Happy New Year's Eve!

I had big plans for this years New Year's Eve...  Roast in the crock pot for dinner, holiday lights at the zoo, and yummy snacks to watch the ball drop...

Well, it didn't quite pan out that way.  As I was cutting potatos this morning to throw in the crock pot, I managed to slice my thumb wide open with a paring knife.  We managed to stop the bleeding after about 30 minutes.  Once we assessed the damage after the bleeding stopped, we knew right away it was going to need stitches :(

So we spent 4 hours in the ER today and came out with 5 stitches.  Marshall passed out in the car while we were waiting for my prescription to be filled so we decided just to stay in tonight.  Our wild and crazy evening now includes pizza and possibly an NCIS marathon before we watch the ball drop.

Hope everyone has a safe New Year's Eve!

~AKO

Christmas in Review

We didn't do as much as I had wanted as a family this Christmas season due to everything else that was going on, but I definitely wanted to make sure we made it for our town's annual Christmas tree lighting.  It was originally scheduled for December 7th, but due to bad weather was pushed back to December 14th.  The town we live in isn't big.  As a matter of fact, town hall is a very quick 10 minute drive from our house.  The festivities weren't huge, but it had a nice small town feel to it.

Everything took place in front of our town hall.

There was free hot cocoa and cookies for everyone as well as a small petting zoo.  They had two sheep, two goats, and a pony.  Marshall was beside himself excited about the animals!

At the end of the night, they had all the kids count down and lit the town Christmas tree!

Santa showed up to, complete with a police and fire escort!  I didn't get any good photos of that.  Marshall was so excited when Santa showed up we decided to wait in line to try and get a photo with him.  When we finally got to the front of the line, not only had the battery in my camera died, Marshall freaked out and wouldn't go near him!  I ended up with a crappy photo on my phone of Marshall reaching for the sucker they were trying to bribe him with.  Oh well... there's always next year!

Since we were in Michigan the past 2 years (to make up for the previous 2 years we were in NY), we spent Christmas on the East Coast this year.  We offered to host Freddy's family for Christmas this year now that we're in a house that has room for guests and festivities.  They traditionally do family Christmas on Christmas Eve so I spent most of the day and night before trying to get our house ready.  I didn't get everything completed that I wanted, but I guess it was good enough!

Here is what I was able to do in our dining room.  I actually got to use my holiday china and the fancy silverware that we got for a wedding gift.  Our dining room table only seats 6 so with 10 people to feed we had to add our card table.  In the future we hope to get a nicer table set that can expand to feed 10 - 12 people.

 

After dinner we opened presents!  Freddy and I got some gift cards that can be used to purchase things for our new home.  We also got a beautiful ornament from his sister that has our home address and family name on it as our "New Home" ornament.  Marsh, of course, was the center of attention and made out like a bandit!

 

 

I had already decided to not put out Marshall's gifts from us until that evening so that he would have stuff to open on Christmas morning.  Following in the footsteps of my mom, I was up until 3:00 AM wrapping gifts!!  But in the end it was worth it.  I fell asleep on the couch and when Marsh came down the stairs the next morning, I heard him say "Ooooooh.... pretty!"

Marshall doesn't quite get the Santa Clause concept, but he definitely gets how to open presents!  It took like three hours to open everything because he had to play with his new toy as soon as he opened it before he would open the next gift.  There were lots of cars, trucks, and musical instruments added to Marsh's toy collection that morning!

 

 

You can see the carnage :)  While I missed being with my family this year, we had a nice little family Christmas on Christmas morning.  It was followed up with pancakes for lunch and a nice dinner at my friend, Michelle's house.

 

I hope you and your family had a nice holiday and are looking forward to 2013!

 

~AKO



A Project I Just Might Complete!

The Christmas season was very disorganized for me this year.  It all started with Freddy's possible overseas deployment that wrecked havoc on our summer.  While I was preparing and expecting to move into our new house in September alone 4 weeks before the deployment was supposed to begin (Freddy was supposed to be at a training course during our scheduled closing and move), his deployment was cancelled a week before closing.  While we were happy that he didn't have to leave for 12 months, our summer had been pretty much ruined with various pre-deployment training requirements.  To the point where Freddy almost missed Marshall's baptism in August!

While we were settling into our new home, Hurricane Sandy hit at the end of October.  Freddy was deployed out to Long Island for two weeks while Marsh, 4 putties and I did our best to cope with chilly weather and no power.  We were lucky in that we sustained minimum property damage and only lost power for 3 days.  Others around our town were not so lucky.

Oh... and Marsh turned 2 the day after Sandy hit!  Last year we had a huge snow storm on his 1st birthday, which makes me wonder what next year will bring!

Anyway...  we were supposed to have Marsh's birthday party on 11/10, but pushed it back to 11/24 since Freddy had only just been released that same weekend.

