Day 2

This morning we got up really early and headed to the Today show and Lady Gaga was performing for the summer concert series. Not having ever been to New York, I had no ideas what to expect. The amount of people was unbelievable. We decided to leave because of the sheer number of people and I'm glad we did. We heard reports of 18 to 20 thousand people which is the largest crowd they have ever had. Not wanting to go back to the room, we just rolled up my sign and stuck it in Becky's backpack. It stuck out a little, but we didn't worry about it. We walked over to Rockefeller Center and it was so neat to see something that I've seen on TV and movies so many times.

Radio City Music Hall



We decided that we would get on the subway and go to Soho. I had gotten some recommendations from a friend about restaurants. I wanted to go to Magnolia Bakery and thought we could eat breakfast there. We were at the wrong end of Bleecker Street, so we had to walk a long, long way to get there (sadly enough, my sign for the today show fell out of Becky's backpack and we didn't know it. Bummer!). We finally made it to Magnolia Bakery and it the bad news was that it didn't open until 9:00 and it was only 7:30. Ugh. SO, we decided to go to another recommended place called Balthazar's. We ended up just taking a cab because we were 10 blocks away. As Becky said, it was the best $8 we ever spent! Anyway, the food was awesome and I'm so glad we went there. It was wonderful!!

We hopped on the subway and headed to Coney Island. I don't really know what I was expecting, but of course everything was closed up tight. Well, it was still very quite early in the day because of the Today show/Magnolia Bakery fiasco and it makes sense that people wouldn't be on a ferris wheel or roller coaster at 9:00 in the morning. :)






We decided to head back and wanted to go on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was really cool. This is my best picture by far...


After we walked the bridge, we took the Subway back to Grand Central. My mom and Becky went back to the room and I went downstairs in Grand Central and found this-


Yay!!!!! So I bit the bullet And bought these...


Oh my goodness. We split them into thirds so we could all try them. My favorites were the smores one, the red velvet one and the yellow iced one. They were yummy.
Tonight we are heading to Wicked and could not be more excited!!! Stay tuned!

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First day in New York

Yesterday we had a great first day in NY! We got up at 3:30to catch a 6:00 am flight. We landed without incident and were so excited to be in New York! We checked into our hotel on 40th street. It is great! We are only a couple of blocks from Grand Central Station. We started to unpack and my mom brought out a sign she had made for to take to the today show.

Grand Central Station





Me & Becky


Who knew they'd ever name a restaurant with my initials? :)


Times Square



Me, Mom & Becky


After much walking around, we headed back to the hotel and took a nap. We got up and headed to dinner. We stopped at Marcony's on Lexington. Yum! Here is me and my mom...


When we got back to the room, the empire State Building was lit up and it was beautiful. This is actually the view from our room - how awesome is that?


We are having a great time!

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Summer continues...

It's July... How did that happen??? This summer has been busy for us - that's why I'm not blogging much. I barely have time to do a load of laundry!!! I have good memories of summer and I wanted the same for Reed (since this is his first real summer) so we've been doing something every day. It's been fun and the boys are having a blast, but there's no way I can keep up with this pace!! A small peek into our summer...
My mom has my two nieces staying with her his week, so on Monday we went to Six Flags. We rode the train around the park, we rode the cave ride twice and we drove the antique cars. When we got off the cave ride the second time it looked like this...

It was pouring and showed no signs of letting up. So we decided to wait it out for a bit...



Then Reed and Lilly had to go to the bathroom. We went to the closest one which turned out to be not close and all and saw these yahoos sliding through the giant puddles.



We finally decided to head to the car and after crossing many small rivers in the parking lot (with Lilly and Reed yelling "This is awesome!!!" the entire time) we made it to the car and eventually home. I was soaked, exhausted and smelly. It was an outstanding day. :)

We have also been swimming like maniacs. We were at Gammy and DadDad's pool almost every day last week. We went over on Sunday for a belated Father's Day celebration and Brian brought his camera that supposedly works underwater. I didn't think it would work, but he got some really neat pictures.





Both boys have swimmers ear... I wonder why? :)

And this next picture is just because I decided to dress the boys alike and had to show their absolute cuteness!


I love my guys!


I have one more week here and this time next week I'll be in New York for my birthday trip!! Stay tuned!

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Summer!!

We have been having quite the summer this year! We have been quite busy simce school let out, but we,ve been having fun!! Last Friday we went to Six Flags. Here Reed and Uncl Brandon are on the cave ride. We rode it 5 times people. I don't know why he loves it so much, but it's always his favorite ride. And I apologize for my brother's weird expression. It's just how he is. :)

Uncle Brandon took him on the log ride and he told me he liked everything about it except for the end where you go down the hill and splash. Actually he didn't like anything that made his stomach feel weird. Anyway, here they are on the log ride. You can barely see Reed's little blond head in the front...


We saw a face painting booth and Reed just had to have one. He got a snake on his leg. The kids loves snakes and bugs!



We had a great day. The rest of the summer will be filled with a lot of this...


Yay for summer!!!!


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Memorial Day Weekend

For Memorial Day, my parents rented a cabin in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. We had a really fun weekend. We ate, watched TV, played games, made smores... Just relaxed and enjoyed each other. Here mine and Brian's our room in the cabin- love the log bed!

We rented paddle boats and Hudson life jacket rode up a little. :)

Me and my baby...



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Kindergarten Graduation

Today was Reed's Kindergarten graduation.  It was cute.  They sang some songs and each child took a picture accepting a diploma.  Here's my big boy...

Here we are with our little graduate

with Mimi and Pepaw...

and Gammy and DadDad...

and here he is with Mrs. Sain.

