Five on Friday (7)

I've had different variations of this post in the works for a while now, but finally I'm actually here writing it down. Which means I'm excited to say I'm linking up with Five on Friday!
1. The boy and I recently purchased a new set of dishes from Sur la Table. Our old ones were random and mismatched so we figured it was finally time to act like grown-ups and upgrade. We actually couldn't decide on one design, so we bought two different sets. Since both of them are all white they do still go together. The photo above shows the square ones, with the boy's coq au vin, and the one below the more circular ones, with some of the boy's pad thai.
2. Earlier this week it was announced that Garth Brooks will be having a concert in New Orleans in July. I was hopping this would happen, and am so, so excited about the news. The first concert I ever saw was Garth, back in 1996 or so, and am so excited to see him again. Tickets go on sale in a week, so hopefully I'm able to score some good seats!
3. The boy and I recently discovered a new Italian restaurant right by our house, Randazzo's. It's a tiny, family owned restaurant where the chef is from Italy and is so, so good. The first time there I had the lasagna, and while good, the marinara overpowered the homemade pasta a bit. However, on the second visit I had their vegetable pasta with pesto, which was amazing. Honestly, the pesto is likely the reason we'll be going back again and again.
4. The past two year's I've been ending every month with a recap post, except I never got one up for April. Honestly though, with everything I'm trying to balance it's hard for me to manage to post anything, let alone a timely post like a recap. Plus with my daily photos and Elley's monthly updates, I'm still basically recapping daily happenings. What I'm trying to say is that for now, I don't plan on posting monthly recaps. But who knows when or if it will return.
5. One item I will miss from my monthly recaps are my flashbacks where I highlight a post from year's past. But there's no reason why I can't still do that in other posts, like a Five on Friday post! With that said, 3 years ago, in May 2012, I posted about my bridal shower out in California.

If you're stopping by from Five on Friday be sure to say hi! Also let me know your view on monthly recap posts.

Flashback Friday

Remember this post where I said I'd be posting reviews of some of my favorite childhood book series? Well here's the first of hopefully many. We're going to be talking about...

The All-of-a-Kind Family Series by Sydney Taylor
Similar to the Betsy-Tacy Series these books tell the story of the author's life growing up in the early 1900s. Except there's a few major difference between the two. First the books take place in New York City (instead of Minnesota), and the All-of-a-Kind family is Jewish.

The reason for their name is that when the series starts there are 5 sisters with 2 years between each of their ages, and they all dress alike (at least at the start). The from oldest to youngest are Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie. (Sarah the middle child is the author herself.) At the start of the series Ella is 12 and Gertie is 4, and by the end Ella is around 19. There's 5 books in the series and in order they're All-of-a-Kind Family, All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown, More All-of-a-Kind Family,All-of-a-Kind Family Uptown, and Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family. (It actually took me a while to make sure that was right when I just reread them. The reason being that while All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown is second in terms of the girls' ages, it was actually the 4th book published.)

One thing I really enjoy about the book is the chapters alternate between the narrator. That way you're really able to connect with each of the all-of-a-kind children instead of just one or two. But what I love most of all about this books is probably the fact that the family is Jewish. I love reading about how the celebrate all the different holidays. It's always interesting to compare the difference between how I celebrated them during my childhood almost 100 years later, but even more so are all the similarities.

This is another series where I feel like I'm the only one whose ever read it, but I know that's not the case. The main reason being that there's actually a Sidney Taylor award given the the best Jewish children's literature every year. I guess maybe the more accurate thought is that not many people my age have read them, but I'm sure they were bigger back in the 1950s when they were originally published.

Has anyone else ever read or heard of these books? Or are they the type of book you think you would have enjoyed reading when you were growing up?

~Shoshanah

Flashback Friday - Senoir Year

Check out my freshmen year of college.
Check out my sophomore year of college.
Check out my junior year of college.

