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 ...

This month has been a whirlwind of activity and mental exhaustion known to baseball fans as October baseball.  Our team, the Seattle Mariners, made it to the MLB playoffs and kept winning.  They've made it to the playoffs before, exactly six times since their inaugural year of 1977, but this year they kept winning. This year they made it to game 7 of the ALCS (American League Championship Series) after winning the ALDS (American League Division Series) against Detroit.  Not only did we make it to game 7, they were ahead in the game through seven innings before they lost to the Toronto Blue Jays.  That's the closest they have ever gotten to the World Series...within 3 innings.  Agonizing, to say the least.   Playoff games are not like regular season games at all.  They're much more intense and there is lot more strategy applied by the coaches like the way they use the pitchers, how they arrange the batting lineup, etc.  There is a lot to understand...

This is a simple dessert that packs a lot of punch for such little bite-size morsels.  We had these as one of the many dessert options in Washington D.C. where we visited last week. My sister, Jolene, lives there with her husband who are wonderful hosts when visiting D.C.  It turns out that Nick was in D.C.  for a work conference and then five other members of my family were there visiting for various reasons...so we had to go and join all the  fun. My sister and her husband were very tolerant when we invaded there otherwise quiet life.  In fact, they rolled out the red carpet for us.   We had such a great time.  The three cousins hadn't been together in years so it was a reunion of sorts.   Coming as far away as Sp ain, San Francisco, and Seattle, it's a rare and special occasion when they can get together.  And their moms had a good time, too.  There was only one evening that we could all get-together at the same time and that is...