this so much fun for me was seeing how much fun these ladies were having.  They laughed at themselves when they made mistakes, they helped each other out with scoring and in general they all seemed to be having a great time.  That’s a stark difference from many of the 4.0 level leagues I’ve played in.  In fact some of the biggest ass-wipes I’ve ever encountered have been on tennis courts.  So seeing these ladies have so much fun reminded why I liked tennis in the first place.

Line of the night from one of Celeste’s opponents when she was slow to call a ball out: "Well I just feel so BAD when the ball goes out I don’t want to call it."

Oh, and seeing how much Celeste has improved in just a few weeks of practice was a real eye-opener.  I’m going to have to watch my back.  Note to my buddy Ted: She already hits harder than me which means she hits a crap-load harder than you:)

Mixed-doubles anyone?

How to Make a Grown Man Almost Cry

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My daughter asked if she could ride her bike over to her friend’s house today.  I said sure, but I wanted her home at 6:30 so we could have dinner.  She didn’t show until 7:00 and I was more than a little pissed.  This isn’t the first time she’s been late and the last time it happened she got a tongue lashing, so I was surprised it happened again.  On top of that I have to admit that tardiness is probably my biggest pet-peeve, so I’m pre-disposed to getting a mad about it.

When she got home I told her we’d have to figure out a punishment, which sent her into major-league pout mode.  She didn’t eat dinner (we went out for pizza) and sulked the whole time.  When we got home I went back into my office to do some work and she came in to ask me what her punishment would be.  I said it would probably cost her points (we have an incentive program that allows the kids to start each week with $10 in the bank, but throughout the week we give them points for things that are either done wrong or not done when they are supposed to be…each point is worth 50 cents), and she started to stomp out of my office.  I told her to come back and then we had this conversation (I’m paraphrasing):

Me: "You don’t think you deserve to be punished?"
Daughter: "I punished myself by not eating dinner!"
Me: "No, you told me you didn’t want pizza so I’d say you were pouting."
Daughter: "NO!"
Me: "Well, I didn’t ask you not to eat.  And this isn’t the first time you’ve been late, so I think maybe you need something to remind you to be on time."
Daughter: "The last time I was only five minutes late and you yelled at me…alot!"  "It was only five minutes!"
Me: "It was more than five minutes, and it doesn’t matter.  When we tell you to be home at a certain time you need to make sure you’re here on time."
Daughter, glaring at me says nothing.
Me, feeling the heat rise: "So you think it’s okay for you to be late even though you inconvenienced four other people?  We were ready to go to dinner at 6:30 and we waited 1/2 hour for you.  You think that’s fair?"
Daughter continues glaring and mutters something under her breath.
Me, heat REALLY rising: "You don’t want to be punished!? Fine, I won’t punish you.  But remember this moment the next time you ask me to give you a ride somewhere or even better, remember this moment when I decide that it isn’t important to be at one of your soccer games on time and I feel like getting there 1/2 hour late.  Just remember it."
Daughter, shooting death daggers at me with her eyes: "I HATE YOU!"
She turns and leaves.  On her way out I say, "I’m sorry you hate me because I love you very much."
Daughter: "I don’t care."

I don’t care who you are, those last two hurt.  Of course I couldn’t let it show (I’m a guy), but it stung like hell.  Thankfully Celeste saw what was going on and came in and talked me down.  She also coached me on how to patch it up…I’d tell you how, but I’m thinking I could rent Celeste’s advisory services to other fathers of teenage girls.  If my household is indicative I’ll be able to quit my day job.

My daughter is only 12 and I’m worried I may not make it to 13.  I don’t even want to think about 14-20.  God help me.

Dinner at Zevely House

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To celebrate our 14th anniversary Celeste and I treated ourselves to dinner at Zevely House Restaurant in Winston-Salem.  We truly spoiled ourselves.

We shared a bottle of 2005 Hogue Riesling that came in a twist-top bottle, but now that we’ve been wine-educated by Bruce Heye at Salem College we know that good wines can come with screw tops and this was a good Riesling. We also shared an appetizer of baked brie (had some kind of great crust, but I can’t remember what it was made of) and doused with a raspberry/Sangria sauce and garnished with sliced fruit.

Celeste got a green salad with nuts and fruit (can’t remember exactly what but she loved it and I’ll update later with her info) and I had a salad that came with a crab cake and fried oysters that was REALLY good.  For dinner she had lamb chops served with greens, potatos, greens and a vegetable mix while I had a Moravian chicken pie with a fantastic sauce (I call it gravy) and greens, rice and a vegetable medley.  If you ever get the chance try the greens; they’re amazing and have a great kick.

For dessert we split a piece of Lemon Pecan Pie served hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  The lemon balanced out the sweetness of the pecan pie so it wasn’t overly sweet as many pecan pies are.  We finished with some house blend coffee which was also excellent.

We had a great time and if you want to spoil yourself this is the place to do it.