A Long and Overdue Update

This update is WAY overdue.  I’ve had only one post since the New Year (bad blogger) and to say a lot has happened since Jan 1 would be an understatement.

Besides our normal work schedule and holidays, over the past six months we’ve celebrated our birthdays (mine and hubs); Anthony turned six!! (omg); I trained for and finished another Spartan race – beating my previous time;  Anthony came to my job for his first Take our Daughters & Sons to Work Day; Anthony was chosen to have his artwork displayed in a district wide art show;  Mother’s Day;  Father’s Day;  and on June 13th Anthony graduated from Kindergarten (omg again!)  We’ve been quite the busy family that it’s left me barely any time to catch my breath, let alone time to blog about it all.

But probably our biggest news of all is that we moved!!  You may have caught it at the end of my 2013 recap post (if you read the whole thing LOL) where I mentioned that we were packing up the old house and were closing on the new house.  We sold our townhouse on December 27^th and on January 6^th closed on a gorgeous 4 bedroom home a couple towns over.  We are beyond excited and are in love with our new space.  We truly lucked out finding our dream home. 

taken the day our offer was accepted (November 2013)

Moving was one of the most stressful experiences of my life and to do it in the middle of snowpocalypse 2013/14 made it all the more challenging.   We were scheduled to move out of our townhouse on the day a blizzard decided to descend upon New York.  Luckily I was able to get the movers to come a day early and they kept our things stored on the truck for the weekend until we closed on the new house.   It was a good thing we were able to do that because the day after the blizzard all of the moving company’s trucks were frozen solid because the diesel fuel in the trucks had frozen!!  You seriously couldn’t have made this stuff up.  It was just insanity.  Certainly not the time to be moving, but we had no choice.  We had to go.  The day we moved into the new house it was minus 5 degrees outside.  I felt so awful for the moving guys.  I bought a few boxes of coffee and some doughnuts and that helped make for happy workers (and a faster move).  Although I’m sure the cold certainly helped them work a little faster.

So as you can imagine, a lot of whatever free time I’ve had over the past 6 months has been spent focusing on the house and doing projects.  We were lucky that the house didn’t need any renovations, but of course there were cosmetic changes we wanted to do to make it our own.  Slowly each room is coming together and it’s starting to feel like home vs a rental vacation home.  More to come on the house as we finish off rooms (and more pics too!)

For now, I’ll leave you with some picture highlights from the last 6 months and the promise that I really will come back to blogging, even if only for short quick updates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

2013: A Look Back

2013 will be over in just a few hours and I have to say that I’m more than ready to ring in 2014!!   2013 brought with it a lot of personal accomplishments for me.  I lost 38 lbs and completed 3 races, including my very first Spartan Sprint!  The past 12 months have been a fun and busy year for our family filled with parties, vacations and outings, but I’m excited to start 2014 and begin a new chapter in our family’s life.

See ya 2013…..Bring on 2014!!
 

January

• Started Weight Watchers
• Bowling outing with Anthony & Me
• Taylor’s Birthday party
• Family fun day at Sport Time USA
• Kindergarten Registration
• All three of us got sick with the flu :(

February

• Fun in the snow (Nor’easter blizzard)
• Swapping valentines at school
• (another) week with Wally (preschool project)
• Girls weekend trip to Foxwoods & Mystic, CT

 

March

• Tae-Kwon-Do trial lesson
• Trip to Florida to visit my mom & stepdad
• Easter egg coloring & hunt
• My birthday brunch at Xavier’s on the Hudson
• Bowling play date with Anthony’s BFF, Tyler

 

April

• Anthony turns 5!
• RJ’s Birthday Party
• Anthony’s 1^st day of T-Ball

 

 

May

• Mother’s Day dinner at Restaurant X
• More T-Ball games
• Gavin’s Birthday Party
• Crazy hair day at preschool
• The pool opens!
• Memorial Day Weekend BBQs

June

• Anthony’s “graduates” from Preschool
• Gilly’s graduation party
• Matthew’s Birthday party
• More T-Ball games
• Swimming and outdoor fun
• I completed my first Spartan Sprint!

 

July

• Watching 4^th of July fireworks from our window
• Vacation with my extended family to Niagara Falls
• Damian’s 1^st Birthday party
• Anthony gets a new pair of glasses
• Crazy hat day at Preschool
• More swimming
• Birthday parties for Chase & Aiden
• Kindergarten orientation day
• Had family photos professionally taken at a local park
• Put our 1^st house up for sale (eeek!!)

