Dotzour Family.com

Hi All!  Here’s a note from my brother Joe:

Bowdoin College is hosting a Relay for Life event this coming weekend and I’ll be participating with some friends.  I’m writing you all to ask if you had an interest in donating.  If you don’t know what Relay for Life is, it’s the fund raising arm of the American Cancer Society.  I’ve participated in Relay for Life in years past at De Forest High School and, if you’ve never been to an event, they’re usually a lot of fun and a nice time to relax and reflect.  At Bowdoin, we’ll be locking ourselves in our indoor track from 8 pm to 8 am and walking around the track, playing games, listening to live music, and doing our best not to fall asleep.

I’m only writing to give you an easy opportunity to donate to Relay for Life, not to ask that you donate on my behalf.  I don’t have any fund raising goals and don’t care if my team raises zero or a thousand dollars.  I simply think Relay for Life is a great organization.  Mom actually went to a Relay for Life event a couple of months after she was diagnosed in 2005.  She was wearing a wig at the time and we walked a few laps together.  I think she was happy to be there and happy to have a community of people that were glad to see her.

If you do want to donate, the easiest thing to do is go to my Relay for Life page and fill in your credit card information and the amount that you want to donate.  Otherwise, you can mail me a check if that’s easier for you and I can make sure it gets to Relay for Life.
My address is: 33 Smith Union, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME 04011

Again, I’m only writing in hopes of giving the opportunity to make a donation, not out of a sense of fund raising pride.  I just know that it’s sometimes hard to remember to make donations so I wanted to give you all an opportunity.  I hope everyone’s April is going well!

Best,
Joe

We spent this weekend, idyllically, outdoors.  Spring is really here.  The willow trees have turned green, and our maple trees are sending out puffballs of spring green flowers from their buds.

Sylvia spent most of the weekend outdoors, naked.  We worked on our gardens, planting peas and carrots and salad greens.  I loved watching Sylvia’s little fingers as she carefully placed the peas into the earth and then helped me “tuck them in.”

On Saturday, we did our first family bike ride of the season.  With Andrew on his tag-along bike behind Bryan and Sylvia in the trailer behind me, we biked four miles over to Tenney Park for some playground fun, duck watching, and a picnic.  The sun was warm, and the weather was mild, and it kind of felt like we were living a dream.  That dream included Sylvia screaming the whole way home, but some dreams are like that:)

I think we all got a little pink in the cheeks today, and while I’m chiding myself for not pulling out the sun screen, it feels so nice to have sun-kissed skin.

Website-wise, I spent a lots of my free time this weekend tweaking my newly moved website.  I think of moving a website host a little like zapping one’s apartment and moving it across town exactly as it was.  And then running over and grabbing the old street sign and door numbers so your new apartment has the same address.  But then you find that your phone doesn’t work.  Or the heat only goes on high.  And so I’ve been working on the computer-equivalent of fixing those issues.  My website had been dotzourfamily.com/bryanandalthea  But in the move, we got rid of the /bryanandalthea.  So that meant that a lot of links had to be changed, so I made friends with my sql database and learned some find and replace commands.  Technical, tedius stuff.  Yet so satisfying to get right in the end!

If you notice anything about my site that doesn’t run as you’d expect, please let me know.  Now tonight, I move altheadotzourphotography.com to its new home.  Same address, new apartment.  Wish me luck!  This one should go faster if I learned something the first time around!

Since any post is better with a picture, here’s one of the first dandelions of the season from my girl.  We have lunch with Bryan on Fridays, and before having our picnic last week, we played around outside his office for a while. I snapped this picture of my cute girl on my phone.

I know that Easter was a whole week ago, but with my all my late-night website machinations, I’ve been hesitant to post something at the “old” location.  So here we are…at the “new” location!  Welcome!  Is it faster?  Probably not…but it was worth a try:)

Last weekend, Tom’s friend Asta and her kids invited our family over to their home for Easter dinner.  Asta’s family is from Lithuania, and she prepared a wonderful feast for us.

Photos follow:

Here’s the lovely table she set for us.  The kids all got cute treat baskets.

Here’s our buffet, stretched out along the counter.

Vinaigrette.  It’s a cold beet salad that was really tasty.  We took home leftovers and devoured them the next day!

Lots of delicious dill in this meal.  Here are some potatoes sprinkled with dill.  We put the potatoes into our bowls and then filled the bowl with Asta’s terrific bourscht.

I’ve had borscht several times, and I really enjoy it.  This version was a pinker version, which was so festive for Easter!

Hey, I noticed that inserting those pictures went significantly faster than it has in the past.  Just a few seconds per photo.  That’ll save me hours over the course of the year (given how many pictures I tend to include in each post!).

After our Easter dinner, we enjoyed a round of traditional Lithuanian egg cracking.

