Thursday, January 19, 2012

I know, I know

You'll have to forgive me for falling off the face of the earth blogosphere in the past few months.  Since I was last present on the blog at the beginning of November, Colin and I have visited Maryland then made the actual move, put the house on the market, gone under contract, found potential homes here...  it's been a crazy few months but it is so nice to be living in the same place as Mike finally.  So in the interest of time, I'll update the last few months by way of pictures.  Then on to one of my goals for the year - update at least once a week... we'll see how that goes.
 
Loving time with Aunt Jenni

My sister and nephew made it to my dad's to visit and the great thing about that is my dad lives just an hour from us!  So we got to spend a little bit of time together - but not nearly enough time.

We went to NYC for 3 days to celebrate Christmas as a family.  We knew that we wouldn't have a "Christmas" here since there were no decorations and we didn't really even know anyone here, so it was our own little present to ourselves to get to spend the holiday together and experience a great city.

Herald Square Santa
Colin's first Santa experience was with the Santa on 34th Street.  It was pretty fun to see the actual "Miracle on 24th Street" Santa.  The Macy's at Herald Square was incredible!  We went on the night of the 22nd and they told us it was an hour and 15 minute wait and we decided to come back the next morning.  They warned us that the 23rd would be even busier but we decided to go at around 10am and we waited maybe 30 minutes, tops.  It was definitely worth it even though Colin looks a little shell-shocked in all the pictures.



We had a very touristy-filled time in New York but it really was a great trip.  We started our trip with the Empire State Building then headed back to the hotel to try to get Colin to take a nap, which he was not a fan of despite being exhausted.  He screamed so loud that one of the maids knocked on the door to make sure everything was OK.  That night we went to Macy's and Rockefeller Center before crashing at the hotel.  Friday after our time with Santa, we made it to Union Station, the Chrysler Building, did some shopping and ended the day by meeting up with Colin's favorite nanny from the summer because she's now living in NYC (which made me very sad when she left this summer).  Saturday we went to Katz's Deli (famous for the When Harry Met Sally scene with Meg Ryan faking it) and then made our way to Central Park.  Unfortunately it was too cold to really appreciate Central Park.  I think if Mike and I had been there alone it would have been OK but since Colin was with us, it was definitely too cold.  

Overall, we did about half of our transit in cabs and the other half on the subway.  We both felt pretty comfortable with the subway but it definitely was an experience.  On our last cab ride as we were getting dropped off at Penn Station, I almost lost my cell phone - thank goodness for lots of traffic outside of Penn Station so the cabbie hadn't gotten to drive off yet.

Christmas day was spent in the apartment with nothing all that fun - we literally watched TV and played with Colin.  Then we had to go out for dinner because we had no food in the apartment at all... so sushi it was.

That really has been the most excitement we have had since we have been together as a family.  The little things like having dinner together and just sitting on the couch are really great.  Colin seems to learn something new every day... if he would just let go I swear he'd be walking.  He'll start day care for the first time just after his birthday because I have accepted a position here - back to 3 12 hour shifts a week, mix of days and nights.  I'm very excited to get back to work and I really believe that Colin having a chance to interact with other kiddos will be so great for him.

This post has certainly been more wordy than I like, but over the next few days and weeks I'll update with lots of pictures... all in anticipation of our little man turning 1!  I don't know where the last year has gone but it's really been incredible.  It's time for us to reminisce about the craziness that has gone on in the past year!