August

• Soaking in the final days of swimming
• Kindergarten bus orientation
• Fishing at the local lake with Daddy
• Birthday parties for Gilly, Vinny & Quincy
• Found a buyer for our house & intensified our search for a new house
• Girls weekend trip to Hershey, PA to see Justin Timberlake/ Jay Z concert

 

September

• Anthony’s 1^st day of Kindergarten
• I completed my first 5k Color Run!
• Stephen & Petra’s Engagement party
• Play date at Sport Time USA with Anthony’s BFF, Tyler
• Attended the world’s largest picnic in NYC (a Guinness World Record) sponsored by Hellmanns
• Hit my weight loss goal!!
• Continue the search for a new house

 

 

 

October

• Family apple picking trip at local farm
• Kindergarten Halloween Parade & Party
• Birthday party for Connor & Paige
• I completed my first Ridiculous Obstacle Race!
• Continue the search for a new house

November

• Celebrating thanksgiving with our family
• Steven & Colette’s Wedding
• Trip to NYC to see Lion King (Anthon’s 1^st Broadway show)
• Found our forever home!

December

• Ride on the Polar Express (Essex, CT)
• Celebrate our last Christmas in our house
• Continue to pack up the house
• Close on the sale of our 1^st home

 

From our family to yours.  Wishing you a very Happy New Year.  Cheers to 2014!!

An Interview with a Five Year Old

We were having a little fun this weekend and I decided to interview my five year old to see what kind of answers came out of him.  The results were pretty funny.

What’s your name?   Anthony

How old are you?   Five

Who is your best friend?   Tyler

What is your favorite food?   Tacos

What is your favorite animal?   A Lion because it has big teeth and eats the Zebras

What is your favorite color?   Blue

What is your favorite tv show?  Lab Rats

What is your favorite movie?  Monsters, Inc.

Who is your favorite person?   My Mom & Dad and Layla (my dog)

What does Mommy do for work?   Works on the computer

What does Daddy do for work?   Works on the computer and they have a cooking area at his job

What do you want to be when you grow up?  A superhero (Superman to be exact)

What do you love to do for fun?  Play with my best friend Tyler

Who is your favorite Superhero?  The Avengers

A Letter to my Son on Kindergarten Eve

To my number one man,

Only five short years ago we brought you home from the hospital and tomorrow you will embark on a whole new journey. While maybe it shouldn’t be that big of a deal since you’ve been attending an all day program since you were 17 months old, tomorrow morning marks a different kind of a milestone.  You will start your academic career which (I hope) will last for the next 14+ years.  I am such a mixed ball of emotions tonight as I sit here and listen to you sleep.

Excited:  I’m excited for all of the new things you are going to see, hear and learn.

Sad:  Truth is, it makes me a little sad to see my baby boy growing up so fast.  Tomorrow may only be the first day of kindergarten but it snuck up on me so quickly that I can only imagine how fast your elementary school years will fly by.

Nervous:  I know what a caring & gentle soul you are and I am nervous that others won’t treat you right and that bullies will try to take advantage of you.  I know that you need to learn for yourself who to listen to and how to stick up for yourself but the protective mother in me wants to shield you from all of that.

Proud:  Our hearts are just bursting with pride when we think of just how successful you will be.  You are growing up to be a sensitive, strong, independent, talented little man, who spreads joy to everyone who spends time with you.

I know we can’t protect you from everything.  You will have good days, and bad days.  You will get tempted to make bad decisions.  Not everyone will want to be your friend and there will be times when your feelings will get hurt.  I will help to soothe your broken heart and do my best to arm you with the tools you need to make your own decisions.

Always do your very best and treat others with respect.  Remember your manners but don’t forget to come home and hug me tight every day after school (until you graduate from college).

I love you to the moon & back.

 

 

200th post! Well, close enough ;)

I just realized that I missed my 200^th post.  Oops!  So this is really post #202.  Eh, it’s close enough ;)  It’s a little sad that it’s taken me almost 3 years to hit 200 posts (not to mention my 100^th post was just about 2 years ago) but who’s counting, right??  Happy 200!!

 

 

Countdown to K has begun!

Look what showed up in my mailbox yesterday...

 

 

 

My first reaction was “WHAT????  already?!?”  Then I looked at the calendar and realized it was almost August.  My big man starts Kindergarten in 46 days.   OMG!!  I guess I have been in a little bit of denial that this is really happening, but it’s COMING. and coming FAST!  He sat at our dining room table last night flipping through it picking out the backpack he wants (transformers) and new markers, lunchbox, etc. 

