Grins N Giggles

I am happy to say we survived our first week apart.  Neither Jayson or I shed a tear at any of our departures and at each and every pick up he was still smiling.  I swear I love this kid more and more every day.  All the credit for this successful week belongs to my long time friend Michelle who runs Grins N Giggles Daycare.  I had to go with my gut and forgo prior plans to enroll him at another daycare, however infant care is tougher to acquire than a meeting with the President of the USA so as you can imagine I was panicking.  Michelle fortunately had a brief time frame available where she could watch Jayson for me and for that I am SO grateful.  She is a life saver and I swear my kid is now bored when he comes home because he has such a blast at her house every day.  Not to mention he has a zillion little mothers tending to his every need and what can I say, he's a flirt like his father.  Just check out how happy he's been this week:

Pass the Ketchup

Ok, I am in serious need of catching everyone up on the past week of activities which of course flew by in a blink of an eye.  I don't know where the time went, but it went so quickly I had no time to blog.

At any rate, we had a wonderful July 4th holiday surrounded by friends and family.  Even though it was a week night we threw together a bbq.  The local fireworks are viewable from our front lawn so most of our guests stayed late to enjoy them.  This year we had plenty of activities planned:  wiffle ball, washers, ladder ball, horseshoes, and of course the pool.  I also tried out a new recipe for Raspberry Rhubarb Upside Down Cake which was out of this world.

26 & Counting

Since 2009 the hubby and I have selfishly taken over the holiday of Thanksgiving.  I say selfishly because we host both sides of the family which means we don't have to bounce houses for once.  The first year two years we had 27 people.  This year we had 26 as my cousin Richie wasn't in attendance.  You are probably wondering how we pull off such a feat.  Well, we have a wonderful sunroom which converts very nicely into a long dining room.  We borrow tables and chairs from the local high school where my mom works and everyone brings a dish to pass and/or a dessert.  My sister-in-law and I take care of the turkey, the stuffing, and a couple sides that we can make on the stove top (since oven space is at a premium).  I will tell you the first two years were chaos.  Year one was just mainly because we had no idea what we were doing, our timing was off, and we over did it on food.  Year two would have been perfect except for the fact that the turkey took forever since it was still a tiny bit frozen inside.  This year was a piece of cake.  We had a 26 lb turkey and he was thawing in the fridge since the Thursday before the holiday.  This year I can especially count as a success because the left overs fit in one fridge.  The prior two years we had so much food left over that a majority of it ended up in fridge out in the garage, aka Jay's "man cave."   I guess it's like they say "third time's the charm."  

Every year seeing all of our family in one place makes me feel extremely blessed.  Usually one of the kids, either a cousin or a sibling of mine, will say the standard "Bless us oh lord" grace, however, this year my Grandfather came prepared.  He said such a beautifully touching prayer over the meal and followed it up with "and that was from Dear Abby" which of course had us all chuckling, but the prayer itself was awesome enough that I thought I'd share his version on here:

Dear heavenly Father:

We thank you for the food we are about to enjoy here today and 

we ask you to help us to remember the hungry.

We thank you for our health and ask that you help us to remember the sick.

We thank you for our family and friends here with us tonight and 

ask that you help us to remember those who are without.

We thank your for our freedoms and ask that you help 

us to remember those who are oppressed.

For all these blessings we are thankful in Jesus name, Amen.

Ketchup

Today's title is a bit of a play on phonetics charades style.  One word, sounds like... you guessed it:  Catch Up.  Get it?  Ketchup = Catch up...

Anywho, this weekend was jam packed full of good things: friends, food, shoes and snowmobiles.  Not necessarily in that order but it sounded better that way.  Friday night the hubby and I had an excellent dinner out at the Reel Seafood Company.  We'd never been before and even without a reservation we had  absolutely no wait.  Unheard of in Albany, NY!  We should have bought a lotto ticket.  We enjoyed some fresh bread, adult beverages, fried calamari, stuffed shrimp and Alaskan Chicken (crab meat in a cheesy white garlic sauce over chicken). Delicious.  A little pricey though, so this will have to be something we do sparingly.

Saturday was the Big East Powersports Show in Syracuse, NY.  We went with friends of ours who share our affinity for snowmobiling.  This event features vendors from across the US who bring a butt-load of product with them at deeply discounted prices.  Deeply discounted must mean "jam packed convention center" in another language so I had to pretend not to be claustrophobic long enough to buy stuff.  I'm a bargain shopper and let me tell you...I was successful.  I got an entire outfit (Jacket and bibs) for $179.  Jackets alone normally retail over $300.  I also found Itasca snowmobile boots for $49.  At one point, though, I was trying on a modular helmet (since my current helmet is a hand-me-down that fogs up terrible) and was bumped from behind causing the face shield to slam down on the bridge of my nose.  I could have cried but I reminded myself this would all be worth it since we were going to Delmonico's for dinner afterward.  Delmonico's features their very own "Delmonico's Steak" which is a 24 ounce center cut seasoned angus rib-eye steak. This of course was the entree I ordered and subsequently ate the other half of for lunch today.

Sunday was a day of shoe shopping with my mom and sisters.  We have an upcoming wedding to look spiffy for, so we headed out to one of the malls closest to my house.  A new store had opened called Shoe Dept. Encore.  This store is like heaven for shoe addicts.  An entire room dedicated to clearance.  A tv and chairs over by the kid section.  Rows and rows of beautifully organized name-brand shoes with bargain prices.  Plenty of space so that you didn't feel overcrowded by other shoppers.  Plus the store was cooler on the temperature side of things, so that made it all that much better to shop there.  I despise shopping in a hot over-crowded store.  It makes me grumpy.  At the Shoe Dept Encore, I was far from grumpy.  I had more shoe selection than I could have asked for.  I probably tried on ten or so shoes that all could have been contenders for my dress.  I ended up with the black shoe pictured.

What did you do this weekend?  How do you feel about crowds?