Sylvia's Scenario

As always, July is flying by with all the celebrations this month.  Nick's family is not here this year so that makes it a little more quiet (since he has three summer birthdays in his family) but Lauren was here one weekend so we celebrated her, we've celebrated  my birthday  and last weekend we celebrated our anniversary; a significant one of 45 years.   Since it was such a turning point anniversary, we also took a trip in May to celebrate by taking a seven day Alaska cruise that left out of Seattle so it was super easy to do.  We've always love cruises and now we decided we like cold weather cruises, too. Alaska was so fun; bundling up and being in cold, snowy weather in a vast wildness was very exciting. We may do a coolcation more often.  We took the White Pass & Yukon Railway at Skagway and it was so snowy up at the top of the pass.   The train is a real old-fashioned train that rides on a historic narrow-gauge railroad built in 1898 for the ...

I haven't done a New Year's Resolution in a couple of years but I think I have one this year.  I've been pondering what makes for a festive holiday season with lots of holiday spirit and what makes for a stressful holiday season.  Everyone wants a low stress holiday season with lots of fun times and memorable moments, of course, and I feel fortunate that that’s how mine has been.  For me, I know the most obvious reason is because we haven't traveled anywhere.  It’s been really nice staying home to relax and enjoy the holidays.  Our last trip was in September for Bruce's birthday but we haven't gone anywhere since.  I get in a good routine when I’m home and I have a nice, low stress frame of mind.  My diet is more healthy and I exercise regularly.  I'm not going to say that my New Year's Resolution is to not travel, however.  There's more to it than that.  We also had friends and family come over for dinner parties more than usual so the...

Now that Father's Day is over and our visitors have left,  I've had some time to settle down.   I thought I would post my other cream pie that I made for Father's Day this year which was a banana cream pie to accompany the chocolate cream pie.  I have only a few days left until our very busy July hits with five birthdays to celebrate, plus our anniversary, plus the fourth of July.  So, it will be a busy July.  I've made this banana cream pie several times so I am finally posting it.  In my family, chocolate cream pie is the favorite but honestly, this recipe is a close second.  I usually make them together for a big crowd which I did this year for  Father's Day because there were ten of us with my sister and her husband visiting and my brother and his wife also visiting.  There are never any complaints about having too much pie.   After everyone left, I took a week off and went on an Alaska cruise with a girlfriend which was a ukulele c...

It’s September now and summer is soon ending but I'm a little more accepting of that since we just had our highlight of summer; our summer vacation.  Once again we visited Nick & family in Spain and then went on a Mediterranean cruise together.  It was a great way to spend quality time together and being the grandparents that we are, Nick & Sachiyo got a lot of alone-time together while we played with the grandkids.  The kids hung out with us A LOT.  At their house in Spain, we mostly swam in their pool playing all kinds of pool games and silliness, something they never seemed to get tired of.   I also packed some chapter books along with us since the grandkids are now 6- and 8-years old so I tried to remember what Nick and Lauren loved for me to read to them at that age and remembered their favorite  Indian in the Cupboard  and  My Father's Dragon .  I got the three-book series of my Father's Dragon and it turned out to be exactly th...