The Bronx Zoo

On Saturday morning, we all headed to the Bronx Zoo. I've been wanting to go for a while now, and Evan being here gave me the perfect excuse! It was a really nice zoo and we had a great day! Here's our day in photos:

Tommy and I and our lovely fox ears:

Katy looks more scared than Evan coming down the slide!

Lemurs and polar bears:

Evan's 2nd carousel ride - the ladybug on the bug carousel:

The butterflies almost landed on me in the butterfly center:

Evan's favorites were the giraffes:

Not very many people showed up for the guided Congo tours at 3:30, so we got our own private tour from one of the zoo guides. The gorillas were really cool!

Here we are at the end of the day in front of the zoo (Tommy is taking the picture, of course!):

We finished the day with Thai food at Papaya Thai in Sono and, of course, a trip to Chocopologie. A delicious way to finish a great day!

Sisters Shopping Day

Since the day Katy and Evan booked their plane flights to come visit us in Connecticut, I've been so excited about their visit! They finally arrived on Thursday night. Their plane was 45 minutes early, but unfortunately, I got caught in New York traffic and it took me almost 2 hours to get to the airport! We eventually made it home, ordered pizza for dinner, and called it an early night so we' d be rested to begin our long weekend.

Friday was shopping day. It took us a little longer than we'd planned to get up and ready to go, but we got out and about near lunchtime and stopped by the food court in the mall in Danbury to grab some lunch. There was a big carousel in the food court, so we decided that we'd take Evan on his first ride! Here are Mommy and Evan before the carousel started:

And during the ride:

I'm not sure he was too excited at first, but he eventually settled in and started to enjoy himself.

After lunch, we headed over to Babies 'R Us. My wonderful sister, the experienced mommy, walked me around Babies 'R Us and offered her advice as to what I absolutely needed, and what wasn't as necessary. I kept a detailed list and Tommy and I will head back to start our registry this weekend after our gender ultrasound on Thursday (I can't wait!) Keep your fingers crossed that Baby Mhire decides to cooperate!

Finally, we headed over to Destination Maternity. Her timing was perfect, my pants hadn't buttoned properly for about a week, so I really needed some maternity clothes. All of the women working in the store were very helpful - clothes just kept showing up in my dressing room! I felt like I tried on everything in my size in the store, and finally settled a few basics: a pair of jeans, black work pants, 2 short sleeved shirts and 2 tank tops. Katy even bought a couple of the shirts as an early birthday present for me. Thanks, sis! Here's a picture of me in some of my new clothes - I'm finally starting to have a little baby bump (even if you can't really see it in the photo)!!

(my 20 week Ultrasound is coming up this Thursday - can you believe it?! - Do you think it's a boy, or a girl? Vote in the poll at the top of the page!)

Anniversary Mini Vacation: Day 4

I'm finally getting around to finishing documenting the last day of our trip. Day 4 was definitely the least exciting day - mostly driving. We drove home through Vermont - a very pretty state with lots of hills and green. Of course, we had one main purpose for stopping in Vermont - a quick trip to the Ben and Jerry's factory in Waterbury, Vermont.

We took the factory tour, and it ended up being a good thing we were there on a Monday, because they only make ice cream on weekdays (although the tasting room is open everyday). We watched a short video about the history of Ben and Jerry's, then went into the factory to watch the ice cream making process. Today they were making 2 yummy flavors, Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch and the new Triple Caramel Chunk. They offer a sample of one flavor in the tasting room at the end of the tour. Today it was the Triple Caramel Chunk - highly recommended!! Here's the description from their website - "Caramel Ice Cream with a Swirl of Caramel & Fudge Covered Caramel Chunks." Even Tommy gave into his craving and tried it.

We stopped in the gift store and I bought the first present for Baby Mhire - a Ben and Jerry's bib! After one last stop at the ice cream store for a smoothie we were back in the car and headed back to Stamford. Yes, it was a lot of driving for a 4 day trip, but we're so glad we went. Yet another Northeast Adventure for the memory books!

Anniversary Mini Vacation: Day 3

Finally, we had an entire day to spend in one place - no 7 hour drive in the middle! Thank goodness!

Old Montreal is a beautiful, quaint city with a very European feel - narrow roads, sidewalk cafes, and street artists were everywhere. The weather forecast predicted rain, so I was really excited to wake up to a beautiful, sunny day.

We began our day with breakfast at a cute sidewalk cafe. Tommy had eggs with home fries and a toasted baguette, while I had a yummy chocolate croissant - what else would you expect?!

From there, we strolled through the streets of Old Montreal and made our way to the Notre Dame basilica. It was pretty from the outside, but the inside was absolutely gorgeous. Since it was Sunday, we walked in right at the end of Mass and got to hear the organist play a little.

We took a short drive over to Mount Royal Park, which was apparently designed by the same person who designed Central Park. We enjoyed just wandering around the park and taking in the beautiful view of Montreal, although I think that pregnancy has made me even more out of shape than normal, if that's even possible!

