Thanksgiving Leftovers

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went for a walk down Greenwich Avenue, the main shopping area near our house.

McArdle's Florist Shop was decorated as Santa's Workshop. They even had live reindeer! I don't think I've seen live reindeer before.

The inside of the store had beautiful decorations for Christmas.

Abigail especially was entranced by the lights.

After the flower shop, we stopped at one of my favorite toy stores. Alyssa had a great time playing with some dragons and a three headed dog.

Speaking of dogs, we gave Sophia and Garibaldi some leftover turkey. They didn't seem to know what to do at first. As you can see, they eventually figured it out. Is it sad to say it took a while? I'm glad they had a fun Thanksgiving, too.

Thanksgiving Fun

I have been wanting to go back to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade ever since we moved to Connecticut. I went every year when I lived in New York. Last year when we were getting ready to move, I thought I had missed my last chance because Abigail was due the week before. There was no way I would take a 1 week old to the parade. Strangely enough, we ended up staying in Connecticut, and moving an hour closer to New York City! So this year, we finally made it down to the parade. Our friends, the Butlers, came too.

We didn't get quite as good seats as in previous years, but there was open space for the kids to run around. And we still got quite a good view of the balloons.

Thanks to Dan, our photographer.

After the parade we walked leisurely through the park, and let the kids climb some of the huge rocks. Then, realizing we would probably miss our train home and have to wait an hour in Grand Central, we ran! And we made our train.

And we then made a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Abigail is 1 Year Old!

My beautiful little blond hair blue eyed baby has turned one! We had a small party for her. Small in part because several families were dealing with sick kids and couldn't come, but it was definitely fun!

Alyssa loved hanging the streamers with me. Really, I love hanging streamers, and they always stay up longer than necessary.


Somehow we ended up with a bear theme for her party. It wasn't a conscious decision, but sort of evolved through the planning process. So, we had to have a bear cake, right?

And here is our little birthday girl.

Alyssa loved the streamers, but Abigail couldn't get enough of these hanging decorations.

One of our party activities was to read the board book, "We're Going On a Bear Hunt". And then we did go on a bear hunt! Abigail's teddy bear was missing, and we had to read and follow clues to find out where he was hiding. The kids really had fun racing all over the house. Although they were momentarily distracted when the search led through the play room...

Here is Abigail eating her piece of cake. I should have taken an after picture. She had frosting smeared all over. So cute! Or video would have been even better. I think it took her less than a minute to eat the whole thing.


Alyssa was great at "helping" Abigail to open her presents. All in all, it was a really fun party. We love you, Abigail! Happy, happy birthday.

Hello, Blogging World!

To say I took a break from blogging would be a gross understatement. I am a little ashamed that our last post was sometime in April or May. What is that, 6 or 7 months? Well, here is a little summary of catching up.

We ended up taking a job in Greenwich, CT. Dan works at Greenwich Hospital. In fact, the house we live in we rent from the hospital, which owns several houses in the area. This means that Dan's commute is a whopping two minute walk! In fact, I can see into his office window from the front of our house. That also means his staff can see whenever I leave the house at all. They keep Dan up to date as to what is happening over here.

Abigail will be one in two days. She isn't walking by herself yet, but she is working on it. She already has an uncanny connection with technology. One day she went over to the dvd player and pressed play, then sat back to wait for her video to start.

Alyssa will be three in January. She has a preschool class once a week that some of the women from church rotate hosting and teaching. She takes a gymnastic class called Tumblebugs that she absolutely loves. She is currently very into Mickey Mouse. And she has an annoying habit of calling me Marie instead of Mama. I think she thinks it's funny.

I have cut my teaching schedule back to one class a semester at Albertus Magnus College. I have also started a program called CMA, or certified movement analyst. About once a month for two years I travel down to the University of Maryland at College Park for an intense two days of training. It is hard to leave my family for that time, but the program and people are great, and I really enjoy it once I'm there.

The pictures that follow are a montage of Halloween. You will see our house, in festive attire, our little ladybug (Abigail) and bumblebee (Alyssa), and some great pictures of the Jack O' Lantern Blaze.

And here is a video of Alyssa interacting with her favorite Halloween decoration.

The Show That Didn't Go On...

Alyssa and I enjoyed taking a dance class together this year. Alyssa had a lot of fun in the class, and I did, too. Her class learned a short little dance to perform in the school's end of the year recital. Alyssa liked most of the class, but she never showed the greatest enthusiasm for the dance routine itself. At dress rehearsal she cried every time she got up on stage. Whenever I took her down from the stage, she said that she wanted to go back up and dance.


You can see her anxiety in this picture, poor girl. She had the biggest case of stage fright. Long story short, the actual day of the performance she was adamant about not wanting to go up on stage. So, we didn't even take her to the performance, but ended up spending the day as a family. Next year, I think we'll see if she likes gymnastics.


This was just such a sweet picture, Abigail looking up at her big sister.

Here is Alyssa just looking cute in her costume. At least we had fun together through the year!

Easter, Better Late than Never

Mostly for the grandparents who live so far away, I wanted to go back and catch up on some of the things I have missed blogging about. For Easter we took Alyssa and Abigail to an Easter egg hunt in Farmington, CT, at a miniature golf place. It was nice because they had the hunt divided into age ranges, so the little kids could be sure to get some eggs. There was a hunt in Stamford we thought about going to, but since we will live down there next year, we decided on this one.