So, Thanksgiving hit, then Marsh's birthday party, then all of a sudden it was December 10th and I hadn't even ordered my Christmas cards yet!!!  I finally got our Christmas tree and a few decorations up around the house, but never got around to putting everything up.  We still have a lot of boxes to unpack yet from the move and still trying to figure out where we want everything to live.  I did most of my Christmas shopping online (thanks free shipping from Amazon!!!) but just couldn't get around to getting things organized.

I had missplaced my Erin Condren 2012 Life Planner shortly after Hurricane Sandy and just couldn't get myself organized without it.  I finally found it last week and the first thing I did was write down a task list of everything I still needed to get done.

So, back to the original subject of this post...  I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of days about what I would like to accomplish in 2013.  The usual are on the list...  get fit, get organized, pay down debt, etc.  I usually end up with crafty type things on my list that I never seem to finish, but I think I might have found something that I might actually finish this year!

It is called a Smash Book.  Now, I cannot take credit for coming up with the idea.  I saw it posted on The Young Retiree today and was intrigued by the ability to be inpulsive with it.  I started doing some research on the web to see what was involved and found a whole world of "smashers".  I have an idea on what I want to do and it involves the purchase of this little guy...

Once I iron out all the details, I'll let you in on my plans!  I won't be trading in my Nikon anytime soon, but the Fujifilm INSTAX 210 Instant Photo Camera will allow me to get some shots instantly to add to my book.

Oh... and by the way... tonight is the last full moon of 2012!

~AKO

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas! I don't know about you but Marsh made out like a bandit today!

~AKO

New Technology

So I have finally taken another step into the current century and just acquired an iPad. My company has an internal rewards program and my awesomeness finally earned enough points for one so I figured why not. Not sure how I feel about it yet but it sure makes it easier to check in on things without the need to boot up my computer. Now the I have an iPod and an iPad, my next step is probably going to be an iPhone when I am due an upgrade in February.

Marsh and I spent about an hour playing with the Team UmiZoomi app tonight :)

A picture of my Christmas kitty taken with my iPad...if anyone can give insight on how to resize my photos when posting to a blog via the iPad let me know!

~AKO

Christmas Decor

So... Things have been crazy busy here these days. We are still not able to get into our offices in Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy. We almost got in today but it was cancelled at the last minute.

I can't believe Christmas is two weeks away! I am still slowly getting our decor up. We are not going too crazy this year but you can guarantee Freddy will be up on the roof with lights next year :). Marsh has been doing ok with it. Every once in awhile he will pull off an ornament to look at. Here are some pictures of what we have up so far. We are hosting Christmas this year so expect a highly decorated interior :)

~AKO

Wordless Wednesday

 

 

~AKO

Marshall's 1st Birthday Party

Now that we're sort of caught up from Hurricane Sandy, we decided to still try and throw together a birthday party for Marsh's 2nd birthday this Saturday.  Before we get to that, since I never got around to posting pictures from his 1st birthday party last year I figured I would get a few... ok a lot... up to get us in the birthday party spirit!

Since Marshall was born on October 30th, the theme of the party was "Our Little Pumpkin is Turning One!".  Everything was pumpkin themed.

 

 We had an awesome magician perform for the kids.  Even the adults enjoyed the show.

 

And... of course... the ceremonious smashng of the cake.  It took him awhile to really get started but in the end Marsh even had frosting on his forehead!  He looked like he had just survived a zombie attack.
 

 

The night went by pretty fast but everyone had a good time.  My mom, brother, and sister were even able to come out for the weekend to attend the party.

 

Stay tuned for more "flashback" posts!

 

~AKO



The Aftermath...

When we woke up on 10/30, we had no power but most of the remnants of Hurricane Sandy had finished with our area.  I couldn't believe some of the damage I was hearing on the news.  We had no heat and no power and it was cold.

I checked outside and luckily we didn't really sustain any property damage.  My passenger mirror on my care was shattered but that was it.

 

Oh, and by the way... it was Marshall's 2nd birthday!!  So we tried to make the most of it.  It was still rainy and cold so we obviously couldn't go outside to play.  We hadn't fully unpacked Marshall's toys so I quickly brought that box upstairs from the basement and we started unpacking.

 

We played a lot of cars...

 



 

And colored a lot...

 



 

And since it would get dark around 4:00pm, we would sit by our battery powered lantern and read books for most of the evening.  We had a lot of Marshall and Mom time.  We were very lucky and our power came back on around 8:45pm Wednesday evening. 

 

Our cable and Internet were still out but that was finally restored on Sunday so, after a week of working off my blackberry, I can actually work this week.  Unfortunately we all have to work from home until they give the all clear for us to get back into our office, which was in Zone A in Manhattan.  We just heard it could be 6 - 8 weeks before we can get back in.  I HATE working from home :(

 

We were supposed to have Marshall's birthday party this weekend, but we'll be pushing that back since we have no idea whe Freddy will be home.

 

~AKO



Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy pretty much wrecked havoc on the New York/New Jersey area.  Many coastal neighborhoods are pretty much gone.  The Jersey Shore, a popular summer vacation spot for many, will never be the same.  Part of the Boardwalk in Atlantic City is gone.  Many people still do not have power.  It is insane.

