November 2008 – Pure Sugar

What A Show!

Posted on November 30, 2008 by Carol — 4 Comments ↓

I hope my fellow U.S. bloggers had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was quiet and a bit subdued. Unfortunately, my MIL’s cousin’s husband passed away on Thanksgiving morning, so that understandably put a bit of a damper on the holiday. He was very sick with Alzheimer’s Disease, but it was still very sad. All of their children were coming down for Thanksgiving anyway, so at least everyone was together. Drew and Jake are going to the wake this afternoon.

On a happier note, we took Jake to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular on Friday, and spectacular it was! First of all, we had an absolutely perfect day to be walking around Manhattan. It was chilly, but the sun was shining and it wasn’t windy. We got there in plenty of time, but holy cow — I could not believe the line to get in! It was kind of funny to listen to people freaking out about the line as they tried to find the end. It’s not like the show was general admission; we all had reserved seats! So you stand for an extra 10 minutes or so.

The hall itself is just beautiful. It might have been the biggest theatre I’ve ever been in, I’m not sure. The show itself was breathtaking and I couldn’t help but tear up a few times. I’m not exactly sure why, but Drew and I were talking later and he had a similar reaction. Maybe it’s because of all the history… thinking of people who scrimped and saved to take their kids to this show over the years… of how it is so unique to New York. Of course I’ll also bet that pregnancy hormones had something to do with it for me! Jake was transfixed the whole 90 minutes. Hands down, it is one of the best musical shows I have ever seen. The talent of The Rockettes just blew me away. I can’t dance to save my life, so to watch their precision (not to mention their high kicks!) was just unreal. There was also a 3-D segment that was really fun! I’ll leave you with a few photos I took.

There are a few more here if you want to check them out! We had such an amazing time, I really can’t say it enough. After it was over, we checked out the Rockefeller Center tree. It’s not lit yet, but it’s up and decorated. We walked around a bit, had lunch and then headed home. Jake was worn out (understandably). There’s nothing like Christmas in the city, that’s for sure.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Carol — 4 Comments ↓

This just might be my most relaxing Thanksgiving ever! The past two years, I was working at the wine shop on the day before Thanksgiving, and it is probably the busiest day of the year. It was fun, but could also be very stressful. In contrast, today we have all just been relaxing. I sliced the sausage and cheese for my appetizer tray, and I need to get everyone’s clothes ready for tomorrow, but that’s about it. In fact, we might even go out to eat later tonight. (Consider it practice for tomorrow. Yeah, I don’t think anyone in the country will even be thinking about appetite suppressants tomorrow. Maybe the day after, though 😉 )

I will be skipping the Black Friday sales for the first time in forever, but I am totally looking forward to the Radio City Christmas Show! It should be so much fun. At any rate, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving (provided you’re an American reader, of course)!

Thanksgiving Prep

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Carol — 3 Comments ↓

No, I’m not talking about cutting and chopping veggies. I’m talking about getting ready to eat all that yummy food, LOL! Every time I open the fridge, though, I see the container of olives and the herbs de Provence salami that I bought to bring to my mother-in-law’s house, and it’s taking everything I have to not dive right in. I wonder if there is a surge of weight loss and fat burning pills like Decaslim immediately after Thanksgiving. You know, because people only have a week or two between T-Day and Christmas, LOL! I admit that I am already going a little heavy on the cookies. That needs to stop or else I’ll gain all my pregnancy weight before the end of the year. At least for us, it’s just the two big holidays. We don’t have any parties to go to where I might be tempted by lots of bad, yummy food. I don’t know how people do it when they have a full social calendar!

CSA Bonus Share

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Carol — 4 Comments ↓

The CSA we belong to offers members a bonus share if they renew their membership by a certain date. We made the deadline, so Saturday morning I bundled up and headed over to Stanfordville. I was really hoping for some cabbage (I’ve had slaw on the brain since I made burgers last week), but it seems that the crop was hit particularly hard by some kind of bug this year. Sigh… Oh well. We still recieved a generous amount of late-season veggies and if I were cooking Thanksgiving dinner I’d surely be all set!