The past few weeks I've been flashing back over my years at college. As you can tell from the links above, we're officially at my senior year. I had my digital camera this year so there's no shortage of photos to choose from.
I turned 21 my senior year, which meant most weekends were spent out at the bar. I never had a fake ID, so this was really the first time I was hitting up the bar scenes. Some of our favorite were on Thursday nights when ladies night was at one bar and dollar bottles was across the street.
Again I played on the soccer team for what as probably last season of my life.
This was taken on our Senior day. You can tell by the "We Love our Seniors" poster in the background. And the following picture was the team at our spring athletic banquet.
This year I went on my first ever (and last ever) spring break trip to the Florida Keys.
And as you've heard about in my previous flashbacks there were the college traditions such as Gala...
and GIG. This year in honor of the fact that we were all graduating we had our so-called future profession printed on the back. There was a bit of a fail taking this picture so you could actually read the back. But I'm the mathemagician on the left.
And as you'd expect with senior year there was graduation. (I'm in 0 in the '06.)
Looking through these old pictures has been a lot of fun for me, and I'm hoping fun for you as well. It's hard to believe this May it will have been 4 years since graduation, which means I've officially been out of college for just as long as I was in college. It's a little crazy considering it just feels like yesterday. Anyone else feel like life just flies by after graduation?

~Shoshanah

Flashback Friday: Junior Year

Check out my freshmen year of college.
Check out my sophomore year of college.

In case you missed it, the last few weeks, after being inspired by Amber, I've been flashing back over my years at college. You can catch on on the first two years with the links above. Which brings us to Junior Year!
This year I started hanging out with a big group of girlfriends. I had known them all since I started college, and had hung it with some throughout, but this is the first year we started all hanging out together. This is a bunch of us at one of the first parties of the year.

My favorite part of Junior year was easily our off-campus housing. We were technically in campus housing, just across the street from school. It was a bit of a pain not having a car, but because so many students lived in these off campus they set up shuttle service to campus that I used quite a bit.
This was taken in our apartment's kitchen Halloween. And the following picture was taken in one of the bedroom's following an indoor water fight. (We had two bedrooms in our apartment, this one was shared by me and one roommate. The second was a single room for our third roommate. And while there's 3 people in this picture, only one of them was actually my roommate.)
But my favorite part of the apartment was the living room. One of my roommates' parents sent us a living room set. These were pretty much the most comfortable couches ever, and I still miss them. But unfortunately I don't seem to have any good pictures of the couches or the living room to share with you all.

Each year I've shared a picture from Gig, and this year is no exception.
We all went out and bought matching sweatshirts and ironed on our superheros on the back. It's kind of hard to read, but I'm Elastagirl on the far right.

Junior year I also finally got to participate in another of our college's big traditions.
Without any Sorority's or Fraternities at our college, their weren't a lot of random formals. But the school did sponsor the prom-like Gala. It wasn't just for upperclassmen. However tickets were first sold to Seniors, then Jrs, and so on. So unless an upperclassmen bought tickets for you, most years it was hard to go if you were a sophomore or a freshmen.

I was still playing soccer for the school.
I realize this is a slightly dark photo, but I wanted to share since you can almost see our locker room here. Here's a slightly better picture of the team taken at our end of the year athletic banquet.
Notice anything about that last picture? It's digital! A big milestone of my Junior year was that I got my digital camera. A camera that made random photo shoots a Coldstone's possible.
And overall seemed to change my picture taking habits.

I hope you've been enjoying these flashback Friday posts. If I'm being honest, I'm going to be a little sad to see them end with my senior year post next week. But till then, what was your Junior year of college like? And when did you get your first digital camera?

~Shoshanah

Flashback Friday: Sophomore Year

Check out my freshmen year of college.

I'm back with another Flashback Friday, this time bringing it back to my sophomore year of college! A big memory of this year was our success on the soccer team. My freshmen year our record was horrendous where we didn't win a single game. But this year we wound up finishing over .500. We actually had the biggest turn-around in the NCAA that year.
Here's a bunch of the soccer girls watching the men's team playing.

