Happy December....

OK, I’m on the home stretch and then I’m all up to date. I was up and at work on the Wednesday. The boys slept for most of the morning, and Bruce of course was driving the desk as he calls it. Everyone at work was happy to see me, which is always nice to hear, especially my bud, Paula. She left me a nice text message to say she missed me, which again is always nice to hear. I spent the day catching up on work and personal stuff with all the girls, so it was a fun day, we did get a lot of work in, it wasn’t all gossip…. I got home and had the itch, so the tree got put up, just the tree, no decorations yet, but it was a good start. I was a week behind in looking at my tree, we finished the tree the next night, I cooked dinner while the boys put all the decorations on. Then like every anal person, once they went to bed, I fixed it up and decorated the rest of the house. I love Christmas; it gives me a chance to make the house look all girly and pretty. The tree came up beautiful and the rest of the house was great too, I was really happy with how it all turned out and to match the cool lights on the outside of the house. On Friday Bruce got a call, Jarrod Leonard (Supercats) was in San Jose and his friends were going to Sacramento for the weekend and catching a ride down with them to stay with us, yeay visitor, Bruce was really excited. Bruce went and picked him up on Saturday morning and we had a good catch up on home and his trip (he’s doing around the world trip) so far. Sounds like he’s having a fantastic experience and has some great plans to the rest of his trip. Conner and Jamieson were nervous and excited about Jarrod being here, they remember watching him play and he was going to be watching them play now…Conner was definitely excited and nervous. We headed out to the stadium and to their credit they both played really well; Jamieson has definitely grown into his size and is like a gazelle running down the court. Conner started off nervous but made a couple of shots and was off to the races, I think Jarrod was impressed and his team was bummed that he wasn’t going to be around to help out at practice. We went out for Conner’s team Christmas pizza night and watched some (USA) footy and chatted to parents, it was a fun night and I think Jarrod enjoyed himself as much as you can on a basketball family night. I went out on Sunday and started my Christmas shopping, yes, started! I was a little freaked out about it. I did some shopping and came home and cleaned the house a bit while the boys watched the football and caught up…. I made Jarrod a nice homemade lasagna etc before Bruce dropped him back to meet his friends so he could go to New York for Christmas. It was a great weekend and Bruce was bummed he had to go so soon. Another week started and another week closer to Christmas, I spent the Monday night after work, while the boys were at basketball, wrapping presents, the great thing about my tree is that it’s nice and low, so it doesn’t take a whole lot of presents for it to look full, I love that!! Tuesday rolled around and arrhh, a day to not go to work, but lots to do around the house. The boys did their usual off track thing, although mum was home so they did get a couple of jobs to do. Wednesday was a big day for me, off to work in the morning, the boys (all 3) at home, I got home around 2.30pm cause Justin and Jeremy were coming after school, Paula had a late meeting so they stayed for dinner and then I took them home and put them to bed. After a long meeting, her texting me while in the meeting, bored and frustrated, she got home around 11.30pm. We had our Christmas Master Mind group meeting, which was enlightening for everyone, it’s always good to look back and analyze the year, it kind of motivates you to do more for the next year. Bruce dropped my mum and dad’s Christmas present box off to Carlos for delivery for me…. thank goodness for Carlos and United Airlines. I again did some more Christmas shopping and the boys had a basketball skills session, so I had a little time to myself to get things done, still feeling like I was behind with everything, but closer. Conner had his friend David over for the afternoon, which turned into a sleepover; David is a great kid (nice and quiet), which is a change for our place. David spent Saturday with us, he came to watch the boys play basketball and then out to Jamieson’s teams Christmas pizza break up. It was a funny night, Jamieson’s team this season parent wise is not as fun as other ones. On Sunday morning, Bruce and I went out early and did some groceries, and it was Belinda grooming day, nails, hair etc. Mum called and we had a good chat caught up on the Christmas plans. Christmas week was upon us, Monday was a tying up some loose ends before Christmas at work, then went home and tried to do nothing unsuccessfully. Happy Christmas Eve Eve, it was on a Tuesday so I didn’t have to work but I did go in for our Christmas Lunch. I wasn’t feeling the great, tooth is playing up, I feel a root canal coming on…. Lunch was kind of weird, there wasn’t a whole lot of talking, I don’t know if it’s because there is a boy in the mix or that Paula and I weren’t ourselves, but we were out of there in just over an hour….I was home around mid afternoon, and tried to relax, but did a little cleaning instead. Spent a quiet night on looking at my tree!! Christmas Eve, today I spent most of the day cleaning and baking lots of yummies, it was tiring but fun, Christmas is always fun and I was excited about being home for the day. We went over to Paula’s - her little Christmas tradition, soup for Christmas Eve dinner. We had it in bread bowls and it was really yummy, a good tradition which I may pinch, at least while we are here in the winter. The kids all played upstairs and we all had Christmas drinks downstairs, we were home by 10.00pm to make our Christmas Day phone calls to home. I called Rael’s first, Mum and dad were there for breakfast, I spoke to them all and so did the boys. It was nice to talk to them, Oscar is talking so clearly and Felix called me Aunt Binda, it was cool!!! Next we called Trace’s place and Bruce chatted with