After we hiked the stairs to the top of the St. Joseph's Oratory (very impressive from the outside, not so much from the inside) wimpy pregnant lady was hungry and tired, so we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to our hotel to rest for a couple of hours.

We saved our fancy anniversary dinner for our last night in Montreal and made reservations at Restaurant Bonaparte, a French restaurant that came highly recommended from the hotel concierge. We had a delicious 6 course French meal - we both started with lobster bisque with ginger, followed by smoked salmon for me and foie gras for Tommy. The next course was mushroom ravioli (me) and quail (Tommy). After an amuse bouche, our main courses were duck for me and filet mignon for Tommy. Somehow, I managed to save room for the mini dessert sampler that was our last course. Yum!

What a great day!

Anniversary Mini-Vacation: Day 2

We started Saturday morning off right with a delicious breakfast at our B&B, did a quick walk around the local farmer's market in Clarence and headed back to the falls, the New York side this time. Unfortuately, we had a long drive to Montreal ahead of us, so we didn't get to spend too long at the falls in the morning. As soon as we got to the Falls, we headed for the "must do," the Maid of the Mist. They gave us some lovely blue ponchos and we boarded the boat for an up close view of the falls - very cheesy and touristy, I know, but we had fun!

After walking around the falls and park for a few minutes, we stopped at at Chili's for a quick late lunch and headed on to Montreal. I guess our Texas license plates and the fact that we said we were from Connecticut sounded must have sounded suspicious because we were stopped by the Canadian border guards and singled out for a car search. After many questions about what was in our car and why we were going to Canada and a thorough search of our car we were back on our way. We made it to our hotel, Hotel XIXe Siecle, in Old Montreal around 8:30pm - here it is:

We settled in, and went out in search of somewhere for dinner. I'll describe the city more in my next post, but Old Montreal is a very cute, very European town - narrow roads and little cafes all around. Strangely enough, we settled on a Polish restraurant, the Stash Cafe. We went all out and got the 4 course Polish tasting menu: borsch (beet soup) to start, salad, a sampler of Polish favorites including krokiety (meat-filled fried crepes), placki (potato pancakes) and mixed pierogi (dumplings), and a Polish layer cake (peach or apple) for dessert. The meal was not bad - we've concluded that Polish food is much like Russian food - very filling and heavy - something has to keep them warm!

Stay tuned for details of our day in Montreal - coming soon, I promise!

Anniversary Mini-Vacation: Day 1

We left Stamford early Friday morning to begin the 7 hour drive up to the Buffalo, NY area. We arrived at our bed and breakfast in Clarence NY, the Asa Ransom House at about 4pm. The B&B came highly recommended from my mom and dad, who had stayed there a few years ago during a trip to upstate NY. We were not disappointed. It was just what I had pictured in a B&B and our room, the Renaissance room, was great.

They even had a fruit and cheese plate and a bottle of water waiting for us when we arrived!

For our anniversary dinner, we went all out and headed to the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, original home of the Buffalo wing! Our verdict? The wings were good (and huge!), but probably not something we'd crave forever after our visit. I guess we are true Texans because we both agreed we should have ordered the "hot" rather than "medium" wings.

After dinner, we headed across the Canadian border to the Ontario side of Niagara Falls. Each night, they light up the falls and since we were there on Friday, we were lucky enough get to see a firework show over the falls at dark. Tommy will tell you that he had the fireworks especially planned for our anniversary. Whatever the reason, sunset and fireworks over Niagara falls were a wonderful way to spend the evening of our 5th anniversary!!

Happy Anniversary, Tommy!

This past Friday, June 12th, Tommy and I celebrated our 5th anniversary. We were lucky to be able to take a long weekend trip to Niagara Falls and Montreal - stay tuned for details!!

I can't believe it's been 5 years already, but when I think about it, we've done a lot in those 5 years. We've lived in 3 different cities, moving from Houston to Dallas for Tommy's job and then from Dallas all the way to Connecticut for mine. We've bought our first house in Dallas, only to return to renting (paying double our Dallas mortgage) when we moved to Stamford. We've traveled the world - all across Europe, Egypt, Venezuela, Russia, Tahiti and now all around the Northeast U.S. We've adopted our 2 "sons," Max and Albert. All in 5 years!!

We definitely have some changes in store in the next year. Today, Tommy accepted a new job with The Freeman Group. The company is based in Dallas, but he will be working under a telecommuting arrangement like he had with FedEx. I'm so proud of him and hope it turns out to be a great decision. The biggest change, of course, will be the addition of Baby Mhire in November (WOW!). Finally, in the early summer next year, my rotation in Wilton will end and we will be heading somewhere, hopefully back to Dallas or Houston, but we won't know for sure for a little while.

Who knows what else life has in store for us, but I do know we'll walk the path together. Happy Anniversary, Baby!