Here’s what we got: spinach (there was a variety of other greens, but I did not feel like chard or arugula), onions, potatoes, garlic, turnips, sweet dumpling squash, butternut squash, carrots, and parsnips. I skipped celeriac and rutabega. (Confidential to Dad: I am so glad I gave you those three garlic cloves. Check it: four cloves in this share!) I’ll be bringing the butternut squash, turnips, and parsnips to my mother-in-law later this week. I might make stuffed squash with the sweet dumplings, and I plan on making onion soup this week since I have tons of onions.

It’s so funny to think that the next time I head over to the farm I will be days away from giving birth! Crazy!

Still Brrrrr!

Posted on November 20, 2008 by Carol — 5 Comments ↓

Goodness, my fingers are almost too cold to type! I want to get some gift knitting in this afternoon, but my hands seriously need to warm up first. At least the sun is shining, though!

So my dad just left about an hour ago. He came for a little sleepover with the boys and they had such a great time playing with him! Dad also helped Drew with the electrical work in our upstairs bathroom, so the new light and vent fan are now in – yay! He also helped hang our medicine chest (it’s one we had years ago in Ossining — we bought it from Restoration Hardware and I love it so much). The medicine chest is an absolute BEAST, but it looks very nice. This morning I put up the new shower curtain and voila! Bathroom makeover complete 🙂

Last night Drew wanted to run into Best Buy for something, so while he was buying that, we wandered around looking at plasma TVs and GPS systems. The we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, since Dad had never been there. We all had a really good time.

Today I’m working on laundry. I think I’ll just make tacos for dinner. I’m also considering making the Double Chocolate Snack Cake that Monica wrote about this week. Doesn’t that look so good? And no eggs, either! And then like I said, maybe I will work on a knitting project if my hands ever thaw.

Wishing you a warm, toasty day!

Brr!

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Carol — 4 Comments ↓

Goodness, I can’t seem to warm up today. On the weather report this morning, they mentioned a chance of snow flurries tomorrow – yikes! They also said that the average date for the first snowfall in this area is November 19th, so I suppose it only makes sense. A little dusting for Thanksgiving could be nice. We had a fun weekend over here. Saturday we decided to head over to Danbury and brave a shopping excursion at Christmas Tree Shops. The shoppers were annoying, as usual (are people dumb or just oblivious to the world around them?). But we did get loot for the boys’ Advent calendar and I got some tins for holiday baked goods, handsoaps that I like, and a few other things. When we were leaving the store, it was pouring rain so we opted to skip the mall and head over to Chili’s for lunch. Oh my God, it was so good! We got the spinach artichoke dip for an appetizer and I wanted to lick the bowl clean. Seriously. And as usual I got my chicken tacos – yummy! We considered braving the mall since the rain let up after lunch, but decided that since we all were in good moods, we’d just head home and relax rather than fight crowds.

Yesterday after we picked up Jake from Sunday school, I dropped the guys off at Target while I went grocery shopping at Walmart across the street. That worked out well and afterwards we ran a few other errands before returning home. We rented Kung-Fu Panda (gotta love Redbox!) and just hung out for the rest of the day. This weekend was a good balance of getting stuff done and down-time.

This morning I woke up with some major nausea after a week or so of feeling pretty good. Hopefully Drew’s company will have their health insurance meeting soon so we can figure out which plan we want for next year. It’s such a hassle comparing health insurance quotes, but at least going into the year knowing there will be a hospital stay makes it easier to figure things out. Ugh… imagine getting pregnant in January or February and being stuck with a plan that has less coverage! Anyway, hopefully the feeling will pass and I can get some stuff done. I seriously need to fold and put away laundry, and I need to return the DVD too.

Well, I hope your week is off to a good start!

Goofy

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Carol — 2 Comments ↓

Noah is currently galloping around the house on his hobby horse yelling, “Giddyup, cowboy!” Uh, I think he might have that wrong. Still, it is totally cute. He’s been pretty funny lately. When he gets angry at me for saying no to something (for example, “No, you cannot have a third Nutri-Grain bar), he furrows his brow and says, “Oh, bongos!” No idea where he came up with that one! But it makes me laugh every time!

Simple Christmas

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Carol — 1 Comment ↓

This morning as I read the news online, I saw a piece about the new Christmas ad from the American Humanist Association. Now, I don’t consider myself super-religious or anything. I am a bad Catholic, at best. But still, I got a bit annoyed over the slogan, “Why believe in God? Just be good for goodness sake.” I have friends who are agnostic or athiest and I respect their beliefs. And I get the point of the ad. I don’t think it’s meant to be malicious. I know they’re making a point. But I have to say that it chaps my hide to put this message in the context of Christmas, a Christian holiday. It’s celebrating the birth of Jesus. I find it antagonistic (or grinchy as someone put it in the article) to push their agenda during what is traditionaly a season with a religious focus. But I’m not going to get myself in a tizzy over it. They probably wouldn’t care anyway, LOL!

