A legacy of love and laughter

For an unassuming man, my dad died dramatically on January 29 (Super Bowl weekend), 19 years ago. We mark this anniversary by celebrating his life.
My brother traditionally honors our dad by taking his own four kids out for ice cream. When we were young, my brother, my sisters and I all attended tennis camp at different times on the Lawrence University Campus. Every year at some point during our week there, my dad would show up and sneak us out for a quick ice cream cone.
With a true love of life and family, my Dad taught all of us how to build a joyful home.
He called my youngest sister Jenny "the Little Honey" and had a hard time disciplining her because she made him laugh.
My sister Kathy once took a long walk with him through the Pennsylvania mountains. They swung through his hometown of Colver on the tail end of their walk, and accepted a ride home on the back of a Cambria County fire truck, sirens screaming.
He began a tradition of taking each of us on a special trip for our 16th birthday. On my turn, we went to San Francisco and walked over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, where he bought me a dress that I still own today. 
Lots of dads give piggy back rides to their children, but I remember my dad once hoisting our whole family on his back, my mom included, and walking us across the room.
That sense of fun increased exponentially when the grandchildren came along. My dad loved to pick my oldest son up from half day kindergarten and take him to Martines Restaurant (the former Left Guard) for "the businessman's lunch."
Deep in the woods of land he bought along the Oconto River, he carved three chairs out of trees for himself, Charlie and Katherine.
Since 1993, six more grandchildren, including his namesake, have joined our family and I like to think my dad is watching and chuckling over all of them.
We can take our children to a cabin he built in Northern Wisconsin, or three different Halls of Fame in which he is enshrined.  There is a high school track in Ebensberg, Pennsylvania that bears his name.
But I like to think my Dad's true legacy lies in the stories we tell and the laughs we share. In every sense, it is a legacy of love.

This is my favorite picture of my dad
and my son Charlie. Mostly, my dad
was the guy behind the camera, so we
really treasure the times we caught him
in front of it.

My dad added the thought bubbles to this picture
of him and Charlie and kept it on his desk at the office.
The one above his head says 'Do we look alike?" and the
one above Charlie's says, "Get serious. I'm Croatian, not Polish."

Here's a sweet shot of my dad and Katherine.

It's a world of laughter, a world of...love

I have never met a bigger Walt Disney World fan than my mother, Peggy Kostelnik.
Our entire family celebrated my mom's 60th birthday on the grounds in 1999. At the appointed time, I met my sisters and brother at the base of Splash Mountain.
"Where is she?" asked my brother.
I pointed to the ride.
We heard a loud Yahoo! and turned just in time to see Mom and my three children Charlie, Katherine and Vinnie come splashing down the mountain.
It is not enough for my mom to celebrate her birthday at Disney World. She has to be the first person down Splash Mountain every year on her birthday. Molly and I have been fortunate to celebrate some of those milestone birthdays with her.
We set a record in 2009 when Molly, my mom, my sister Kathy and I celebrated Grandma Peggy's 70th birthday by being the first group down Splash Mountain two mornings in a row.
Should you find yourself in the company of a similarly wired septuagenarian, I give you the following tips:

1) Wear comfortable shoes. The gates to the park will open and you will follow directly on the heels of the Disney guard as he briskly walks you through the park. Here's the trick: when he guides everyone else straight ahead to the castle, you will quickly duck to the left and sprint through Adventureland straight to Frontierland. You may want to train for this part prior to your trip because Grandma sets the pace and she doesn't even turn her head to see whose following.

2) Bring a rain coat. We've have conquered Splash Mountain in all kinds of weather, most memorably in 2006 when the temperature hovered around freezing, which pleased my mom greatly. No lines. The thing about riding the first log down Splash Mountain is you will be wet the rest of the day if you don't dress properly.

3) Do not under any circumstances let your mother know that you have never ridden Space Mountain. She will shake her head in disgust and march you right over to Tomorrowland. This happened to me five years ago and, after I obediently rode that terrifying ride all by myself, I emerged to find myself abandoned. They had all jumped into the Disney Parade; Molly actually rode one of the princess floats.

Because we are all heading to Florida in June to celebrate my sister's wedding, we will not be with my mom tomorrow to celebrate her birthday. (She tried to talk my sister into getting married at Disney World, but, probably with vision of Mickey Mouse saying her vows, Kathy politely declined.)