In all of Lithuania, the act of hitting Easter eggs is known and practiced, especially by men and teenagers. The egg is placed in the palm of the hand with thumb and forefinger holding the pointed end of the egg, which is the hitting area. The cracked egg is taken by the person whose egg did not crack in the process of hitting.

Lithuanian Customs and Traditions

Turns out that while Andrew and Sylvia both really enjoyed smashing eggs together, Tom was the winner with the hardest egg of the bunch.

Our Easter meal at Asta’s was on Saturday, and then on Sunday morning, we had Alivia and Rayna come over for an Easter egg hunt in the yard.  The four kids had a great time, as did the adults (who got to stand around and chat since the kids were so happily amused).  Thus, no pictures were taken.  We all ordered the traditional Easter pizza for lunch.  Just kidding.  I don’t think I’ve ever had pizza for Easter lunch.  But it was delicious.  I recommend it:)  Mmmm Glass Nickel Pizza.  Mmmmmm.

I can’t remember a March/April that has been this warm and spring-like!  We’re all soaking it in (and ignoring the snow that fell mid-week:)

Hope your Easter weekend was great!

Hi Friends!

It’s been a little painful for me not to post this past week.  I feel like every few hours I think of something I want to write about.  Last weekend, I went over to my brother, Michael’s house, and he helped me get the ball rolling with moving my website to a new host.

Our work wasn’t complete, though, and the last couple nights Ive been negotiating with my computer, with SQL databases, and with login info that I long ago forgot.

I’ve already moved the content of my blog to the new site, so I haven’t wanted to write more here, since it won’t get transferred.  Just so you know, you shouldn’t have to change anything about your reading of my blog.  But once I get things set up, I’ll put a note here in case your rss feed or your bookmarks need updating.  I’ll still be happily found at dotzourfamily.com.

Hope your week has been a good one.  Wish me luck!

It’s been a glorious last couple days here in Madison.  Yesterday, my car thermometer said it was 87 degrees.  A nearby bank said 85.  I don’t think we hit 90 degrees all last summer, so for it to be in the mid-80s on April 1st…it seems like a crazy joke.  A crazy, wonderful joke.  I’ve got to get all my summer clothes up from the basement.  I just discovered that I don’t have any short-sleeved shirts in my closet.

And today is supposed to be just as lovely.

I woke up early this morning.  Probably because I fell asleep at 8:30 while listening to a podcast on the couch.  Bryan came home from his frisbee game and found me snoring away (I have a cold:)  We were really active yesterday: bike riding, playground playing, warm-weather-worshiping!  All that sunshine and exercise wore me out!

As I lay in bed early this morning listening to the birds singing their little brains out, I was thinking back to the first weekend in April, 2000 – a whole decade ago.  Bryan and I had been married less than a year, and he was a month away from finishing his senior year at Carleton.  I was working for the Off-Campus Studies Office.  We had no cats, no pets, no kids.  And we lived in a wonderful apartment above the Rare Pair in Northfield.  Due to our lack of pets, I played Petz on the computer somewhat compulsively.

I had applied to environmental studies graduate schools around the country, and on that first weekend in April, Bryan and I hopped on a plane from Minneapolis and flew to Michigan to check out our new home:  Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.  It was an exciting weekend, and parts of it are still so vivid in my mind because at the time, it was so unknown and exciting and important.

We rented a car for the first time…had a marital dispute about whether we should have purchased the rental insurance…and drove from the Detroit airport to lovely Ann Arbor.  I still remember what the city looked like as it appeared around the corner; how my eyes soaked in the sites as we pulled off the Interstate and drove up State Street.

We were checking out the School of Natural Resources & Environment, looking for an apartment, and hoping to find some leads for Bryan to find a computer programming job.  The weather was amazing.  Flowers were blooming, trees were just starting to pop tiny green leaves, and the sky was blue with wispy white clouds.  I later learned that while Spring does come nice and early in Ann Arbor, the spring skies are not often sunny and blue.

Our kittens, Bowser and Spooky would be born in May 2000 (we got them in July).  As Bryan and I went from one large apartment complex to the next, we contemplated what part of town we wanted to live in, how much we could afford in rent, and what life would hold for us in this new sweet town.

For us, that weekend in Ann Arbor was a first step in our path into adult-hood.  Stepping out together from the comfort of our college into the excitement and fear of the unknown. Ahh, the sweet memories!

So Father’s Day isn’t actually scheduled until mid-June, but last Sunday we took an outing to the park, and my girl and her dad were certainly having a glorious time together:)

I just love this next picture.  Oh, the cuteness!

One of the piers was pulled up on the shore, and Sylvia was racing down it and leaping into Byran’s arms.  I didn’t get a shot of it, but she would just go flying off the end.  That girl trusts her papa to catch her!  And she’s got a lot of jumping energy!