I cannot say enough about Mrs. Sain.  She has made is first year of school absolutely wonderful.  It took so much off of my shoulders to know that he had such a sweet teacher who loved him so much!  Thank you Mrs. Sain!

And to our sweet boy - your daddy and I are so very proud of you.  You have done such a great job at school - listening and learning SO much this year.  You are going to be a great first grader and I am so excited to see all the great things that you will do!  Love you little man!

Memories

Brian just came in and as we was putting on his boots getting ready for the day, a memory flashed back to me.  About 8 to 12 months ago, Hudson was just toddling around and he would always put toys in Brian's boots.  Brian would start to put them on in the mornings and only get it half way on and have to take it off to dump out some random toy.  Giant legos, action figures... anything that would fit got dropped down in his boots.  I reminded him of that this morning and he smiled and said "We need to write that stuff down, don't we?"  Yesterday I was realizing how big Hudson is getting.  He's losing a lot of his baby fat and really starting to hold converstations with us.  It's great to have certain freedoms, but also very sad that I'm losing my baby so quickly!  And Reed... oh, gracious.  He will be a first grader next year.  He is such a smart, sweet, helpful child.  It seems like the days of baby and toddlerhood are SO long ago!  The days of him constantly carrying around his plastic elephant that he called an "et", the days of when he couldn't find something and he would say it was "hino" (hiding). Where has the time gone?  I am so crazy about my sweet boys and all the great memories they have given me.  Here's looking forward to making many more memories along the way!

Two super cute boys + a juicy watermelon = 

The beginning of a fun summer!

If you'd like to read about it...

Brian has done a couple of new posts on his blog about our garden(s).  Read about it here.  I really like what he titled the latest post. :)

Mother's Day Weekend

I've had such a great weekend!  Yesterday morning, Brian took the boys to breakfast and then to the store.  Both boys picked out flowers for me and Reed got me the sweetest necklace.   We worked outside in the garden and then spent the evening at Brian's parents for his mom's mothers day.  This morning after church, we took my mom out to lunch at Miyako's where she and I shared some sushi and filet mignon - Yum!  After a nap, we headed out to the garden to get the corn plants on the ground.  Since rain was supposed to be on the way, we wanted to get as much planted as possible.  For the next couple of hours, Brian dug holes and Reed and I planted the corn plants.  (Hudson played in the dirt, drank our Route 44's from Sonic, sat in the tractor seat and yelled at everybody to look, repeatedly stepped on various plants and cried a lot for whatever reason the moment called for.  He was quite helpful.)  We cleaned up and went to eat where both boys ended up on my side of the booth for dinner.  I had the best Mother's Day that I can remember.

To my sweet husband - Thank you.  Thank you for giving me these two precious boys and making not only this day, but our lives special.  I love you like crazy.

E-I-E-I-O...

After so many plants, I wasn't shocked when Brian came home with these yesterday...

Ten baby guineas.  They are so stinkin' cute!  The boys loved them!

The guineas eat bugs and will help with our snake issue - Yay!

I'm beginning to accept it now... Folks, we're quickly becoming a farm.  We cut, bale and sell hay.  We will soon have "crops".  Brian is getting a new tiller as we speak (the old one was having issues) and today he'll be tilling so we can get the corn, pumpkins and canteloupe planted.  I've been weeding the garden the last couple of days and Brian and I spent some time yetsterday walking around discussing where things should go.  A corn field here and a chicken coop there... Chickens??  Why, yes we'll have chickens. What kind of farm would we be without eggs? :)

As I was sitting in the garage yesterday watching the boys play with the guineas, I saw this bag and the name make me laugh out loud.

Evidently I'm becoming a farm wife. I didn't know how much I would like all of this, but turns out, I do! I guess as the saying goes, if the shoe fits... (or in this case, the hat...)

The Good, The Bad and The Crazy

First we'll start with the bad stuff... 

Brian found a copperhead in the studio the other night.  Is was super windy outside and the wind blew the doors wide open.  Evidently, the snake was attracted to the warm building, so he crawled right in.  Brian had gone over to let the dogs in for the night and he saw what he thought was one of the boys plastic snakes... until it moved.  He came back in the house, changed his flip flops to boots and after trying to chop the head off with a blunt garden hoe type thing with out any success, finally got the snake outside and chopped the head off with an ax. Yikes!

Now to the crazy stuff... Brian came home on Friday and told me (and I quote) "I did something today that you're going to roll your eyes at."  Honestly, he does stuff all the time that I think is silly/funny/weird/crazy, so I had no idea what to expect.  Evidently, he had gone to a local nursery and they had plants on sale.  They had quite a few left, so he offered to buy ALL of them if they gave him a deal.  The boy came home with 7 flats (just keep in mind that a flat is 12 plants) of pumpkin plants, 5 flats of canteloupe and hundreds of corn plants.  When I say hundreds, I am NOT joking.  Amongst these gillions of plants, we have a few varieties.  We now will be growing regular sweet corn (like corn on the cob that you eat), ornamental corn (the pretty multi-colored corn that you see as decoration around Thanksgiving), some other kind of colored corn and popcorn.  The two pictures below show what he came home with.  He had to go back and get more because it wouldn't all fit in the bed of his truck and the enclosed trailer.  Seriously.

(Just a side note, since he bought all the above plants, he has also bought a lemon tree, and orange tree and two blueberry bushes.) 

Here is a (far away, but current) picture of our garden now.

To plant all of that stuff that he bought, he's going to have to plow up a lot more land but I'm sure he's all about it.  He told me yesterday that we 'needed' a hay baler.  Have mercy.

Lastly, I just had to include this because it's the good stuff.  :)