A Walk on the Feminine Side

Mason is home with me today as he has been under the weather the past couple days. Yesterday he coughed so much that he threw up in school. He was really miserable yesterday. So, I kept him home today and he is doing much better. He is happy, not coughing nearly as much and playing. He keeps telling me he wants to go to school.

I went down to check on him in theplayroom, and there he was..standing at the play kitchen with a pretend ice cream cone and wearing Sophie's princess shoes. He loves the Belle ones the best as they are yellow.

I'm sure we will be able to blackmail him in the future at his football banquet with this picture.

The Turkey is finished, let the retail madness begin!

Well, Thanksgiving is over. We had my mom and dad down, along with my sister, brother and law and my two nieces. Have you ever stopped to think about how long you spend preparing a Thanksgiving dinner and how long it takes to eat it? Well, with some down time last night I did. I shopped for food for probably 2 hours, got table accessories on my afternoon off, started preparing side dishes the night before and basically did not sit down all of Thanksgiving day (That's with my mom making the turkey and my sister bring the pies..the 2 hardest tasks). We sat down to eat and were finished the main meal in under 40 minutes. Yep. Do the math..it doesn't seem very productive, does it?

All in all, the food was good. The kids were as good as 4 children under the age of six can be. Brooke and Mason were amongst the pickiest of the eaters, but no one walked away hungry.

I went to sleep early last night, thinking I can score some good Black Friday deals and get an early workout at the gym. I was out of my house at 6:00 am, only to discover that the coveted GPS we were thinking of getting flew out of the stores within 5 minutes of opening. I was able to score some good scrap booking supplies at a nice discount. This Black Friday thing is maddening. It is so wild to see no parking at 6:00 in the morning and lines wrapped around the stores. Next year, I'm buying online. I'll still have to wake up early to catch to deals, but at least I can do it from under the covers.

Enjoy the shopping! Although I don't think it can be classified as retail therapy today!

New York, baby!

Brian and I recently celebrated our 6th anniversary with a long weekend jaunt to the Big Apple. We dumped the kids off at Brian's mom's house and set off for 3 days without dependents. It was so weird to be driving and looking at the seats in the back without car seats.

We had a few setbacks on our trip. First, we check in to our hotel and we are informed that the only room they have left was a smoking room with a queen bed. So, before we can be pissed off we were offered a free night at the hotel across the street with a promise our room will be ready tomorrow. Not too bad..we slashed our hotel bill in half.

As we were getting dressed on Saturday to head down to Tix for discount theatre tickets we see on the news that a strike on Broadway is looming. The Stage Handlers decide to pick the weekend I go away to fight for more fair pay. So, most of all the popular shows are shut down. There were 8 shows available that were not part of the striking union. It worked out ok, cause one of the shows was the Putnam County Spelling Bee. What a great show..absolutely hysterical. We had it on our list of ones we wanted to see so we weren't disappointed.

We took to the streets, mostly on foot, partly by subway and did the 5th avenue stroll..as I lingered in the windows of Tiffany's, Fendi and Cartier, Brian picked up the pace. After the show, we had a yummy dinner in Little Italy.

On the way home Sunday, we stopped at Harold's Deli..a famous stop on the New Jersey Turnpike for monstrous sandwiches and other Jewish delicacies. Brian and I shared a single sandwich and had enough leftovers for 3 sandwiches. It was crazy good and as good as it was, it was even more fun to watch other people get their meals. We attached a picture of the monstrous corned beef sandwich.

When we got to Brian's mom's house..both kids pitched a fit to go home with us. Sounds like everything went well and we can plan our next getaway sans kids soon.

Break out the fleece!

There is an autumn chill in the air! We have not turned on the heat yet, but getting close. I have already gotten the comfy, cozy pajamas out for the kids to keep them toasty when they sleep. Mason gave us a tough time with the "feeties". He tried to peel them off as fast as we put them on.

Generally, Mason is a good kid. However, we had a "time-out" incident in school today. He and another one of his partners in crime decided to pull all of the library books off the shelf in his room and jump on them, pretending they were a pile of leaves. They did not stop despite warnings and both ended up in the time out chair. His teacher said the two boys sat in the chairs and laughed. Great.

Sophie has finally graduated to a booster seat in the car. She is thrilled to be out of the car seat, and she really looks like she aged once we made the transfer.

Brian and I are off to NY for the weekend to celebrate our 6 year anniversary. Brian's mom is taking the kids for a few days while we get some adult time. Hopefully the kids will be good so she will want to do it again! This is our first time leaving the kids overnight (actually 2 nights!) so we will see how that goes.