While our conference was one where everyone made it to the end of the season tournament, this year we actually felt like we had a chance of winning. Our coach arranged for us to go away for the weekend, which made the the game even more exciting. The plans we to leave for the game on November 1st. We had actually missed Halloween the night before due to a game, so instead the entire team showed up to the dinning hall for our last meal before leaving in costume, on the day after Halloween. (I'll be really impressed if anyone can actually find me in this picture!)
Yes, we wound up winning this game. Although we lost the following game in the conference semis. But it was the furthest the team went all four years I was playing.
Here's one more picture of the team at our end of the year sports banquet.

I posted a little about GIG last week, our big school wide field day. Its the type of day where students actually start drinking in their morning classes, and all the professors know exactly what's happening. So with all this craziness going on, there's bound to be pictures.
This is a relatively tame shot, compared to all the debauchery that can go on, on such a day.

This is me in my dorm room on my 19th birthday.
I'm posing with flowers my best friend sent my while she was studying abroad in London.

Speaking of which, I was actually able to go to London over Thanksgiving break to spend some time with her.
Here we are on my first night there, in some English pub.

Last week I wrote about how close my roommate and I become freshmen year. While we didn't live together sophomore years, we were next door neighbors, and stayed close throughout all the ups and downs of the year.
This was actually taken the very last night of freshmen year on the roof of our dorm!

I hope you're all enjoying the trip down my memory lane, but I'd love to hear some of your memories as well. What do you remember most from your sophomore year of college?

~Shoshanah

Flashback Friday: Freshmen Year

The past few weeks Amber has been reliving her 4 years of college in honor of her college graduation in a few months. While its been a few years since I graduated college, I can't help start reliving my college years while I read her posts. So I figured my own Friday Flashback of college was in order.

I was paired up pretty randomly with my college roommate. But like all those cliched stories, we really hit it off and stayed friends throughout college. I'd even say I consider her to be one of my closest even know.
As you can tell in this picture I went off to college trying to look as California as possible. I was in going to school in Maryland and wanted to be sure everyone knew I was from California. So there I was with blond hair, trying to be as tanned as possible.

I don't have a lot of pictures from my freshmen year, mainly because that was back in the pre-digital area. But I do have a few to memories to share. First there was the Nick Carter concert that we went to.

Freshmen year also recorded one of the biggest snowfalls Baltimore had seen.
At least it was one of the biggest snowfalls until this past winter.

One big event through my all four of my college years was GIG. It;s pretty much like a college field day. Classes are canceled around 12, and the rest of the day is one big party.
This is me very unsuccessfully riding a mechanical bull at GIG freshmen year.

The other huge part of my college life was being a member of the soccer team.
While we might not have had the most successful year, we still had a lot of fun.
This is me and some of my teammates dressed up for blind date ball. This was another fun school tradition, where you could sign up for a blind date to go to as your date. Being that the school only went co-ed in the 1980s, there's still a relatively high female population. So every year they try to bus in guys from the Naval Academy to use as dates. Although we had a game that morning, so we weren't sure whether we would be going to the dance that night. Which meant none of us actually signed up for a blind date.
And one last picutre of some of the girls on the soccer team.

Because I'm sure you're curious, and I had almost forgotten what it looked like, I'm glad I do have a picture to share of my dorm room.
We actually lucked out and had one of the biggest doubles on campus. But only because originally we were put into a single, and one of the smaller singles. Our original room barely had enough room for two desks, two dressers, and a bunk bed. But luckily a few days into freshmen year they were able to move us into an actual double to share.

I do have one final picture taken of my roommate and I on our very last day of freshmen year.
I'm no longer blond here, and you could barely say I'm tan.

It's actually been a lot of fun going through pictures for this, and I'm just as excited to share my sophomore year of college. But first what was your freshmen year like? I'd love to see your pictures and here your stories!

~Shoshanah