We're going to take this opportunity to say, "Happy Birthday Grandma Peggy and thanks for inviting us into your Magic Kingdom."

Here is my mom on her 60th birthday. I was able to snap
this picture because I was waiting in front of Splash Mountain
with everyone else as instructed. These four hooligans snuck
in an extra ride prior to meeting up with us.

Chilled but triumphant. This is our 2006 trip and we covered
a whole lot of ground that year because hardly anyone else was
in the park.

In 2009 we earned this photo two mornings in a row.
I'd have cropped it so you could get a better look at
Molly's scream, but I think it's pretty hilarious that we're
the only ones on the ride. There's a log jam of tourists
back at the castle. Suckers.

I really can't tell you how thrilled my mom was to have Mickey
and Minnie wish her a Happy Birthday....

...but I can tell you she danced.

Here is Molly on her first trip to Disney World. My mom loved
the yellow T-shirts I made everyone until they inspired the animated
garbage can to follow her all over Tomorrowland shouting "Grandma
Peggy is 60! Grandma Peggy is 60!" Molly's got a good grip on Vince's hair.

This present takes the cake

On Saturday Molly baked her grandmother a chocolate cake, a sweet gesture on many levels. But Molly's Grandma winters 1,425 miles away and so begins the story of the $100 birthday cake.
The tradition of a rich, homemade chocolate birthday cake begins in Cincinnati, in the small but sophisticated kitchen of my Grandmother, Dorothy Fey.
Standing on heels, wearing frilly aprons and pearls, my maternal grandmother baked beautiful peach pies and perfect chocolate chip cookies. Her signature dessert, though, was her chocolate fudge cake. She would have approved of the fudgy confection Molly whipped up this weekend and, as a Monty Python fan, she would have been amused at our absurd efforts to get the cake to Florida in an edible state.
First, Molly coated the cake with two to three inches of frosting, reasoning that the icing would act as an airbag for the cake within. We loaded it into a Tupperware cake container, purchased just for this occasion, and then jammed the whole thing into a cardboard box.
Just before I brought the box to the UPS counter for shipping, I banged my head on the car door, which may have explained the stars I saw when the kind gentleman behind the counter told me it would be $100 to overnight my cake to Florida.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"It's gonna be $100. Ouch. You might want to put some snow on that welt on your face," he said.
"That seems a little steep for a birthday cake," I said.
"I'd send it three-day. That will be $36 and it will get there on Thursday."
"My mother will never eat a five-day old birthday cake," I said.
We huddled up with another gentleman, who told me you could barely see the mark on my face but it did look like it hurt, and we all decided the second-day rate would be best.
By now, my mother should be enjoying a big old slice of chocolate cake, sent from one brick house in Wisconsin with fond memories of another brick house long ago.

Here is Molly's Super Delicious Deep Dark Chocolate Cake Recipe
(Which is not my Grandma's but it's pretty close)

1 3/4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients except boiling water. Beat at medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water. Pour into two greased and floured 9" pans. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes on rack and remove from pan.

Molly can't include her frosting recipe because her Grandma really dislikes butter. But there are some dairy ingredients in it, cocoa, powdered sugar and vanilla. She makes lots of it when she frosts cakes.

How great is this picture? This is my Aunt Doris, my mom
and my Grandma in their pearls and heels in the midst of
dinner preparations.

Here is Molly's chocolate cake before the journey.
She added extra dollops of chocolate frosting to
pillow the cake.

We're hoping this lovely Tupperware container
cushions the blow.

This is an action shot of me banging my head on the car door.
For some reason, I wanted to take one last shot of the package
before I sealed it, and the wind whipped the door into my face
as I shot it. I smell a Christmas card.

