New York (part 2)

Alright, alright! I will finish the post since my inbox has been FLOODED with messages begging me to continue rambling about our trip in excessive detail. You people are insatiable...

Anyway, I was so mad all over again when I was writing about getting bumped from The Daily Show that I forgot to tell you about the "post-blister" part of the evening -- South Pacific!

I have watched Rogers and Hammerstein movies since I was like 4 years old, and South Pacific was one of my very favorites. So when I found out they were reviving it on Broadway this summer, I begged Boone to go. He told me if I could control myself at Target and continue being a subservient housewife he would consider it, so I was on my best behavior for about 23 minutes and then I just ordered tickets online.

We got to the theater and quickly realized we were younger than 95% of the people there which didn't bother us, but seemed to arouse suspicion around us. "You look awfully young to be here," the woman to my right said (like what, I'm really here scoping out which wealthy elderly couple to mug on their way out of Lincoln Center?)

"Thank you," I replied, "but I know every lyric to every song in this show and you'll probably be listening to me sing the whole time."

She looked at me even more suspiciously, and then her husband leaned over and said, "Well which is your favorite song, then?" I'm sure he thought he was catching me in my lie, but then I rattled off about 6 or 7 song titles while explaining what I loved about each of them, and that seemed to surprise and satisfy them.

The play was fantastic, but poor Boone had his knees pressed up against the back of the seat in front of him the whole time and spent most of the next 3 hours trying desperately to get the blood to flow back into his lower legs. I spent it listening to people make endless comments about "Well, in the ORIGINAL show (40+ years ago), they didn't focus so much on the military aspect of the story", and other comparisons that had no relevance but were stated just to brag that you had been there the first time around. Whatever, they were probably way past their bedtimes and a more than a little cranky.

Despite not knowing the story as well as I did and the seating being designed for people under 5'5", Boone had a good time too, and we high-fived each other on the way out for our total coolness in being able to hang with the elderly Jewish theater community in New York City. And this after a night at Shea Stadium sucking down hot dogs! We're versatile and awesome, we know.

So the next day was our actual anniversary, and we decided to wander around Greenich Village and go get some world famous cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. We completely deserved it after walking over 28,000 steps the previous day, so we grabbed 4 before lunchtime and pigged out.




They were pretty great, but the frosting is piled about 2 inches deep which gets to be a little much in the way of sugar after the first, oh, 3 cupcakes or so. Boone wanted to stop after the first one and carry the rest, but I gave him the "are-you-kidding-do-you-know-me-at-all-after-10-whole-years?" look.

And hey, before you get all judgy, let me also tell you that it was about 85 degrees and super muggy, and who wants to eat cupcakes that have been humidified all day? We had no choice (that sounded better than more cupcakes in my belly), so I took one for the team and polished off the box.

After the rest stop, we ducked into several cute little shops and just meandered through the streets looking at all the cool doors and commenting on how it reminded us of the outside shots of The Cosby Show.


The other fun thing about Greenich was realizing that it was Pride Week while we were there and seeing all the rainbow flags and posters hanging in every window.


This was probably our favorite though:


***I want really badly here to use the whole rainbow theme and "We're not in Kansas/Georgia anymore!" as a brilliant segue into our anniversary evening and seeing Wicked, but then I would have to skip over our dinner at Nobu, and I just can't bring myself to do it (because it's food, duh!). Rest assured that the similarities weren't lost on me.***

So, Nobu. My friend Jeff (from high school days)(who now lives in New York) told me that this was where Boone and I HAD to go for our anniversary dinner, so I made a reservation as soon as they'd let me and we prepared ourselves to be wowed. We were not disappointed, except that Matt Damon wasn't there like he was last time Jeff went. It's not that I am in love with Matt Damon -- it's that I am in love with Jason Bourne, who is played by Matt Damon. Sigh.

We were trying to act all casual at first, like we regularly eat meals that are this upscale in Grovetown, GA. But then we just starting laughing at ourselves and our sheer panic when we realized there were only chopsticks on the table and nobody else was using silverware. Oh, and we had no clue what to order, which is a little more of a concern when you are facing a menu with $32 appetizers -- you can't afford to make mistakes. So we swallowed our pride and said to our server, "Look, we haven't ever been here before, but we love to eat. What would you get if you were eating here?"

