Friday, December 31, 2010

And We're Back

We had a fantastic Christmas back home in Arkansas, it just ended up being a few more days than planned since NY got 20" of snow and all of the airports closed! We were able to make it back late last night after our original flight back earlier in the week was cancelled. We got lucky and got stuck in Little Rock and not some connecting city. We also had all of our bags when we got home which was not the case for lots of people judging by the sea of luggage at the Newark airport last night!
 
Poor Rosie had to be boarded for a lot longer than I would have liked. She's completely exhausted and has slept non stop since she got home, fingers crossed that she won't get sick again like last time (I'm convinced she picked up the bug while she was boarded at Thanksgiving).

Here's a couple of pictures from the walk home after picking Rosie up. 
She sooo wants to play in the snow! Here are a couple more random images.
The tree at my mom's Christmas morning, yes that's like a ten foot tree. She actually thought John could just reach up and put the angel up when we first got there. I think she underestimated how tall it actually was :) 
John likes to play with sweet baby Austin, doesn't he look so cute! 
Clearly we had fun back home :) We got to see lots of family and friends but no matter how long the trip is it seems like we never fit everyone in. I just haven't quite figured out how to get the scheduling down, I'm definitely working on it though!

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Christmas Cards

I meant to post this weeks ago but like every year I procrastinate with my Christmas cards. There have been plenty of years they ended up being "happy holiday" cards because I sent them after Christmas.

A few weeks ago I saw that Shutterfly was offering free cards if you posted on your blog and I thought that would be great to share with everyone but here it is the very last day for the deadline, sorry! I even had a card picked out that I really liked and then I got the exact same card in the mail today from someone else. Guess I'll be picking out a new one :(

I've never gotten cards from Shutterfly before but I'm really loving their styles, you can check them out herehere and here. This is the card I was looking at using but the other problem is that it requires lots of pictures and getting John to take one picture is hard enough!
I love getting Christmas cards every year and seeing the pictures of everyone and their sweet families. I also really love having a steel door that I can put all of the cards up on :)
I even found some really strong magnets that will hold up the cute metal Christmas tree this year :)

Onto another Christmas deal that you'll actually have time to use, free shipping day is this Friday. Tons of stores will offer free shipping with delivery in time for Christmas! I'm super excited that I'm being bailed out since I have also procrastinated with my Christmas shopping :) 

The halls are officially decked!

I put my Christmas tree up a week ago and immediately got it decorated. The rest of the apartment however didn't get touched until this past weekend. We had quite the eventful week last week and by eventful I mean a sick puppy dog and going through four rolls of paper towels in five days!!! I'll let you use your imagination :)

Thankfully Rosie is feeling much better and I spent the weekend washing everything in the apartment and then finishing the decorations. Somehow I managed to get splinters in one hand, cuts all over the other and my back is killing me, but everything is clean and decorated. Lets see how long that lasts!

 My attempt at making another wreath this year. I should really suck it up and buy a wreath form instead of bending wire hangers together because each year my wreath comes out more oval than circular :(

John definitely thinks I'm a crazy person since I sat on the floor for hours bending coat hangers and cutting up tree branches! I think there was even a "no, seriously WHAT are you doing?" 
 More creative use of the tree branches
This year's addition to the decorations. I love these because they're not so traditional and they weren't too expensive either, always a plus!

And of course I have to give credit to the man who made all of this possible.....my awesome husband who carried our tree six blocks home (as you can see its not a small tree)!

Monday, December 6, 2010

Orlando

Earlier in November John and I took a quick trip down to Orlando to visit his family. Now that we live in NYC we've realized that we really enjoy spending time in nature every chance we get so while we were in Orlando we definitely worked that into the trip.

We went to a state park that has a hot spring fed river. The water temperature stays in the 70's even in the winter and so the neighborhood manatees migrate to this river to stay warm. There was a boardwalk along the river with areas to take pictures, here's one of a mama manatee and her baby.
John and I wanted to make sure we really got our fill of nature on this trip so we decided to go canoeing....in November! Being that it was Florida it wasn't too cold but still, canoeing is a little scary when its cold and you're really scared of tipping over.
John's brother Justin and his wife Andrea went on the canoeing adventure with us. I should have known the brothers would do something crazy, they always do when the two of them get together. There was a wide path that the guide suggested we canoe on but of course John and Justin saw a tiny overgrown area that they wanted to canoe through. To me this looked like nothing but snake heaven and I am TERRIFIED of snakes! The whole time I was just looking for snakes or dead bodies (on a side note, I've watched way too much CSI: Miami!).
 Luckily we made it out of snake alley unscathed :) We saw more birds than anything else, I didn't even see a snake until we got back onto the main river. At that point the river was wide enough that we could keep a comfortable distance, which is good because it was a big snake!
Our non-nature part of the trip was going to Universal Studios to see the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter the next day. The theme park was just a small section of Universal so there wasn't a whole lot to see, but what they did have they did really well. There was Hogwarts which had the roller coaster ride in it and then Hogsmeade had all of the shops. Both were very impressive. Here's John drinking his butter beer (not beer at all, much more like syrup!) in front of the Hogwarts Express. 
It was a quick weekend trip so that was about all that we had time for but it was definitely lots of fun and we love getting to visit with family!  

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Au Revoir

This is the last Paris trip post, I promise :)

Our chateau portion of the trip was over and now it was time to make our way back to Paris. Along the way we drove through the Champagne region and saw some really beautiful vineyards.
John of course had to stop a couple of times to sample the grapes.
And stomp through someone's field to take pictures :)
It was around five o'clock when we got back to Paris and it was rainy and there was a lot of traffic. It got pretty stressful trying to find the hotel. When we eventually found the hotel John told me I should get out with the bags and stay at the hotel while he took the car back. I think I was driving him crazy with how nervous his driving was making me :)

That evening we had a lovely dinner and then the next morning we went to Notre Dame again but this time went inside. After that we had to leave for the airport to head back home. We had a really wonderful trip and I'll leave you with a couple of random pictures from walking around Paris and the link to the online album which has a few more pictures. You can click here.

Subway entrance
Bicycles for rent