Cohen family yearly recap, 2016

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy New Year!  We hope you all had a wonderful 2016.  My year started off great with a trip in January to Grenada with my sister Susan and her friends.  My friend Debbie Lapidus joined us too.  It was wonderful to get away while the northeast was having their first snow storm.  A lot of laughs and swimming occurred (Editor’s note: not as many laughs at home, especially with lots of snow-blowing and shoveling!).

During the February break, my parents took the entire Gray clan to Woodloch Pines. It was the first time for us, and we had lots of fun, and of course a great time being with the entire family. Brian and I also did a couple of mini road trips with Rebecca to look at colleges.

This summer we went to London for about two weeks, and then headed off to Rome to visit the Vatican for a few days.  We love Europe, and London was lots of fun. We were very fortunate to stay at Brian’s cousin’s home in St. John’s Wood while we were there.  They were in Sag Harbor for the summer so we had their home to ourselves (we got to see them during our annual “Sag Harbor visit” which we look forward to catching up with Brian’s cousins at that time).  In London, we did quite a few walking tours, visited Stonehenge, Oxford, and Cambridge (while in Cambridge we met Amanda’s friend Rachel who was working there for the summer), We saw and did a lot while we were there.

Amanda and Rebecca with the London Eye in the background

  

Selfie of the 4 of us at Stonehenge

Off to Rome to see the Vatican, which is unbelievable!  Then luck would have it again my flight home was cancelled, so Rebecca and I had to stay another day.  Back to the Vatican we went again to climb the copula and then did a tour of the crypts and catacombs of Rome, which while it was fun, was also kind of creepy.

By the Trevi Fountain in Rome

During the year, there were a couple of milestone birthdays that we celebrated. The most recent was of Brian's brother Ben in December. He turned 40, and we celebrated with him and a few of his friends to a steakhouse in NYC (Spark's). The other was my mom, who turned 75 this past May. She continues to work her way through retirement, still at the library. She does it because she still loves doing it, and she also keeps busy socially as well. Getting back to her birthday, we surprised her one day at her house where the entire clan was doing a work day to help around the house and outside. The surprise was when "Chef Lance" came ringing the doorbell, loaded with appetizers, and a full gourmet dinner and dessert to prepare for all of us in her house. It was a great time, as well as delicious!

Lauren, Mom, Susan, Chef Lance, Amanda, Ali, and Sami in the background

Earlier in the year, Amanda took a course and became licensed as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), and worked part-time at Old Navy and Macy’s. Before we headed to England, Amanda was offered a full-time job at Stony Brook University hospital as a desk clerk in the ER department.  She truly enjoys her job and is excited to go to work every day, and has some interesting stories already from her experiences there.  She works the night shift 11pm to 7:30 am, and then she comes home, sees us on our way out, and sleeps. We then will wake her for dinner, and as we get ready for bed, she is off to work. Rebecca also got a job this summer working in the local grocery store.  She started in the spring and continues to work there during school.  It is also handy that we gave her Grandma Sue’s car to drive, so we rarely drive the kids anywhere any longer.

In August, my family came down to visit because dad had knee replacement surgery (he is doing great). While he was in the hospital we went to the ocean before visiting him.  While jumping in the waves, I turned around to look for my nephew Lucas, and then hit by surprise by another wave.  No worry, until I couldn’t stand up, my ankle was a flop (ends up broken in three places).  Thank goodness my sister Susan was on shore to help me out of the water with another gentleman.  Lifeguards, EMT’s and a lot of action took place.  I insisted that Susan drive me up to Huntington Hospital because Dad’s orthopedic surgeon was on call that weekend.  As we call him in the Gray clan “Dr. McHottie”: just ask my sisters.  In my wet, sand filled bathing suit off to hospital I went to have pins and plates put in for emergency surgery.  Yes, Dr. McHottie did do my surgery.  Dad and I were on the same floor recovering, which made it super easy for everyone.  The nurse would roll me down the hallway to see dad, and we even had dinner together one night.  I kid you not, we had a lot of laughs, though a broken ankle is not fun.  I had a hard cast, soft cast, walking boot, walker, crutches, and a knee scooter.  The scooter was lots of fun.  Brian let me deck out the one for school with a bell and streamers.  It even had a basket, goes super fast and my principal once gave me a speeding ticket.  Oh and PT 3x a week.  

So even though I had fun with it, I wouldn’t recommend breaking an ankle to anyone.  I am all done with PT now, though it is still swollen and I can only wear my sneakers, since I can’t fit into my shoes still.  In some ways I feel like Cinderella when she didn’t fit into the glass slipper, however, I still have my prince charming Brian! He was wonderful during the entire process (no Editor’s note needed J)

Fall came and Rebecca applied to a few schools.  She has heard some quite a few with acceptances.  Right now her top picks are the University of Delaware and the University of Pittsburgh.  She wants a medium-semi big school and is interested in entrepreneurship and business/accounting. On an exciting note, her cheerleading team made it to the national competition in Disney World for this February.  It is the first time in Harborfields history that the cheerleading team has been invited to go.  Needless to say we are all very excited for them. 

Brian still enjoys Landmark Wealth Management, which is a good thing because he is a part owner.   I continue to enjoy being a speech therapist.  The children are so much fun and we laugh and laugh.  Amanda is happy and working hard.  She has a boyfriend named Rob, they enjoy hanging out and doing things such as going to ghost tours.  Rebecca is still waiting to hear from more schools, then we will go and do more visits, and then a final decision will be made of where she wants to go.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year and a healthy 2017 filled with adventures and laughter.

Cheers,

Debbie, Brian, Amanda, and Rebecca (and Buddy too)