Having the server order for us turned out to be a great plan more than once on our trip. We got 5 dishes and a dessert, and they were all absolutely outstanding. I think I could eat the rock shrimp tempura and the black cod in miso every day for the rest of my life. Seriously, everything just melted in our mouths and Boone and I struggled to not look too stunned by the deliciousness of what we were eating and the miracle of our adequate chopsticks use -- you know, to keep the whole casual thing going. We had someone take a picture of us in front of the restaurant after we finished, but I look about 5 months pregnant in it (can you say food baby?) so I refuse to post it.

After Nobu we hopped on a subway up to the theater district to see Wicked, which I had heard was life-changingly good from several people. I snapped this contraband photo before the show began since my theme this trip seemed to be "Break the law!"


It was fan-freaking-tastic, and I'm glad this photo is far enough away that you can't see how splotchy my face is from sobbing my head off at the end. I would recommend avoiding Wicked if you are a girl who has had one of your best friends move away within a week of the show (thanks alot, Emma). Other than that, beg, borrow, or steal to get there. That's all I'm gonna say. Okay, that and "Sorry I told you the entire plot and made you watch bootlegged YouTube videos of my favorite numbers, Mom".

Moving on, we grabbed cheesecake after the show and scarfed down as much of it as we could back in the hotel room. The pieces are ginormous enough that they cost something like $9 a piece, so we couldn't finish our second dessert in one sitting.


We were okay with eating it again the next day, maybe right after working out in the morning.

Alright, and maybe after the cheesecake we went down to Little Italy and got gelato at Ferraro's, which apparently has been there since 1890. That's what the napkin said, so it must be true.



We were too full from cheesecake and gelato to eat real food in Little Italy, so we just wandered around until we found our appetites again. We happened to be back up in Little India by then so we popped into some crazy Bollywood themed Indian place that had Bollywood movie stars plastered on the wall and a Bollywood movie blaring on the flat screen in the corner. Boone made sure to ask the server, "Hey, which of these chicks is the one Richard Gere kissed?" (She pointed, and Boone nodded approvingly.)


Now that you know what it HAD (Bollywood everything), let me tell you what it didn't have: Diet Coke syrup in palatable amounts. When we told them politely that the Diet Coke was mostly soda water, the owner sent our waitress across the street to buy us individual cans! We felt kind of bad, but we hadn't been demanding or anything, so we chugged it down gratefully. Once again, we had our server pick our food, which still worked out but not quite as well as it had at Nobu. She seemed to think this was cool though and ran across the street a second time for more cans when our Cokes got low. When we told her we were in New York celebrating our anniversary, she brought out a dessert on the house. It was a good thing too, as we had only had two desserts so far that day, and it WAS nearly 4:00 pm.

We went back to the hotel and changed since our clothes now smelled like sweat, curry, and... well...like you need a third reason to change after those two?

Anyway, we had tickets to see Eddie Izzard (a comedian, if you don't know) at Radio City Music Hall.

It was extremely funny (especially if you aren't all that impressed with President Bush:) and we had another great night hanging out together kid-free. (Am I seriously still typing about New York?)

The next day we had just a few hours to kill before heading back to real life, so we wandered around Central Park for a bit...

...grabbed some fat New York pizza for lunch...


...and walked back to the hotel for the last time to grab our bags and hail a cab to LaGuardia. On the way to the airport, we flipped through all our pictures, told ourselves how totally awesome we are, and made a date to come back for our 15th anniversary. I know, I know, how will you survive 5 whole years?


P.S. Big huge thanks to my wonderful mom who stayed with our rugrats for 5 whole days while we were gone! She did a great job and only managed to get locked out of the house once! I can't even describe how rewarding it is to watch other people struggle with your kids -- probably about as rewarding as watching your grown children come unglued about their own kids, eh Mom?

New York, New York!