But then (funny how things happen), I watched this video over on Cheryl’s blog and felt a little better:

I’m all about keeping things simple this year, trying to remember the meaning of Christmas, enjoying time with my family, and hopefully teaching these lessons to our munchkins.

Wednesday Randomness

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Carol — 3 Comments ↓

Hooray – Drew is coming home tonight! He’s been in Virginia for work for the last couple of days. Seems like everything has gone pretty well, though the bed is apparently really uncomfortable. Well, it’s just your standard Hilton business hotel — not like if he had to go to a trade show or something and got to stay at a swank hotel in Las Vegas. I’m sure he’ll be happy to be back in NY!
Yesterday Noah randomly put on a beret and got out the watercolors and started painting. I took a couple photos, but I still have to upload them. Too cute!
He also just announced that his going to cook dinner for me tonight: ham, celery, and root beer. Good thing he is cute and not actually cooking, because just thinking about that combo… blech!
I am so eager for the first trimester to be over. Not because I want to rush time (I don’t!), but the nausea is really getting old. Overall I’ve been OK with Drew gone, probably because I had no choice. If I make sure I snack regularly I generally feel OK, but smells… ugh. I have a pretty acute sense of smell to begin with and it’s heightened during pregnancy (this time is no different). D.’s been doing all the cooking because my stomach turns so easily. So I’ve been holding my nose a lot when I open the fridge, LOL…
That’s about it. Pretty quiet week over here. I have to put new sheets on the beds and take care of some laundry this afternoon. I think I might bake some rosemary bread too. Nothing strong-smelling about that, thank goodness!

Saturday In The City

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Carol — 3 Comments ↓

For my birthday, my mother-in-law and aunt-in-law gave me a ticket to see the revival of American Buffalo on Broadway. (Drew was responsible for his own ticket, heh!) I am a big fan of David Mamet, so I was thrilled. We saw Glengarry Glen Ross when it was back on Broadway in 2005 (funny, I was pregnant then too!).

We dropped the boys off at Drew’s mom & aunt’s house and took the train down on Saturday morning. Usually the train is packed at that time of day, but this time there were plenty of seats. Maybe the rain discouraged people from going in? No matter, I was thrilled to sit and knit for 40 minutes, uninterrupted! I’d packed my purse full of snacks because my nausea has been awful lately. I was so afraid of not feeling well, but I made out just fine. By the time we got to Grand Central it was pouring, so we decided to find lunch there instead of looking for a restaurant. Neither of us remembered Junior’s having a seating area, but there it was, so we decided to try it. (Very little else was appealing to me.) We both got the soup and salad for lunch, and I think that’s got to be the best $10 lunch at Grand Central! First they brought us a bowl of yummy cole slaw and awesome sour pickles. The bowls of split pea soup were huge and came with a delicious pumpernickel roll. The salads were bigger than I thought they’d be too. It made for a healthy, comforting lunch!

Then we hurried over to the Belasco. Neither of us had seen a show there before and it was a very pretty theatre. The show was fantastic and John Leguizamo was just amazing! I’ve always liked him, but after seeing him perform live — wow. What a great actor. It was fun seeing Cedric the Entertainer as well and he was also quite good in his role. Haley Joel Osment was a little bit wooden, but still gave a good performance. The show was well-paced and everyone in the audience seemed to really enjoy it. I know we did! If you have a chance to see it before it closes, I would say — GO!

After that we decided to rush to make a train back to Ossining and got dinner at the diner we went to all the time when we lived there. Then we picked the boys up and headed home. I love going into the city and I’m so excited that we get to do it again in a couple weeks! We are taking Jake to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular! I am probably more excited than he is. Every single Thanksgiving since I was a little girl, I’d watch The Rockettes in the Macy’s Parade and think about how much I’d like to see them live someday. And I’m finally going to get to do it 🙂 I hope it’s a nice day so we can see the tree at Rockefeller Center. It won’t be lit, but I think it should be up at least. Yay!