He's worth it

For athletic, altruistic and arithmetical reasons, we believe the Packers should negotiate to keep veteran wide receiver Donald Driver.
Most of you know the statistics. In 13 seasons with the Packers, Driver has caught 735 passes for 10,060 yards and 59 touchdowns. Last week, Driver scored the only Packer touchdown and, during a confounding season that saw the Packers' elite receiving corps develop a late season case of the dropsies, he consistently showed up with sure hands.
Beyond his own physical abilities, Driver offers the truly valuable though less trackable ability to make his teammates better. The wily receiver still runs strong routes and is not afraid to throw a block. He conducts himself with both class and exuberance on the field and dedication in the locker room.
Once homeless himself, he and his wife Betina work hard to support the Driver Foundation, which funds local charities in Mississippi, Texas and Wisconsin. The Packers and the state of Wisconsin could not have benefitted from two more gracious ambassadors.
My husband Vince and I went to a small cocktail party earlier this season featuring Donald. The party was scheduled from 6:30 to 9 p.m. and we figured Donald would make an appearance and then politely excuse himself. Instead, he pulled up a chair and stayed to chat for an hour and a half beyond the allotted time. In fact, when we left at 10:30, he lingered behind and may have been the last guest to leave. Donald addressed his contract situation that night and made it clear, as he has in every conversation since, that, while his first preference is to stay with the Packers, he definitely plans to keep playing.
Nice guys get traded all the time in the NFL and everyone sighs a little and understands it's a business decision. But we honestly believe that this particular nice guy still has a lot to offer the Packers and we know he still has a lot of offer the Green Bay community.
Keep Donald Driver in a Packer uniform. It just makes good business sense.
Here is a link to a survey designed to keep Donald Driver in a Packer uniform:

Petition by iPetitions.com

This picture is from the Evening of Elegance fundraiser. Left
to right are Vince, Donald Driver, Greg Jennings and myself,
grinning like a nut because I know that's probably the coolest
caption I'll ever get to write involving Vince and me.

This is the third in a series of children's books Donald
has written. The others are Quickie Makes the Team and
Quickie Handles a Loss. Highly recommended.

La Dolce Vinnie

We're going to miss Vinnie when we finally drive him back to UW Madison tomorrow. But even more than the young man himself, we're going to miss his cooking.
Both disciplined and inventive, Vinnie whipped up a wide variety of food and drinks during his month-long break from school.
His specialty hot drink kept us warm, his signature salad kept us healthy and his wide variety of potato dishes kept us full.
Just this week he made me a wrap stuffed with chicken salad (chicken, celery, grapes and mayonnaise with bacon, lettuce and tomato) and he grilled Molly a cheese quesadilla.
And, though his father and I initially weren't sure what to make of the bartender school he attended last week, we benefited from the skills he learned there as well.
The following pictures will give you some idea of both the various looks he sported and the dishes he served:



These are Vinnie's potatoes just before
he roasted them. They were delicious!

First step in his chai tea recipe. Steep the tea bags in hot water.

These are the spices he used. He doesn't always use french vanilla
tea. In fact, most often he uses black. The spices are: ginger,
cardamon, cinnamon, whole cloves and allspice.

Remove the tea bags when the tea is nice and black. For me,
this is definitely a morning drink.

Vinnie adds brown sugar.

And milk. Here he is using 1% milk.

As I mentioned, for me this is a morning drink and for him
this is a morning shadow.

Strain the tea before you serve.

And now we're on to the salad. Chop romaine lettuce
and slice a small onion thinly.

He uses classic stir fry sauce in his dressing.

Olive oil, red wine vinegar, classic stir fry sauce
and a little juice from the mandarin oranges.

Add mandarin orange slices to chopped lettuce
and slice onion and toss with dressing.

Here is the chef with his lovely Aunt Elaine.
We're going to miss that smile.

A Giant disappointment

My boots have not yet recovered from the indignities of Sunday's Packer game and neither have I.