Boone and I first went to New York 5 years ago and we loved it so much that we decided we would return to celebrate our 10th anniversary on June 26. Flights were booked, TripAdvisor was consulted, emails to locals were exchanged, and we were off!

We left at the "BCOD" (a commonly used phrase at our house, but if you were wondering, it's "butt-crack-of-dawn" -- when have we ever claimed to be classy?) and arrived around lunch time in Manhattan. We ditched our bags at the hotel and headed out the door, pedometer securely attached, to find some good chow. This is not difficult in New York, no matter where you are. We walked about 2 blocks before we found a great little pizza and sandwich place with patio seating and no free refills (I had forgotten about that part of New York -- bummer). Afterwards, we wandered around until we stumbled upon Venieros and were forced to buy some fantastic cannolis and cake (let me pause here to say, "Yes, I do plan to tell you about everything we ate in New York -- it's half the reason we went, and we love food, okay?") and we scarfed those down on the sidewalk before heading back to the hotel to actually check in.

We got settled, washed up, and headed back out the door to see the Mets play the Mariners at Shea Stadium. We got there a little early so we headed over to take some dorky pictures at the globe thingy outside Arthur Ashe stadium (where the U.S. Tennis Open is played).


I would like to take a moment to point out that I coached Boone into much better position than he did for me, so his picture is better. Plus, he isn't making a bitter beer face like I am.


Anyhoo, this is not even close to the first time we have gone to a professional sporting event to root for the visiting team, but I was a little concerned about doing it in New York.

What I had forgotten was that the Mets and the Mariners are pretty much the two worst teams in baseball, so most of the Mets' fans were too deflated to give Boone a beer bath. We ate hot dogs and yelled our heads off for the stinky Mariners, who looked like All-Stars that night and won 11-0! We were about the only ones who had any fun and that was without bellies full of $8 beers!


The next day we decided to scope out Chinatown since we totally missed it the first time around. You come up out of the subway into total craziness and it takes a minute to convince yourself that you are still in North America.



We wandered up and down Canal St. for a bit and just took it all in, and then I decided I might like to get a knockoff bag after all. I had no idea what I was in for.

There are a billion places selling fake Dooney and Burke, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci bags all out in the open on the street, but I'm kind of a Coach girl myself, so Boone and I began asking, "Any Coach?" to all the vendors. We were a little miffed when the first several we asked told us "No!" so adamantly, but we soldiered on. Eventually we came across a vendor who responded to our question by nodding, looking both ways quickly, and then hurriedly shoving us towards the back of his minuscule store. We were a little confused, but it was nothing compared to watching him swing what looked like the back wall of bags open to reveal a TINY room with a TINY woman in it! The door slammed shut and we were handed a "menu" of Coach bags on some laminated sheet of paper and asked to choose what we wanted. So Boone goes, "Um, how come most of the bags are out in front and a few are back here?" And the woman replies very matter-of-factly, "Oh, because these are illegal." Turns out they are ALL illegal, but a few companies care more than others about the fakes and Coach is one of them. I can honestly say I had no idea going in that it was so black market, but once I found out I marched Boone and I straight out of the store and called the police.

Please tell me you didn't fall for that! Do you know me at all?!? The "against the law" thing only added to the fun and I got such a rush it's ridiculous!

So anyway, I look at the menu and pick a bag I'd like to see, and the girl uses her phone to call out to who knows where -- I thought she had them all right there, but whatever. About 5 minutes later the door cracks open, a black bag flies in, and it shuts again. We were dying laughing at this point! I looked at the bag and it was nice, but it had a little too much gold hardware for my taste, so although I was a little worried about having inconvenienced these people, we said we were going to keep looking. She radioed out to what I can only assume was the lookout person, and after getting the "all clear" we were allowed to quickly exit the back room.

