Celebrating July 4th

This July 4th we celebrated the good old fashion way—by eating American hot dogs! I haven't eaten a hot dog in a looooong time, and so it made the experience that much better. 

We enjoyed our "Shake Shack" hot dogs while sitting in the NYC heat. 

Since our lives revolve around Hunter's naps, after his second nap of the day, we headed out to Pat's favorite place in Central Park—the Ramble. It is the hidden gem in Central park where you are easily able to forget that just beyond the trees is a hustling city. 

Although it was July 4th, and the rest of the park was crawling with tourists and other city dwellers, the Ramble was some what subdued and very enjoyable. 

We have a nice treat this week of having David visting us from Maine. It is so great to see David with Hunter. David is such a great Uncle, always wanting to see pictures of Hunter and bringing him gifts from Maine. At first Hunter was a little scared of David when he first saw him, but now he can't get enough of him.

This trip David brought three shirts what included "Maine" in the design. They are so cute and it so sweet of David to spoil his nephew.

In the evening David ventured over to the West Side of Manhattan to watch The Macy's firework show, while Pat and I relaxed at home (the NYC heat always gets the best of me and sucks all my energy) and watched the show on T.V. —we even danced a bit to the rockin' jams.

Life is good.

Christmas

Christmas when you are away from family and do not have any children who are old enough to realize what is going on is kinda anticlimactic  For the past three years Pat and I have spent Christmas in the city alone and it is kinda getting old. 

We miss the excitement that little children bring to the holiday and we miss spending time with family. We try to make the most of it, but we are excited for Hunter to become of age so we can teach him the true meaning of Christmas and also get excited for Santa and gifts. 

For Christmas Eve we didn't do anything traditional or special. We ended up watching a really lame 80's movie about a dragon slayer. 

However, Christmas morning was a little more festive and having Pat somewhat made up for the lake of children, as he gets excited for gifts just like little kids do.

This year Pat decided to institute a new tradition with the "Christmas Dagger." He decided that the "Christmas Dagger" would be brought out every Christmas and each person had to open their gifts with the dagger--so that is exactly what we did.

This year for Christmas we also started another tradition of using Pinterest to make our "wish lists."  I for one always have a hard time knowing what to ask for for Christmas (Pat doesn't have any trouble at all). So in order to help in this endeavor we started a private board on Pinterest that only Pat and I could see and pin to. The months leading up to Christmas we would pin miscellaneous items that we wanted that we found on the internet. It is amazing how easily you can find items on the internet that you don't need but want as you surf on a daily basis and if not pinned would be forgotten about minutes later.

Despite the wish lists, we still managed to have some surprise gifts to give one another that the other person would love but did not ask for. For me this was a fake butterfly in a glass mason jar that flies around just like a real butterfly (when I have seen this is stores in the past I am always enamored by them). And for Pat this was International Scout Gear and Thinking Putty.

New shoe smell

The rest of the day was spent chatting with family via video chat over the internet. I am so thankful for the technology we have today. I can't imagine living so far from family and friends without the luxuries of seeing their faces and video chatting online. It makes being away from them bearable and as if we are not missing out on as much.

Also, a new tradition we I (pat was kinda against it) started this year was Christmas Lotto Scratch Off Cards. Even though mormons don't gamble, Santa didn't know better, and gave each one of us a lotto scratch off card. Hunter ended up winning $15 to go towards his college fund! 

It's Christmas time in the city....

I love this time of year, especially in NYC. I am sad because I haven't been able to enjoy the weather and the Christmas festivities as much as I would like to, since little Hunter occupies much of my time and doesn't let me get out much.

I am hoping once Pat gets time off of work that we will be able to explore the city more as a family and we will be able to enjoy the magical feeling the Christmas brings to this wonderful city that we live in.

Of course one of the downsides to a Christmas in New York City is the size of the tree and having to be creative on where to put it! Every year I am convinced that we won't be able to put up our tiny tree because we have no room. However, without fail Pat always finds a way. This year he found the perfect spot on top of our small bookshelf!

Every year I look forward to putting up the ornaments on the tree. It is always fun to reminisce on years past. I can't believe how quickly time flies and this is the fifth Christmas Pat and I have spent together. 

This year, I had some "new" Christmas ornaments to add to the tree that I am especially fond of. When my mom came in October she brought a handful of ornaments that belonged to my grandparents. They are so charming and take me back to my childhood of Christmas Eve's spent at my grandparents home set in the Oakland Hills. 

 

One ornament in particular brought back a flood of memories -- the knitted Reindeer heads. When my mom brought them I got excited because I remember always going up to my grandparents tree and checking to see if there was a special treat inside these reindeers. If I got to them before anyone else, I would find a hershey kiss waiting for me. The funny thing about this, is my mom had no memory of the purpose of these reindeer so when I popped open the mouth of the two reindeer ornaments she brought me, guess what I found!!! Two hershey kisses! The funny thing is from my calculations the hershey kisses were probably over 12 years old!

Christmas is a time for family and traditions. I am excited start my family and to continue old traditions and start new traditions of our own!

Lake Placid

As Pat said, since Winter didn't come to us this year, we decided to go to Winter. This last long weekend for Presidents Day, I planned a very last minute get-a-way to Lake Placid, about 5 hours north of Manhattan.

We left on Saturday morning and rented a car from Laguardia Airport. From leaving our apartment, getting our rental car, to getting out of the city took about 2-3 hours. We weren't really intimidated by the long drive since we were just really excited about being in a car. It was a nice drive, but as we got closer the Lake Placid we realized that we probably were very ill prepared for the elements. We weren't expecting any snow, as a few days earlier I called and they said they didn't have any. However, this definitely was not the case. We ended up being fine, but did have a hard time staying out in the cold for long periods of time.

We managed to find a hotel that allowed pets, so believe it or not, we took Montee along! We thought he would enjoy the trip a lot more than he actually did, but for being a cat he did surprisingly well.

While we were there there just happened to be a bobsledding competition, since Lake Placid held the 1980 Olympics. It was really fun to be right up close to the blobsledders, even though we only saw them for a split second as they zoomed passed us at 80 miles per hour. It became a kinda of game for us to try to see if we could capture them in a picture--it only works about a third of the time.

Later on that day we went on a little hike to a 700 foot frozen waterfall that had these wooden walk ways and bridges. It was really nice to be out in nature and just take things slow. 

After our hike they had all the supplies to make s'mores. It was a nice little treat and I will NEVER turn down a s'more.

Lake Placid is a very quaint town. It had your touch of the modern with retail stores on main street, but it also kept its history with all the mom and pop shops. It was fun to see so many people engaging in winter activities, such as ice skating on the frozen lake, skiing, and even dog sledding.

All in all, it was really good to be spontaneous and to get out of the city for a day or two. As is anything when it comes to city living, it was a lot of work and money to actually get out city, but we were glad we did it. I think we need to keep life exciting and splurge every once and while to maintain happiness and sanity.