Just A Brief Recap

Since our big storm last week, things have been pretty calm. Thursday the weather warmed up enough for us to actually get out of the house, so the boys and I went and visited our friends Susan, Anna, and Lucy at their house. They used to live next door to us and now live about 5 or 6 blocks away, which unfortunately is far enough that we don't see them often. The boys had a lot of fun playing with their friends and I had fun hanging out with my friend. Visiting them also made me realize how lucky I had been during the huge storm; Susan's husband was out of town (in L.A., no less!), so she had to snow blow her 4-5 foot drifts and the entire driveway one night after getting Lucy, who is just 9 months, in bed, while Anna watched a show and then watched Susan from the door. Of course, this was Susan's first time with the snow blower, too. Ugh.

Here are Zach, Drew, and Anna enjoying lunch at Anna's fun pink table.

Friday we hosted play group, and Drew took a good nap. Here's what he looked like when he woke up. He reminded me a bit of his cousin Cam with his great bed-head.

Friday night I got to go out with the play group moms for a girls night out. We had a great time eating dinner at Splash, a really good seafood restaurant, and then going to a piano bar in the East Village that is owned by a former member of The Nadas.

This picture shows (from L to R) Erin, me, Sara, Tyra, and Brea. I used to teach with all of the girls but Sara, but we love her just as much as anyone else!

Saturday was the start of my annual cookie-baking weekend. I actually had mixed up a double batch of cut-out sugar cookies and made a batch of these yummy chocolate/peanut butter bars on Friday afternoon. After a quick run to the store for extra flour, milk, and a few other necessities, I got started on the baking. Mike and the boys headed out to run some errands, but got lucky by running into Santa at the gas station near our house first. Every year on the second weekend in December, Santa hops on the town fire engine and drives through the streets talking with kids and handing out candy canes. So it's a double bonus- Santa AND a fire engine with firemen on it. Anyway, I started baking by 9 a.m., and I am not kidding, I basically baked all darn day. I did sit down for some cottage cheese and pretzels for lunch around noon (I had been stealing bites of dough here and there, so I wasn't all that hungry), and I did stop for a bit when Drew woke up from his nap. When it was all said and done, on Saturday I cut out, baked, and frosted that double batch of sugar cookies, made chocolate-pistachio wreaths (something new, and not worth the trouble of making again, I think), made some new chocolate cookies with peanut butter in the middle (also something new and good, but again, not necessarily worth the trouble in my opinion), made 7-layer bars, and at about 10:30 that night, I made Mike help me make Cornflake wreaths. On Sunday afternoon I also made spritz cookies and was going to make regular and chocolate pizzelles, but I realized I didn't have room on the plates I was putting together for those. I already have the chocolate chopped up for the chocolate pizzelles, so I'll have to make those soon! It was a lot of baking, and I sure was tired (especially considering I didn't get home from my girls night out until 1:30 a.m. and then was up at 7 a.m.), but I enjoyed it. My sisters and I used to get together to do a big cookie baking weekend, but with all the kids we have now, our lives are a lot busier, and it just hasn't worked out the last couple of years. So while I had fun doing all the baking, there definitely was a hint of loneliness and sadness in not having my sisters there to laugh and converse with me.

I tried to rope Zach into helping me with baking, but he wasn't interested. He was much more interested in getting outside to play in the snow since it was finally warm enough to get out. So while Drew napped and I baked, Mike and Zach went sledding on a huge hill not too far from our house.

Here's a little video montage of the sledding. The first part of the video is just Zach- watch for him to come down the hill on the white inner tube. Then the video transitions into Zach and Mike on the inner tube together, and we think it's a pretty hilarious clip. You can hear Zach saying something like, "I'm flying!" and Mike's laughing, and then there's an audible thump, and Zach laughs, but Mike says, "That really hurt." It turns out they sledded right into a tree, ending their ride with Mike's back hitting the tree. I'm thankful it was Mike hitting the tree and not Zach, and luckily Mike wasn't hurt badly.

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Here's a cute picture of the boys playing firemen together on Monday. I just love how they play with each other (most of the time) lately.

As a birthday present to me today, Drew decided that he would wake up before 6:00 this morning. I wasn't too happy about that, but I went in and told him he needed to go back to sleep, and he said in his sweet little voice, "Okay," and rolled over onto his tummy. Well, then we heard him again at 6:30, so Mike went in and told him again to go back to sleep. Bless his heart- he sure tried hard. It was a preschool day, and on preschool days we need to be done with breakfast and brushing teeth by about 8:20ish. Well, of course, this is what Drew looked like at 7:55 when I walked into his room.

Totally asleep. I had had his door open for a while to help him wake up, had opened his east-facing blinds so the sun could pour in on him, and I'd taken this picture of him. At least he went back to sleep, right? I did appreciate that a lot. It definitely ended up being a slightly rushed morning, though.

The highlight of my morning was definitely when my parents called to sing me happy birthday. Thanks, Mom and Dad! To celebrate my birthday we decided to go out to eat at Olive Garden, and realized about half-way through that we should have stayed home and made tacos like I had originally planned. Drew ate one bread stick and not one bite of his pasta, and Zach told me after trying his pizza, "I wouldn't order this again! I mean, I like it, but I don't love it." Drew spent most of the dinner alternating between saying mama and home, because he did not feel like being there. Good thing Mike and I are fast eaters. Oh! The funniest part of the night was that I got carded when I ordered a glass of wine. That doesn't happen very often, and considering it is my 32nd birthday and I was at dinner with my husband and 2 children, it was just a little funny to get carded. It didn't really make me feel any younger, though.

Tomorrow is Zach's preschool program, so hopefully I'll have some good photos and maybe even a little video to post.