We got out onto the street feeling like we knew this great secret (that I'm sure millions of people already knew about) and began with a new sense of purpose to look for a bag. We got about another 3 blocks down the road before we started passing these little old ladies on the sidewalk who would mumble, "Coach, Chanel" as you walked past them, and on about the third one we stopped and nodded, and she motioned for us to follow her. She walked us DEEP into Chinatown, where no tourist has any business being. Like all the shops stop writing anything in English and there are markets with whole eels and dried who-knows-what on the sidewalk. Once we were to wherever she wanted us to be, she pulls another "menu" out and we are allowed to pick one. Keep in mind that you are looking at a thumbnail picture of a bag and they are constantly nagging you to hurry up. So I pick one, and once again, a cell phone is used to radio my choice to someone else. This time we waited about 10 minutes (which feels like forever when you have jittery Chinese women looking around the corner the whole time) before some dude walked past us and casually dropped a telltale black plastic bag onto the sidewalk next to us. The lady opened the bag just enough so we could peek inside, and says, "Good quality, see?"

***Side note -- We learned quickly that they ALL say "good quality", even if the bag is crappy, and how are you supposed to know when they won't take it out of the bag for you to see?***

Anyway, we glanced at it and Boone said, "How much?"

"Fifty," she replied.

"Will you take $40?"

"NO! Fifty! Good quality!", and she shoved it into my hands. Boone shrugged and gave her fifty bucks and we were on our way. Once we found our way back out to the main tourist area, we started laughing about what had just happened and felt like total rebels. It was one of our favorite parts of the trip, and if you think less of us for it, well, we don't care.

After Chinatown, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and all around the Brooklyn Promenade. Don't let Boone's face fool you -- he was having a blast, he just hates pictures and swears he lacks the ability to "fake a smile". I'm starting to think he might be telling the truth.


(This picture is looking up at the underside of one of the arched bridge supports, in case you care.)

Because I know you are wondering, we ate some great Thai food over in Brooklyn and took a few pictures down by the waterfront before catching a train back to get ready for the evening activities -- a taping of The Daily Show followed by South Pacific! at Lincoln Center.


I had reserved tickets for The Daily Show months in advance, so you can imagine how ticked we were to arrive at the studio and be told they had overbooked and we weren't getting in. Awesome! Well, at least we only cut our day short and ran clear across town to stand in line and get nasty sweaty before they told us. The even better news was that I was wearing "cute" shoes because we planned to sit in the studio and then walk a block to the subway before sitting in a theater and watching a play. Had I known we would suddenly have 3 hours to kill I'd have planned better, but I marched around midtown until my feet were blistered in 7 places. And all I have to show for the whole evening is this stupid picture of the back of Assif Mondvi's head.

He's a correspondent on The Daily Show, and I walked right passed him in the crosswalk as we were leaving the studio, but I was too mad to get a better picture.

Well, I'm exhausted all over again just writing about our first two days, so I can't imagine how much fun you must be having reading about it. I am going to call it a day and do the rest in another post.

Sorry, I almost forgot! We ate Halal food from a street vendor for dinner:) Now you can sleep...

Charleston ***WARNING -- EXCESSIVELY LONG POST ***

So we decided to take my mom out to Charleston before we ditched her for 5 days with our kids, and we discovered our hands-down favorite southern city. Charleston has so many things to see and do and with a mere 24 hours to spend we crammed a ton in. We already know we need to go back and take more time to really explore, but this was a great appetizer.

We started our adventure walking around the historical district downtown. I think they have something like 83 pre-Revolutionary War buildings there, but that's not something we were about to attempt with 3 kids, so we just wandered and saw what we could from the street. It was still pretty impressive...


...it was also hot as Hades and we were thrilled to stumble upon this park with a wading fountain. Once Keaton saw the water he peeled his shirt off so fast you'd have thought it was on fire. He and Rylan (Branik was a little intimidated) had so much fun playing in this fountain and I'm pretty sure all 3 adults were ticked to be too old to soak ourselves in public. How fun does this this look?

Keaton got really brave after about 5 minutes and decided to stick his head into the blasting water. I thought he might freak out when he felt how hard it was coming out...

...I was SO wrong. Notice the mohawk hair from the blast of the water -- obviously he loved it.

Anyway, after the fountain we wandered out onto a pier and took in the scenery...



Branik just wanted to get down and run -- he was in no mood for photos...


...see?

