North Pole Express

The Essex Stream Train is an exciting train to ride on any time of the year. It is an old coal burning locomotive. But at Christmas time, it becomes the North Pole Express, going all the way to the North Pole!

Every car has an "elf" that entertains the passengers throughout the ride. They do a musical version of "The Night Before Christmas", sing carols, and play games with the kids. Elves even serve hot chocolate and cookies made by Mrs. Claus herself!

One of the best parts of the North Pole Express, is when it stops at the North Pole to pick up Santa Claus. He comes onto the train and gives the children a very special gift. Every year the sleigh is decorated with bells. Santa gives all the bells from last year's sleigh to the boys and girls on the train.

Alyssa and Abigail both love their bells. It was such a thrilling night for them. I hope we can repeat it next year!

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.