 

We may still be waiting for his teacher assignment, but we’ve got the supplies list and he said he’s ready to get on the bus and head off to the “big kid school” (as he calls it).  He might be ready but I don’t know how ready I am….  Even though he’s been going to “school” since he was 17 months old this is going to be different.  Taking the bus…having homework…making new friends…being in a bigger class environment.  I’m both excited and a little nervous for him at the same time. 

 

For now though, I'm not thinking about that.  We’ll just stick to some back to school shopping and try to hit the stores a bit early before everything gets sold out.

My Journey to Green

In honor of Earth Day this week I am dedicating this post to going GREEN.  I’ve always been an earth conscious person but over the past year I’ve furthered my journey over to green.  You’d be surprised how a few small little changes can make a huge impact on our environment.  While I’m in no way 100% green, I do what I can and what I’m comfortable with. 

I’ve always recycled.  Ever since I was younger my parents recycled.  It was just something we did.  I’m slowly getting my husband to do it and find myself less and less pulling things out of the trash bin and moving them to the recycling bin.  Little by little I’ve added on other things such as using reusable shopping bags and most recently I’ve been buying more organic food. 

If you take a closer look around the produce section of your supermarket you’ll notice that a lot of them come from outside the USA.  The pesticides that are used in the US are bad enough that I don’t even want to think about what they’re using in Chile or Uruguay.  Not to mention what kind of genetically modified foods are also lurking in our supermarkets.  (those little stickers on your produce DO actually mean something other than price).  Eating organic drastically reduces your exposure to these harmful pesticides and GMOs, but it can also make for an expensive shopping trip.   To keep down cost I stick to the “dirtydozen” list and buy those items as organic. The Environmental Working Group publishes this list along with its partner list (the Clean 15).  The lists include the top foods that have the highest & lowest content of pesticides.  The highest (on the dirty list) are the ones that should be purchased organic and the lowest (the clean list) are OK to be purchased non-organic.

If you’ve thought of going green but don’t quite know where to start, try making one small adjustment in your life.  Whether that’s recycling, or using your own bags at the supermarket or carpooling to work.  You don’t have to make crazy changes in your life and you also don’t have to do everything.  These are some of the simple changes I’ve made in my life:

• Recycle all of my paper, metal & plastic
• Use reusable bags when shopping
• Use energy efficient light bulbs & appliances
• Buy organic foods off of the “dirty dozen” list  
• Changed to green cleaning products & laundry detergent
• Use reusable coffee and water cups at work
• Purchase oxybenzone-free sunscreen for summer

There are of course more aggressive things you can do to be green if you’re already doing everything I’ve said.  Such as:

• Switching to holistic medicine
• Buy a hybrid or electric car
• Use paraben-free makup
• Use sodium laurel sulfate (SLS) free shampoo & conditioners
• Implement Meatless Mondays.  It’s not just about being vegetarian. If everyone in the US were to eat meat one less day a week it would save 99.6 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock farming. (that’s the equivalent of taking 19.2 million cars off U.S. roads for a year!!)
• Composting kitchen scraps

If you want to read more here are some resources to check out:

• Environmental Working Group (EWG) – A Wealth of Information from Green products to GMOs
• Center for Science in the Public Interest – website that breaks down ingredients in foods
• Skin Deep Database – rates beauty products
• Just Label it – Genetically Modified Foods
• Non GMO Project – Genetically Modified Foods
• Clean 15/dirty dozen List – organic shopping guide published by EWG

Fabulous Five

Friday, April 11, 2008  3:47 pm

Wow, five years.  It’s a bit incomprehensible that five whole years have gone by since that rainy Friday afternoon when I held a little peanut of a boy in my arms for the first time as we welcomed him into our lives.  Four was a much more kind age to us than three or two ever were.  Anthony went through a LOT of maturing this past year.  Not to say that the last 12 months were all puppy dogs and rainbows, but we noticed a positive difference in some of his behaviors as compared to a year before.

 Dear Anthony,

Such a bright, caring & funny kid you are!!  You amaze me more and more with every day that goes by and I am so very lucky that god chose me to be your Mommy.  You have such a kooky sense of humor and a laughter that is just infectious.  Keep telling jokes and being silly.  The world can always use a dose of silliness. 

As I look at you now, there are certain things I admire about you.  Your generosity for one.   I am always amazed at the way you share with others.  Toys, food, crayons...whatever.  At only five years old you are already putting the feelings of others before yours.  I am simply in awe of you for that.  You are constantly thinking of your friends/family and what they might like to have.  You have a kind, gentle soul that is wise beyond its years.