Alyssa loved her Easter basket. She helped me pick it out. I think she liked having the basket more than the egg hunt.

Here we are all lining up for our turn. They only allowed one parent to go with each child. It's a good think we have two kids, or I might have missed seeing Alyssa hunt for eggs.




When we got home, we of course had to dye our own. This was another first for Alyssa, and technically for Abigail, but she was otherwise engaged, as you will briefly see.

Alyssa loved dyeing eggs. She was fascinated by the whole process. She kept asking for days afterward if it was time to dye eggs again. I think the red was her favorite, or maybe green. Green has been her favorite color lately.



Abigail occupied her time playing while we experimented with colors.



This is just a really cute clip of Alyssa with the easter eggs.



And not to leave out the furry members of our family, here we all are, except for Dan who is holding the camera. Yes, our house is pretty crazy, but most definitely fun.

The Peabody

So, I still have a lot of catching up to do with blogging, but here is what we did today! With a month or so until we move, and since it was rainy, I decided to take the girls to the Peabody Museum.


Alyssa of course found the fossil of the large turtle right away.

I was proud of my girl for correctly identifying the stegasaurus and triceratops fossils in the dinosaur room. By the way, if you ever get a chance to go to this museum, they have an awesome mural of different eras of dinosaur rule that goes the whole length of the room.

One of my favorite parts of the museum is the discovery room. Abigail really liked feeling all the different things, feathers, rocks, etc. Of course, they ultimately started on a course for her mouth, and then she was very sad when I took them away.

This is the only one she didn't try to put in her mouth.

Alyssa reached inside this box, and immediately declared it to be a dog. She was close, it was rabbit fur. She didn't believe me though. She kept insisting it was a dog. I think I'll have to take them back a few more times before we move. It's a great way to spend an afternoon. We always have so much fun.

Vieques and home

While on Culebra, we decided to visit the other "Spanish virgin island," Vieques. There are no scheduled boats between the two islands and going back to Puerto Rico to catch a ferry would have wasted most of a day. So we found someone to give us a lift. Our babysitter was excited about the small plane. Marie was a bit nervous, especially when they told us all, including little Abigail, where to sit to balance the plane.There are two small towns on Vieques. We stayed in Esperanza, a town on the south that is filled with ex-pats, societal dropouts and sea side bars. The first bar-retaurant-hotel was Banana's, we stayed next door at its similar, and lizard infested, rival.Unfortunately, we have no photos of Marie's favorite part of the trip. We went to Vieques to see the bio-bay. After a few calls we found a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy (that was how business on this part of the trip went) who would meet us at a bar to take us to the bay. After dark he drove us and a few other people out through a dirt road to the bay. We kayaked out to the middle and tied up the boats and took a swim. The bay is filled with little microorganisms that glow when disturbed. The kayaks and the paddles caused the water to glow once we got a third of the way out. Swimming was crazy since every movement turned the water electric blue and every drop glowed. Marie turned into a little girl, she loved it.
Then we got back to the kids and sent our babysitter out with the second group.



The next day it was a ferry to Puerto Rico to pick up the car and drive back to San Juan. We walked around old town a bit but were too tired, grimy and burnt to do much else. Our main regret was that we did not get to see the inside of the Fortress. The place we stayed was the Beach and Water club, which turned out to be an ultra-modern style place with neon lights and waterfalls everywhere. Alyssa loved the water theme. There was even a waterfall in the elevator. Then it was time to head home.

Flamenco Beach

Flamenco beach is said to be one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world. I'll admit that overall, it is the best beach I have ever been swimming at. Part of the appeal is its isolation. This is what it looks like in the middle of the day during Spring Break.









We had a great day at the beach. Part of the reason it is so isolated is because the U.S. Military used to do maneuvers in this area, complete with heave artillery. This tank is just one remnant. One of the locals we spoke to said there are unexploded elements still around. A person walking over one would not set it off, but heavy machinery would. So, this beach will probably remain undeveloped.



I just love this video of Alyssa. She loves the beach.

Culebra

The third day of our trip we drove from the rainforest to the port city of Fajardo, where we took a ferry to the island of Culebra. This is a very small island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. Something like 2,000 people actually live there. The main town is called Dewey. This is where the ferry stops. We wanted to stay at some villas on the beach, so when we arrived we caught a taxi to take us to the villas. When the driver realized we didn't have reservations yet, he stopped the taxi and ordered us out. It's one of the more bizarre things that has happened to us on our trips. We reassured him that we would pay him for both ways travel if they didn't have any openings, but he kicked us out of his taxi. Note: when looking for a taxi in Culebra, DO NOT accept a ride from Willy.

It turns out that the villas didn't have any openings for that night, but they did for the next. So, we stayed at a place in town for the first night on Culebra.

Mamacitas just happens to be the most happening restaurant and bar in Dewey. Since it was spring break for a lot of colleges, we happened to stay in a room next to three very nice girls from colleges in the D.C. area. They were very taken with Alyssa, and volunteered to watch her for us if we needed it. We didn't take them up on it, but we enjoyed their company out on our shared patio.

We were a little worried that noise from the bar would keep us awake at night. It turns out that roosters were the true menace to our slumber. Two am, three am, they just kept crowing. Oh well. It's all a part of the adventure.