Rhys, and gave Dylan some crap (nothing’s changed), Elise put on the webcam and we chatted, then I got o chat with Trace and everyone (we as much as you can when they are all yelling stuff and you are on speaker phone), it was fun and they are all really cool. The boys went off to bed around 11.30 and I got off the phone around midnight. I started wrapping in the closet and I took the last one out around 1.30am, but the time everything was set, Bruce and I got into bed about 2.00am. It was the usual Christmas Eve sleep, waiting to hear noise around the house. Jamieson woke up around 7.15am, and I heard him run down the hallway, then he came back up the hallway to see if we were awake. He jumped into bed with us and we talked. Apparently he saw the basketball shooting game, and then there was also something under a blanket, what was it? He didn’t know because he didn’t look. What kind of a kid on Christmas morning is he??? Bruce and I looked at each other and just laughed!!!! After him fidgeting around in bed for half an hour we told him he could wake up Conner, if you sleep after 8.00am you should get woken up, that’s my excuse anyway. I ran down the hall and put the tree lights, music and set the video camera. They came out and there were a lot of COOL’s and YEAY’s, so I would say Santa and Mum and Dad rocked this Christmas. We had to stop half way through the present unwrapping to get the turkey organized. I figured it that I ‘just’ fit into the oven so it didn’t have to go to Paula’s to cook. Bruce, god love him, stood at the kitchen bench and grabbed the bag of innards out while I made the stuffing, we stuffed that bird, put it in the oven bag (wasn’t going to stuff this up, went the guaranteed route) and put that sucker in the oven for the next 4-5 hours. Conner was bummed that we weren’t having roast potatoes cause there was no room in the oven that’s just what had to happen. We sat down to our Korostin traditional Christmas breakfast of boiled eggs, ham, toast, juice and hot chocolate. What was really nice was we were sitting there and Conner said, “ I miss this”. I said what “sitting here together or having ham and eggs?” He said, ‘Both’, it was a really cool breakfast just sitting there eating and talking. We got up and let the boys play with their new stuff while we cleaned up after breakfast. We had showers and the boys played, Bruce had NBA basketball on the TV and everyone was just chillin out, I was playing with the table settings. Paula and Steve arrived around 2.30pm, when we looked at the oven bags directions and realized it didn’t take as long to cook, so we were eating a little earlier than we thought. YEAY, we cooked a 20 lb turkey and it was really yummy!! Lunch turned out fantastic and we had a really great meal all 6 of us. It was cold outside, the house was toasty with lots of yummy smells coming from the kitchen, it was like in the movies. We finished up lunch and cleaned up a little, had a couple of calls from home and the boys watched basketball – the Lakers were playing, that says it all. Justin and Jeremy were dropped off around 6.00pm, the kids played for a little and then they went back to Paula’s while we finished tidying and took a breath. We got to Paula’s around 7.00pm and I sat on the couch and didn’t really move – exhausted!!! Bruce picked me up off the couch around 10.00pm and took me home, not to most exciting Christmas night, but hey, you cant’ have everything. We got home and Bruce put me to bed, what a good husband. (the kids had a sleepover at Paula’s – quiet house – AWESOME!) Boxing Day (Which is not what they call it here – the day after Christmas) came around, we got up and around lunchtime I went out and had a look around at all the Christmas bargains – 75% off - gotta love that. It also turned into a few extra things for me –80-90% off Vera Wang, gotta love that even more. I got all my new (Red, yes I said RED) I decided to do red and white next year to go with my really cool pretty fuzzy tree skirt. We had a quiet rest of the afternoon, I picked up the boys from Paula’s just after 4.00pm and we went home for a couple hours before going back to her place for Christmas drinks with some of Steve’s friends. This was actually the first time meeting most of them, so it was going to be nice and add a little weight to Paula’s side of the party, so to speak. We grabbed the boys around 10.30pm and took them home to bed, they were so tired after the last couple of days and late nights. Saturday morning Bruce and Conner went out to see if there were any garage sales around and spent some time together, they ended up at Toys R Us and Conner bought some stuff with his Christmas money, he got some basketball cards (DER) and a game of some description. Jamieson and I had a quiet morning, playing and generally not doing a lot at all and that’s pretty much how we spent the rest of the day…aarrhhh!!! Sunday came and went pretty much nothing much going on, it was nice to not have any plans, I did however spent a lot of the day cleaning the house, not very Christmasy. Back to work on Monday after a few days off a lot of business here are still on skeleton staff so it was slow and will be until about the 5th when most of them come back. New Years Eve came around we had strategic planning at work. We finished up mid afternoon and everyone went home early, I stayed a little longer to tie up some loose ends and Bruce came and got me. We had a nice dinner and headed over to Paula’s to have a “New York New Years Eve”, which sounds weird but is actually a really great idea. We celebrated the New Year when the ball dropped at (9.00pm California time) this way the kids all get to celebrate without our eyes popping out of our heads and we are still in the party mood…. The Rivera’s were at Paula too and Kristie had some sparklers from July 4th celebrations so the kids had a ball in the court running around even in the FREEZING COLD!!! Then not long after that they were back upstairs playing and watching movies, brilliant idea!!! That was how we finished another year…I hope you are all well and had a great New Years Eve and finished the year with good friends and or family.