This coming year brings with it so much newness.  A new school.  new friends.  new experiences. I will try my hardest to show you the right path, but I am bound to make mistakes. Please forgive me for them.  I see so much of myself in you and at times I want to shield you from the world so that you don’t get hurt.  But I need to keep reminding myself that you need to go through these experiences (like I did) so that you can grow to be the best man you can be.  I’m so proud of the boy you’ve grown into in the short 5 years that I’ve know you.  

Happy 5th Birthday to the pint sized man who completes my world!!!

I love you to the moon & back,

Mommy

xoxo  



photo credit:  Dan Stockfield

Photo Credit:  Dan Stockfield

Photo Credit:  Dan Stockfield

I’ve been Freed!

I am no longer a jury duty virgin.  I went to the courthouse yesterday and performed my civic duty.  The process itself was interesting to watch and they were pretty efficient given the 80 people that showed up for service that day. 

I had built up in my head that I was going to be stuck in the courthouse all day, but in actuality I was done and freed by lunch time.  They began by splitting us up into 3 groups for the 3 different cases that were going on that day (2 civil and 1 criminal).  I was crossing my fingers that I would end up in the criminal case room.  I figured if I was going to serve as a juror the criminal case would be the most exciting. 

 

My group was brought upstairs to the courtroom where the judge questioned all 30 of us about our general background.  Things like, where we were born, where we currently lived, marital status, number of kids, occupation, etc.  I was pretty psyched to find out we were being questioned for the criminal case but when the judge mentioned that the trial would last for approximately 10 days that balloon deflated a little bit.  After the questioning we were all led out to the hall where we waited for the lawyers to make their decision.  After about only 15 minutes they called us all back in and announced who the jurors would be.  This particular case only needed 3 additional jurors since they had filled most of the jury from last week’s pool, so the odds of me getting picked were really low.  Unknown to us, it turned out that the 3 they needed also had to be men so there was no way I was ever getting picked to begin with.  

 

A small piece of me is a little bummed that I didn’t get picked.  I think it would have been cool to go through the process.  But I’m happy to not be driving to the courthouse for the next 10 days and sitting through testimony and evidence.   Now I’m free for the next 6 years!

 

Bad Mail

One late night after work last week, I was sorting through the mail and I came across an envelope stuck in-between the birthday cards I was opening.  I knew right away what it was without even seeing a word written on it.  Just from the way it looked I knew it had those two little words stamped in red across the font.  Those 11 letters we all dread... Jury Summons.  Mother f#?@!%.

The last time I got called was over 13 years ago when I was in college out of state.  I was excused from service back then so I've avoided it about as long as I'll ever be able to.  I guess that means you could call me a jury duty virgin since I’ve never ever gone or served. I am due to report April 1 (if my number is called) so this should be interesting...  To be honest, the ‘Law & Order watching’ half of me kinda wants to be picked for a cool case, but the ‘I have a life and don’t want to be sequestered for weeks away from my family’ half of me doesn’t.   We'll have to wait and see what happens on April fools day ;-)  

Good Dog

Last week I had the dreaded flu. It was sort of weird yet kind of amazing to see just how fast my body reacted and went down.  I felt perfectly fine leaving work Monday evening and by 8:30 pm I was in bed unable to move.  I didn’t emerge from my quarantined bedroom until Friday morning (with the exception of a trip to the doctor for some meds on Tuesday afternoon).  Thank goodness for my wonderful husband who helped to take care of our son and the house so that I could get the rest that I needed. 

On Thursday afternoon I kept hearing our 8 year old labrador retriever mix crying.  Figuring that she needed to go out, I got myself up and managed to take her outside for a quick walk so that she didn’t have an accident in the house.  A couple minutes after I got myself back into bed I heard her crying again.  I tried to ignore her since I had just taken her out, but after a few more minutes of listening to her I couldn’t take it anymore and got myself up out of bed again.  As I turned the corner out of my bedroom I was shocked at what I saw next...

 Our dog hasn’t climbed these stairs in over 5 years since we put in the hard wood floors.  Like many dogs, she became very afraid of the slippery floors. Although there is a runner on the stairs, she never felt comfortable coming all the way up because the landing at the top is straight wood.  We actually prefer that she doesn't come upstairs so it worked out better.  She has her bed & domain downstairs and we have ours upstairs.

On this particular day, I believe our dog had sensed I was sick and simply wanted to be with me.  But since I was upstairs she had no choice but to climb the stairs she was so scared of.

Dogs have extraordinary senses as we all know and there have been studies done about whether or not dogs can even sense illness.  Whether or not that was the case here, I can't say for certain.  But what I do know is that my sweet dog faced one of her biggest fears to come and bring a smile to my face when I was feeling pretty crappy last week.  What a good great dog!!