Along with everyone else in this great state of Wisconsin, I believed my boots and I would see another home game this season.  Like many season ticket holders, we easily negotiated the distribution of our tickets, reasoning that our son Vinnie could attend the Giant game and Molly would go to the 49ers game.
Sure, I was nervous about the game as we tailgated in supreme style with our friend Gregg Graycarek and his band of merry football fans. But I did not believe our season would end.
And then my sister and I entered Lambeau Field and got a good look at our seats.
For a moment I thought I had stumbled into the wrong stadium, so prolific were the screaming Giants fans seated there. Oh, section 117, I thought I knew you!
The luxury of our pre-game accommodations equaled the misery of our gametime experience.
One quarter in and my boots started taking on water. Don’t ask me how. I really prefer not to think about the source. I leaned over and gently tapped the weird little man in front of me.
"Excuse me," I said brightly. "If you hold your sign up during the play, I can't see what's going on down on the field. Could you please hold it up between plays?"
I think he tried to restrain himself at that point, but he was awfully proud of his scribbled little message "We'll Cruz to victory."
Clever…and prophetic.  He and his wife even autographed it. I know this because they waved it in front of my face about a thousand times during the game. I could have done a complete handwriting analysis.
As I squished out of the stadium on feet I no longer could feel, a Giant's fan pointed at me.
"Let's wait for the riff raff to leave," he said to his friend. "And then we'll head down to the field."
Just over a year ago, I similarly made my way out of Cowboys Stadium. On that occasion, my feet barely touched the ground and the momentum of that Super Bowl win carried us through the drive all the way from Dallas to Appleton, Wisconsin.
I believe I know what motivated my seatmates in section 117 this season. I think they reasonably told themselves they could sell their tickets to the Giants game and earn a little money to put towards the Super Bowl. But, here's a life lesson we're constantly learning from sports and still have to remind ourselves from time to time: the glory is fleeting.
Next year, I hope section 117 will join me in celebrating every single Packer game from pre-season to post.  Carpe Diem.

Pregame. Giants fans are everywhere!!!

Our host and I inside a toasty heated tent for
a championship caliber tailgate. 

He hooked up a flat screen. There really was no reason to leave.

My sister Kathy, Vinnie and Vince make themselves comfortable
around the heater.

It seemed like a whole lot of Packer fans poured into the stadium.

But this is what we saw when we got to our seats.

My poor boots took a beating too.


P.S. I really, really hope the Packers bring back Donald Driver!

Champions and friends

"We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead."
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963

The year Martin Luther King made his "I have a Dream Speech" marked the first season Lionel Aldridge, Henry Jordan, Ron Kostelnik and Willie Davis anchored the defensive line for the Green Bay Packers.

The four men went on to play together for six more years and earned three consecutive world championships, including two Super Bowl titles. En route they formed a friendship that transcended both race and the playing field. Although three of the four died far too soon -- Henry at age 42, my Dad and 53 and Lionel at 58 -- their legacy stands as much for their athletic prowess as for their loyalty to each other. All four have been inducted into the Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame and two, Willie and Henry, are enshrined in Canton.
One day more than 25 years ago, my Dad picked me up from my college apartment and asked if I'd help him with a project.
"I need to find Lionel," he said.
Dad had heard a report that Lionel was homeless and living on the streets of Milwaukee. Though we spent that afternoon visiting Milwaukee homeless shelters looking for him, we did not find him that day. The shelters took my Dad's contact information, though, and a short time later my Dad reunited with his old friend.
From that day until his own death in 1993, my Dad kept close tabs on Lionel, a gifted speaker whose battles with schizophrenia have been well documented.
We last saw Willie Davis at the Packer Alumni Brunch earlier this year. The only surviving member of the line greeted us with a big smile and a hug.  
I think often about how fortunate these men were to play during the Glory Years, when they lined up against a backdrop of such tumultuous historical events but alongside the same fellows year after year. There are all kinds of ways to measure a team's success and, in the number of rings they wore and friendships they maintained, the 1960's Packers topped them all.

This Packer defensive line played together for six consecutive years.

Lionel Aldridge sat with my dad at my 1987 wedding.

Here is Willie Davis with my nephew Michael Kostelnik
at the Alumni Brunch earlier this season.

A happy holubki birthday tribute

In honor of my dad's joint birthday with my grandma, Molly and I made holubki. There are as many different ways to prepare these Russian cabbage rolls as there are proper ways to spell them, but we stuck to the Kostelnik family recipe, which means we winged it just a little.
My Grandma cooked stubbornly and without measurement, and when you entered her warm little house on 20 Row, you ate. Period.
We once drove 12 hours through the night to visit my grandparents. She was nearing 80 at the time so I told her not to cook for us. "Shhh," I said to my husband as we tiptoed into the house at 2 a.m.
"Hiya," my grandma said brightly from the stiff backed chair on which she had been crocheting and keeping vigil. "Sit down. Eat."
And we sat down to a full course meal of holubki, breaded veal, potato salad and apple cake. "Grandma, I thought you said you weren't going to cook," I said around a big mouthful of food.
"I didn't cook. I just heated up," she said.
As sweet as a crisp Polish dill, my grandma lived by strong principles based on family loyalty. Molly has fond memories of the time my Grandma pulled me through a grocery store in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania by my left ear lobe.
We just loved our trips to Pennsylvania and we use our kitchen for occasional trips back in time. What follows is our recipe for holubki, with love for Grandma Jay.