December Pic's....

New York Trip...

I can’t believe it’s December and I ticked New York off the ‘Bucket List’. Which by the way, I think everyone should do…. We do places we want to go at the dinner table every 6 months or so which the boys love.

I digress….As you heard in the November we started the month/pre trip off with the car in the garage. Our prayers were answered and we got the car back in time, I worked on the Monday, but the packing was pretty much done so it wasn’t really a problem. We were on the road at 3.30am, it was cold, the boys slept in the back of the van with their pillows and doonas.

We got free parking with Carlos’ employee parking pass, yeay for us! We checked in and waited patiently for the plane….we were all tired which wasn’t going to bode well for later in the day. Bruce and I got a row to ourselves, as did the boys, which made the squishiness not as bad. It was a long flight, movies over head which are never as good as the seat screens. The boys did ok, although it was a little turbulent towards the end. Our stop over in Cincinnati was short, we landed around 3.00pm, I grabbed some McDonalds and we had to eat it on the plane. The boys both lets say were not well on the decent down, so I thought they should have something in them, especially considering we really didn’t have a proper breakfast or lunch. I was sitting next to a nice southern Delta flight attendant who was going to New York to work a flight to North Carolina, the accent was fantastic and she was a Hoot!! The flight wasn’t full so Bruce and Jamieson got a row to themselves. We even saw what a ‘Moon Pie’ looked like, and then she gave it to us because we didn’t know what it was. Flying into New York was amazing, Bruce got some good footage.

We landed around 5.00pm (it was pitch black) and got our bags…distributed them amongst ourselves and gave the boys the, ‘Don’t walk off, strange city, unsafe’ talk before buying the subway card for the week and heading outside to catch the bus. It was hot on the bus, and we were all feeling really sickly from the descending again and the not really eating a proper meal for the whole day, being up since 3.00am etc. We were very happy to be getting off onto ground and some fresh air….we walked a few blocks with our suitcases and found our hotel. It was as expected for the price in Upper West side. It was clean and had the basics, which is all we wanted. I would rather spend the money on other fun things; we were only going to be there at nights to sleep so I thought it was a good deal.

We perked up a little after some food and decided to head out for a little exploring, it wasn’t too late and we were jazzed about being there. We jumped onto the subway (new experience, which was kind of fun) stopped at Penn Station, which has a Kmart, how weird is that. We headed down to Madison Square Garden where the Knocks were playing to see if we couldn’t sneak in after the game to get a look. Security was tight and not going to happen, so we looked around took photo’s (DER) and headed down the street to look around, we stumbled onto Macy’s and got to see their windows after a stop at Footlocker. They were cool, like the Myer windows in Melbourne, we walked around the corner to see the other windows and decorations which were cool too. We went inside to have a look at the Christmas section, which was a small and a little disappointing, not what I imagined for New York Macy’s. Oh well! We looked around a little more and made our way back to the hotel for a BIG sleep! Aarrhhh, sleep!! We can now add sleep walking to sleep talking for Conner when he is tired. Kind of funny story though. I was sleeping with an eye mask on, half way through the night, Conner was of course talking but decided to get up, walk over to me in bed and snatched the eye mask from me. I said to him “Are you going to put them on?” He looked at them and said “Na” and put them on the bedside table. Bruce and I were so tired but we looked at each other in the dark and LAUGHED our butts off. Had to share that one.