Well, we weathered the storm about as good as could be expected.  Freddy was activated about 2 hours after he got home from reserve duty last Sunday and has been gone ever since.  They are saying it will be another week and a half before they can even talk about releasing people.  He's been running various missions out on Long Island.

The storm rolled in full force late Monday afternoon.  My office had already made it a mandatory work from home day and I opted to not take Marshall into day care since I didn't really know when it was going to start getting bad.  People started to report flickering lights early afternoon.  Ours flickered a bit around 5:00pm.  I logged off work around 6:00pm so that I wasn't online should we lose power.  This is a shot Monday afternoon when the first banch fell in the street.



 

We went through our normal routine, just me and the Marsh.  As I was finishing up his bath, our lights went out for about 30 seconds and came back on.  Around 8:45pm, I was just getting Marsh dried off and dress and the lights went out for good.  Naturally Marshall started whimpering a bit so my first mission was to keep him calm.  So we lit the lantern to figure out what we needed to do.  I also had flashlights and as soon as I handed one to Marsh, he was fine.  His red flashlight served as a security blanket for him throughout the week.  He wouldn't go anywhere without it.

 

 

 

Since it was almost bedtime anyway, we set up our hurricane disaster recovery campsite on the floor of our bedroom.  My main goal was to try and keep Marshall occupied so he didn't get too stressed out sice the winds were pretty loud and strong by then.  If you stopped and listen it actually did sound like a freight train going through!

 

Every time I tried to take a picture of the both of us, I would say "Say Cheese!" and he would yell "Cheese!" and close his eyes for the flash.  This was the best I could do :)



 

Bruiser wasn't to sure about joining our party.  In the end all 4 cats ended up on the bed with us to wait out the storm.



 

By 10:00pm, we were falling asleep.  Once we had pillows on the floor, he was out like a light.  And before you say anything, I did move him to the bed!

 



 

Over the next couple of days I will update how our week went with no power, no cable, no Internet, and seasonal fall temperatures.

 

~AKO

The Perfect Storm

Or at least that is what people are calling this thing that is heading right towards the East Coast.  According to the Weather Channel we're talking about a "massive storm that hasn't been rivaled in generations."  Holy Crap!

My company had declared Monday a mandatory work from home day on Friday, but earlier today the mayor of NYC declared the area where my office is a mandatory evacuation zone.

If I have power tomorrow night I'll try and get on to schedule some of my posts that I was going to start doing as Flashback Friday posts for the rest of the week.

Freddy has already been activated and will most likely be gone for at least 72 hours so it is just me and the Marsh to weather Hurricane Sandy.

Poor Marsh tried to stop Freddy from leaving by standing in front of the door yelling "no daddy no go daddy!"  This was a drill weekend so he had been gone already since Thursday and was only home for a couple hours when he got the call he had to head back in the city.  Marsh spent all weekend yelling for daddy :(

Here's the post I wrote up on Hurricane Irene last year... Hurricane Irene

The Marsh will now have been through 2 hurricanes in 2 years!

Well, here's to hoping we have power in the morning!

~AKO

Wordless Wednesday

~AKO

Why I Love the 'Burbs

I grew up in the suburbs of Michigan in a small town.  You know, the kind where you run into someone you know everywhere you go.  My parents were raised in the same town so no matter where we went, someone would recognize us as offspring of our parents or even our grandparents! 

I moved to NYC back in 2000 ready to take on the big city and tired of small town living.  I had a couple of roommates and loved city living.  That was when I was single and twenty-something.

Now that I'm married, with a child, and thirty-something, I am so happy to be back in the suburbs!  The other night we just went for a walk in our neighborhood with Marsh and didn't have to worry about where we could walk or if we were going to get run over by a speeding car blasting the latest hip hop out of their window.









Of course we had to carry the car back because Marsh wanted to be carried himself!

I can't wait for our first snowfall :)

~AKO

Favorite Time of the Year

I've always loved fall to the point where I kinda wish it was fall all year long!

The colors are amazing...


The food is awesome...


The decor is beautiful...


And the air is crisp and cool...


What's your favorite season?

~AKO

Back in Business and Some Family Fun

So you may have noticed we've been missing over the past few months.  Well, we finally closed and moved into a house last month.  There is still a lot to unpack and prepare before winter arrives, but the important thing is I now have my own washer and dryer!!  Granted we definitely need to upgrade them but not having to rely on the laundromat is awesome.

Anyway... more to come on the house once we get everything in order.

There have been so many great photos and adventures for the Marsh over the summer that I still want to share with everyone.  So, I'm going to do a Flashback Friday for the next few weeks with a different Summer 2012 adventure.

But... to get us started in the present... now that we are in the suburbs, I wanted to start taking advantage of some fun family activities for the fall season.  So, today we went apple picking!

I didn't really know what to expect from Marsh since he has the attention span of a flea, but he did pretty good and was engaged for a lot of it.  He even picked out his pumpkin at the end.  Here are a few photos from the day...

~AKO