Bryan, you’re going to need to post some of those images over on your Facebook page:)

Joe left to head back to Bowdoin College on Sunday.  We sure had a fun time visiting with him while he was home.  Joe graduates in May, and I just made our flight and hotel reservations for our trip.  It’ll be fun to see his campus again.  The last time I was there (almost five years ago!), Andrew was three months old and we were visiting the school as a prospective student (see the photo below of a younger Joe and my little peanut in his sling).

The day Joe left town, he and Michael stopped by, and we all headed over to Olbrich park for some quick kite flying, rock-jumping play time.

There’s Michael…at home on top of the soccer goals just like when he was a kid.

And the walking on the rocks…

And the winner of the 2010 Haller jam tasting is…

…wait, I’ll make you read the post before I tell you.

Last fall, Terry was traveling in Maine and found some wild blueberry jelly that he loved. You might even say that he went gaga for it. It got him thinking about jams and jellies, and…long story short…he ordered thirty jars of jelly from a handful of award-winning jelly makers so we could all taste them and determine our favorites.

In response, for the last several weeks, my siblings and I have all teased him relentlessly about how ridiculous it is for him to buy thirty jars of jam. However, I’ve retracted my taunts. Today’s jam tasting was a lot of fun.

Alright, I did feel completely ill after forcing down the last eight or so pieces of jam covered toast, but the group taste testing experience was lively and exciting. Even the kids got into it. Andrew tried about eight types and carefully noted his score (always a five) on the score chart. Sylvia’s face and hands were an amazing color of purple when it was all over…

For the jam tasting, each participant (there were seven of us) got a Hallerized score card upon which to grade our impressions of each of the 29 types of jam.

Here Terry demonstrates him jam tasting technique.

There were a lot of jams to taste. And they were all good!

The post-jam tasting counter was a sticky sensation. (The picture below shows half of the jars of jam. Another set wrap around the other side of the counter!)

After we rolled out of the kitchen with our blood sugar levels soaring, we tabulated the results. Yeah, that’s right. The Babler family knows how to have fun. I am all about Saturday afternoons that involves spreadsheets. Ohhhh yeahhhh.

We determined the top rated jams by simple average. Although a part of me did want to run an Analysis of Variance test on that data!

Andrew busied himself with an iPhone.

And Sylvia tried on shoes that used to be Maretta’s.

Now I’m sure that at this point, you’re tense with expectation about what the winner is.

Well, I’ll tell you.

It wasn’t this one, though this one was quite good.

I didn’t actually take a picture of the winning jam jar. So I’ll steal a picture from Amazon…

Harvest Song Apricot Preserve was our winner!

As you can see below, I’ve listed our top favorites and least favorites.

Top 5:
Harvest Song Apricot
Bonne Maman Blackberry
Colorado Mountain Jam Organic Apple Pie
Stonewall Kitchen Black Raspberry
Bonne Maman Four Fruits

Bottom 5:
Harvest Song Sour Cherry
Smuckers Blackberry
Sarabeth’s Kitchen Peach Apricot
Harvest Song Peach
Bonne Maman Wild Blueberry

The results were quite mixed since each tester has favorite flavors and preferences. Some people’s favorite jam was others’ least favorite.

Here are our seven tester’s favorite jams.
Each tester gave a top score (5/5) to a different number of jams, so each tester has a different number of jams listed. Because all jams listed below were all given the same top score (except where indicated), they are listed in random order.

Lisa
Harvest Song Apricot
Colorado Mountain Jam Organic Strawberry
Stonewall Kitchen Wild Maine Blueberry
Stonewall Kitchen Black Cherry
Stonewall Kitchen Blueberry Peach

Joe
Harvest Song Apricot (5)
Colorado Mountain Jam Organic Apple Pie (5)
Colorado Mountain Jam Organic Strawberry (4)
Stonewall Kitchen Black Raspberry (4)
Harvest Song Peach (4)

Terry
Bonne Maman Blackberry
Barefoot Contessa Lemon Curd
Bonne Maman Wild Blueberry

Miranda
Colorado Mountain Jam Organic Apple Pie
Bonne Maman Wild Fruit
Harvest Song Apricot

Althea
Colorado Mountain Jam Organic Strawberry
Bonne Maman Raspberry
Stonewall Kitchen Strawberry Balsamic
Stonewall Kitchen Apricot
Stonewall Kitchen Black Raspberry
Colorado Mountain Jam Organic Apricot
Bonne Maman Four Fruits

William
Stonewall Kitchen Black Raspberry
Bonne Maman Four Fruits
Harvest Song Apricot
Bonne Maman Blackberry
Stonewall Kitchen Black Cherry

Michael
Harvest Song Apricot
Bonne Maman Blackberry

************
So what do you think? Does this sound like fun? Did we miss a jam or jelly or preserve that you love best of all? Does your family do somewhat odd activities like this?
Mmmmm jam. Like sunshine in summer!