Wednesday, Day 2 was upon us, we got up, checked the weather, nice day, so we jumped on the subway and caught the Stanton Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, which Jamieson can only say in American, even after we told him to speak Australian. We jumped on the ferry with hundreds of other tourists. (There was a lot of Europeans in New York, I am assuming on holidays) the ferry was huge, it was like the Sorrento Ferry but twice as big and wide too., those hundreds of people looked like next to no one once they were spread out over the whole ferry. I was freezing cold outside but we got of pictures going past the Statue and warmed up inside. We got off the ferry and decided to walk to Ground Zero….we found a little market on our walk and then found Ground Zero, it was all fenced up so we couldn’t really give the kids the visual to go with the story but I think they got it once we found the gallery and pictures and it was a little more real. We kept walking through the financial district and found a little Italian suit shop, Bruce got a new suit and I also bought him two pairs of shoes to go with the suit for Christmas.

It was a nice little part of the world, but we were on a mission, MEAT PIES!!!! We happened to walk through China Town, the bummer was there was just a sweep and all the knock off bags were gone, stores were closed and signs saying ‘ Trademark Violations’ were on the doors. It was a big bummer no new bag for me. Finally……we found our little “Tuck Shop’, it was around 2.30 and we were all starving to go along with our craving for Meat Pies, it’s been over 12 months. We met one of the owners Lincoln; he is from Adelaide and a really nice guy. They are talking about opening one in LA or San Fran, which would be great for me! We had our pies, Bruce got a Vanilla Slice to go and we were off to find the right subway to get back to the hotel to get ready for out big night out. Lion King on Broadway. Wooo Hooo!!!

We got home and showered and changed into our Theater clothes, had a bite to eat and made our way to the Theatre. How exciting, the boys were actually really excited too. We found our seats, which were towards the back of the theatre but centre of the theatre. The curtain went up and WOW, what a show. We swapped the boys seats around during intermission, they were really enjoying the show, which was great to hear. They spent the rest of show sitting and watching, even Jamieson hardly moved, it was something I’d never seen before. The show was amazing, the singing was unbelievable, the costumes were great, and there aren’t enough words to say how fantastic it was. I guess this sums it up, we were sitting there at the end of the show and I asked them what they thought. Conner (Mr. hard to impress) said, “When can we see that again”, that was awesome. It was worth every cent.

We walked around Time Square checking out the stores and looking around, it was getting late and we were tired so we got back to the hotel around 11.00pm. It had been a long day with a lot of walking and what a great end to the day….

Thursday was here. (Happy 10^th Anniversary Bruce and Belinda). Bruce and Conner were sleeping so Jamieson and I got dressed and walked out the market to get some food. It was only a couple of blocks away; we grabbed some snacks and breakfast stuff and went back to the hotel for some breakfast. MMMM food! We were all really tired and didn’t get out of the hotel until nearly lunchtime. It was definitely a low energy day. We got on the train and made our way to the New York Public Library, it was amazing, the foyer looked beautiful with all Christmas decorations, we had snacks and walked down to Fifth Ave and saw all the Fifth Ave stores. Girls understand, boys not so much. We dropped into the Disney store and had some pictures taken with Goofy and the Chipmunks, the NBA store was also on Fifth Ave, so the boys were happy about that. Two floors of NBA/basketball, the boys (all three) were in heaven. The only bummer was the court at the bottom that you can usually shoot around on had merchandise on it, but there was other stuff to do so they had a good time. We made our way down Fifth Ave, FAO Schwartz, which wasn’t as big as I thought, but the Giant piano was really cool! It did start raining, we found a little café and had some dinner then we ended up getting back to the hotel early (ish), we were tired from the last couple of days and nights.

Friday was here and the bad weather was due to come in later in the day so we spent the morning walking around Central Park, it was really cold and a really big place, we didn’t really scratch the surface but we got to the Ice skating rink in Central park - ???? Rink. Bruce decided to not skate because his knee might buckle again, so he settled in on the sidelines. The boys and I put on our skates and Jamieson took off, literally, he was amazing to watch. Conner slowly made his way around, it didn’t take him long to get used to the slippery surface; and pretty soon after that the two of them were sliding around together laughing and falling, it was great to watch. I got on the ice very slowly, getting on the surface is very disconcerting, I landed on my butt a couple of times and very slowly made my way around. Bruce got some good footage of me falling on my butt; which made him happy. We met an Australian family from Qld and Bruce spoke to Murray for a while, then they left to grab a coach ride before it got dark. We decided to stay until it got dark, (just to have the experience) we took some night pictures and had one last skate then left and found a nice little place to eat a well-earned dinner. We were sore everywhere, I was sore from tensing and skating at the same time.