 Ingredients

1 head cabbage

1 1/2 pound ground chuck
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup rice (Not Minute Rice, Grandma was very specific about that)
2 cans Campbells Tomato Soup

 1) Call your Aunt Martha because she is the keeper of family history and she will help you through this. If you don't have an Aunt Martha, we will try to walk you through this crazy Ukrainian dish anyway.

 2) Scald the cabbage. This means you have to boil it in hot water until the leaves pull off easily. Aunt Martha warned me that this would take a couple of scaldings and, sure enough, we had to douse that head three times. We boiled the cabbage for 15 minutes to start off.

 3) Meanwhile, prepare your rice. Conveniently, we cooked our rice for 15 minutes, which worked out perfectly for us as that was exactly how long we boiled the cabbage. 

 4) Mix the rice with the raw hamburger and season it with salt and pepper.

5) Line your crock pot (here is the first time we went off script. Grandma did not own a crock pot. We love ours though and our holubki cooked all night and was tender and delicious the next day). Anyway, line the bottom of your crock pot with cabbage leaves.

 6) Peel off cabbage leaves. Place about a tablespoon of the meat mixture in the center of the cabbage leaf and roll the leaf up. Per Aunt Martha, which worked out splendidly, roll up the bottom first, fold in the sides and then roll the rest of the way.

7) Place cabbage roll in the crock pot.

 8) Continue creating the cabbage rolls until your crock pot is full. You can layer the rolls on top of each other.

9) Spoon tomato soup on top of the cabbage rolls and cover with extra cabbage leaves.

10) Cook on high until tomato soup boils, and then turn to low.  We cooked ours all night.

This is my Grandma and me cooking in her Pennsylvania kitchen.

Core the cabbage before you scald it.

You can let it cool before you peel off the leaves. We had to
scald it again as we got closer to the center.

Meanwhile, add your cooked rice to your raw hamburger and season.

Place the meat mixture in the cabbage leaf and roll tightly.

Add tomato soup to the top of the cabbage rolls.

Cover with extra cabbage leaves add the crock pot top.

Yum!

Love on the beach

We enjoyed a sweet convergence this weekend when Vince's recently engaged sister and her fiancé invited us to Florida to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.  

Chip proposed to Elaine on a Florida beach at sunrise on New Year's Day, and the twin toasts of that new love and our anniversary made the entire weekend extra warm and lovely.
In keeping with the weekend's theme, I spent some time on the beach whipping up shower invitations for another extra special wedding, my sister Kathy's. Kathy and her fiancé Keith will be married on a Florida beach in June.
As it turns out, my artistic eye was bigger than my sand art talents and I had to be rescued from the project by yet another celebratory couple, my college roommate Trish and her husband Tim, who married the week before we did and flew south with us to mark the occasion.
Let's pause a moment to review the players: Silver anniversary couples (2), recently engaged couples (2), big fat Florida full moon (1).
We clinked our glasses to all of the above on many, many occasions throughout the trip and I am happy to report I returned home with a warm heart, a few more freckles and, with the help of my friend, a shower invitation for my sister Kathy. Whew!

Here we are celebrating with the happy couple who got engaged
at sunrise on New Year's Day. The ring is as beautiful as the bride.

I had this great idea to write a heart in the
sand for my sister's shower invitation. On my
way home from church, I stopped along the beach
and went to work. Mostly, I was concentrating on
keeping shadows and beach walkers out of the picture.

But when I reviewed the pictures, I realized I
had drawn the heart upside down. How embarassing!

So, my friend Trish, an artist, went to work and her husband,
a construction engineer, jumped in to help.

They spent a lot of time on this project while I sipped iced
tea and snapped photos.

To get the best picture, Trish wanted to shoot above the heart,
so she climbed up and angled the lense. Such a good friend.

Voila! A perfect shot for our invitation.