Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving week in NYC was, as expected, great. The weather was beautiful, it was really fun to share it with the whole family plus friends, and New York is always fun to visit.

Jon and I arrived to LGA on Wednesday night, pretty late, and called it a night. He was staying with his friend Joe, I stayed at Sarah's. Thanksgiving morning started off early with watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which was really pretty cool. I think it may be my one and only trip to see the parade, but I'm glad we watched it. A large midday feast was followed up with a walk through Central Park- the picture of all of us above. I hadn't seen Felicia in over a year, so it was really great to see them. The rest of the week was spent doing touristy stuff- which I always enjoy, but it has come to the point that when I visit NYC, I've done all the really big things, so I like to focus on hanging out and walking around. We got to do a lot of that around Sarah's neighborhood, hitting up some restaurants and sights that she's been telling me about lately. Big fan of Lansky's and Zabar's. Good tasty food :) We got to give Stephanie her first taste of Jewish food, and New York for that matter.

One silly, but amazingly cool thing, that we visited was the Charmin Times Square toilets. I'm not really sure why I was so amused/impressed/amazed with the whole thing, but it was so cool. It had to have cost them a fortune, and was so gimicky. But awesome. I'm kind of a big fan of anywhere in NYC that offers public toilets that are fully stocked with TP (and different Charmin variaties, of course!) and cleaned after every usage. Go Charmin... and the catchy jingle that they play in the building is still going through my head....

We thankfully had amazing weather until my last day- Sunday. We should have renamed it Rainday in an effort to truly capture how amazingly horrible it was. There was a light rain all day, but not really light enough to need an umbrella. And it was too windy to use an umbrella... they kept turning inside out like in the cartoons. Plus, it was freezing and got dark at like 4pm.

Overall, it was such a fun trip, and I'm so happy we all got to get together to celebrate together. I guess the next big, full family adventure is our wedding... I can't wait until February!

Fun on the weekends

I've had two back to back weekends that were both great....

OCTOBER 3-5

We're lucky enough to be friends with Mrs. Diane and Kristy any day of the week, but we're even luckier to be friends with them when Kristy has extra friends and family buddy passes for cheap airfare on the airline she works for. A handful of extra tickets resulted in a last minute trip to New York City to go see Sarah. Woohoo! We had so much fun- I hadn't spent time with Kristy in awhile, and it was fun to see her and hear all about the new business she's starting. We didn't do a whole lot while we were there- just hung out, did a lot of walking, some sightseeing, and a whole lot of hanging out. We happened to be in town the same weekend as two of our friends from London, so that was an added fun surprise. One thing we did that I've never done before was walked across the Brooklyn Bridge- it's quite the view of the city!

Mom and Daughters on the Brooklyn Bridge

Bye, Westwood!

I went back to my house yesterday to meet Kelli, the new tenant... she moved in on Wednesday.

As soon as I met her, she thanked me probably 6 times for renting them such a nice house... she went on and on about it being pretty, and quiet, and nice, and about how much storage there was... my response, of course, was "Thanks for paying my mortgage while I'm not here!"

She and Megan are both really nice, and I feel good about leaving our house in their hands. It made me feel better about the whole situation. Leaving Westwood yesterday, for the first time, I wasn't sad. I've been so sad and sentimental about the whole moving thing since we started packing, but I finally feel better about it. I know it's just a house, but it makes me happy that they love it and are excited to be living there... and their money makes me happy too!

I went back to my parents house, my temporary home for the week, with a Moo, Moo Mr. Cow from our neighborhood Moes (and the best one in town!), ate it, then packed for my trip. Oscar and I had our last slumber party before I leave for 2 weeks... it was glorious!

So now I'm leaving town... I fly to New York this afternoon, get to spend all day with Sarah on Saturday, and am leaving for Israel on Sunday.