We walked past Radio City Music Hall (packed!!) and down to Rockefeller Center, the tree was huge, there were people everywhere, which made the experience a little harder. We got our pictures and watched the people on the skating rink then found the Nintendo Store. We ended up at Time Square again and did Toys R Us (Huge store) and MM world etc, it was one of the days that we will all be talking about forever. The boys had a ball and I think it will be a close call to see what they liked the best, skating or The Lion King.

Saturday was a filler day kind of, we went to see Grand Central Station which was amazing, we stopped there for lunch, then found the main hall which was fantastic, it had a Christmas light show like Crown Casino, although this was just on the ceiling. We then jumped onto another train and went out to the Brooklyn Bridge; we walked half way across, FREEZING COLD!!! We went back to hotel and packed for the next day, we were going to Springfield, MA. We had a quiet night, went to Macy’s to buy a couple of Christmas decorations (they were at 40% off already) we ended up sitting in the furniture section for a while, all very tired. We went to Time Square to have one last look around all those lights and buzz with people everywhere.

We woke up on what can only be described as the North Pole, coming into New York, the cold wind came in and you have NO IDEA of the cold! It went straight to the bone. We checked out of the hotel and had a little wait until we could pick up the car, so we went to a café around the corner for lunch and waited…. Bruce picked up the car (and ticked off “driving in Manhattan” from the Bucket List – hey – it’s a challenge you should all try – it keeps you awake!!!) and went back to the hotel and the wind was sooo hard and cold, you could hardly walk forward. We got into the car, said good bye to New York and drove towards the Connecticut border. We drove past the George Washington bridge, through Brooklyn and about 40 mins later crossed the border into Connecticut. Woo Hoo another state to say we’ve been to. We drove through Connecticut, Hartford, New Haven. We didn’t get to see Yale, which I would have liked to see, but we wanted to get to Springfield before dark if we could. We ended up stopping at Denny’s for dinner and got to Springfield around 8.30pm and found the Marriott – big comfy beds, Arrhhh. (God Bless Priceline dot com and last minute Hotel specials!)

We all had a fantastic sleep and didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning. I woke the boys up at 9.00am; we had some breakfast and were at the Basketball Hall of Fame by about 10.30am. it ended up being a great day to go, there wasn’t really anyone else there so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. The boys had a great time doing all the interactive stuff and Bruce had a great time with the whole place as you can imagine. It’s the Holy Land! We grabbed some stuff from the gift shop and made our way down to New Haven where we were going to be staying for the night. We had a lazy late afternoon and evening, chilling out and relaxing at the Sheraton, more comfy beds.

We drove back to New York on Tuesday, of course hit traffic, only had to turn around the wrong way once, which was good. We finally found the car place, unloaded and caught the subway to Penn Station to get the train tickets to the airport. We got to the airport with a lot of time to spare, there was no one really there which was a surprise, no lines at security or checking in. We had some dinner and waited for the plane to come, the boys weren’t looking forward to the flight, residual effects from the flight over. Conner reckons he’d rather drive for 4 days…yeay right, he’s be done after one day.

We finally got on the plane, had a row each again which was good, it was a flight straight through which made a difference, up and down only once. They also had screen’s on the back of each chair with TV shows on it so everyone was happy, it really made the 6 hour flight feel shorter than the 4 hour flight to Cincinnati on the way over.

We were finally home; well, nearly. We landed in San Fran around 10.30pm and caught the bus back to the employee car park to get the car. It was a quiet ride home, the boys were sleeping and I slept for the second half of the trip, Bruce stopped to get a coffee and we drove up to the house at around 12.15am to a really nice surprise. Carlos (we didn’t know who at the time) had been around to the house and put Christmas lights on the outside of the house. It looked so pretty and we got inside and they had put the heater on for us too. Now that’s friends, what would we do without them?

So, four pages later and that was our 10^th Wedding Anniversary Family trip to New York. I will now have to check the list and see what is on the top. It was a great trip and something we will always remember, which is priceless!

Planes, Buses, Hotels & Macy's...

Statue of Liberty, Pies & The Lion King...