If Keaton's reset button is water (spraying in his face), Branik's is any cookie you can think of. It doesn't matter if it's homemade, out of a box, or from Subway (it was close and had air conditioning, OK?), if it is in cookie form he will devour it and it will fill his life with unadulterated joy!

The hat. It's a long story. Okay, not really -- 6 year old girl says she is hot and needs a hat "to keep her face cool". Said 6 year old has a pretty small head, and none of the normal style hats fit. This one did. She loved it. End of story.

Keaton was SURE he wanted a chocolate cookie with macadamia nuts -- we were sure he didn't -- guess who was right?

Anyway, after we left historic Subway we headed back to the car and checked into our hotel so we could let the kiddos sleep it off. They were exhausted from the drive and the heat, and although we were equally ragged, I'm pretty sure I'm remembering accurately that we wasted the night watching some news magazine about a woman who killed her husband (or DID she???)

The next day we decided to drive up the road a few miles and check out Magnolia Plantation. This place freaking rocks, and the pictures I took don't do it justice (but I'm still posting them).

Kids under age 6 aren't allowed into the house, so we couldn't do that part, but we still loved it. We took a tram ride around the grounds and learned about the history of the plantation and a lot about the wildlife that lives there. I'm not going into all of that -- if you want to know about it, Google it.


If you look at the center of this next photo, you can see 2 alligators in the water. We saw several more just walking around, but these were the only ones we could get on camera at all. Crazy stuff.


After the tram ride we went over to the little petting zoo there to let the kids see the animals...



You know how spoiled those Southern goats are -- what are you gonna do? No seriously though, what's up with this?

They had a couple of white-tailed deer which I have never seen in a petting zoo, and it was bizarre to watch Branik run up to them and use both hands to "pet" them (or pound them, if we're being truthful) while they just sat there.


Those animals were so chilled out around my boys that I decided they must be on Valium or something. But then a keeper walked in with food and they bolted straight for him, so I guess they are really that used to children. It was cool.

After I bathed everyone in Purell, we headed over to the actual gardens that have been maintained by the same family since the 1600's. It was stunningly beautiful. And yes, my crummy little point-and-shoot really took these photos.


We were too late in the year to catch the full bloom of azaleas, magnolias, and gardenias, but it was still totally worth it and about as southern as you can get. We can't wait to go back, and we're glad my Mom could come out and experience Charleston with us!

Catching Up!

Okay, there are SO many things to blog about and I have had no time to do it until now! June was a whirlwind for us but we had more fun than anyone deserves to have. I'll prove it in several upcoming posts!

But before I do, I'll start with the one dark spot in the month -- our friends the Patterson's moved away and our whole family was (and still is) pretty bummed about that one. We all said our goodbye's and vowed to keep in touch, and Boone and I are looking at our calendar to plan a trip to Europe sometime in the next few years. Anyway, this was as they were leaving our house...


You'd think that a lifetime of moving around would have made it easier to say goodbye, but it hasn't. Sigh. Thanks goodness for my therapists, Ben and Jerry.

Okay, now onto the happy parts! My mom arrived a few days before Keaton's birthday and we stopped for dinner on the way back from Atlanta...

...umm, yeah. My kids were excited to see Grandma. So we came home and basically got ready for Keaton's birthday. I am kicking myself because I was so busy during the party that I had my mom take most of the pictures, but I forgot to get them from her before she left this morning! Aarrgghh!

You'll just have to trust me that Keaton had a great day, and it looked like Thomas and Friends exploded all over our house when it was over.

Here is a blurry shot of him before blowing out his candles on his Harold the Helicopter cake -- I was nervous that he might freak out when we cut Harold into edible pieces, but he was fine with it and asked, "Can I eat Harold's face?"


After all the friends left, we pulled out one of his gifts -- an automatic bubble blower that he and Rylan played with for nearly an hour! It was great and they loved it!


We just sort of chilled the rest of the day and got ready to head out the next morning to Charleston with my Mom. When I get the rest of the photos from Keaton's birthday I will post more, but he really did have a happy day and loves to tell everyone now that he is 4 years old. We love you buddy!