Food Network

The TV Food Network is coming out with a magazine and I've already subscribed. I got a post card from them yesterday that due to the overwhelming demand for their magazine they are going to press early. Sweet.

Updates

We're back!!!

-I got a job offer while we were away. As of Tuesday, October 7th I will be back to work full-time. It's kind of sad but I'll be making good money and we definitely will buy a house next year (provided the economy isn't sucked into a black hole, in which case I will be moving to Ireland)
-Tony will be in the state daycare facility right across Empire State Plaza from me. I like the plaza, there are alot of shops and places to eat. Definitely a nicer place than Roxbury, MA and Bumblefuck/Canaan, NY!
-Had a great time in Ireland, can't wait to go back. Went a bit overboard with the pictures and cannot find a good free massive photo storage site. I thought I was all set with Picasa but I just ran out of space there so now for anyone that is not friends with me on Facebook you will have to go on Facebook to view them. Don't worry, the albums are viewable to the public so you won't have to join (although you should because really, who isn't on Facebook these days???)

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314481&l=4b895&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314484&l=39e9f&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314491&l=113db&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314701&l=78a12&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314707&l=2d15b&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314709&l=93ee7&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314713&l=5ca83&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314704&l=60bc3&id=918099

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314740&l=9d258&id=918099

-I can't think of anything specific to share about the trip because to me everything was a "highlight" so I guess that is why I took so many photos. I was just trying to capture everything that I saw. It was a bit funny/nerve wracking when Tony said "Uh oh we're gonna crash" as our departure flight took off. In the "Flying with kids" brochure they tell you to make sure your kids don't say anything that may be perceived as a threat. I hope Tony clears security the next time he flies!

Counting down!

In less than a week I will be in Ireland!! I know I know that is all I talk about but I can't contain my excitement. It feels like I have so much last minute stuff to take care of and my head is just swirling. I can't wait until we take off so all of this tension and anticipation can be relieved! Actually, I probably won't be able to fully sit back and say "ahhhhhh I'm in Ireland" until I get the keys to our rental car and then we'll be on our way.

I've got my cousin Carley with me until we leave so I took her shopping today. We went to Peter Harris (a sort of clothing outlet) and scored big on some good brand name items. Tomorrow we are staying in and getting the house in order because my husband robbed me of the car for the day so he can take care of work stuff before we go. I think we'll take a walk to the library to return all my travel guides and pick up some plane entertainment. Friday will be a massive laundry day then on Saturday Carley and I will go for manis/pedis! Trip planning is so much fun, I want to make a full time job out of it. Well if I get a job there will be the opportunity for so much more travel for us, like hopefully a California Christmas!

Another

Tony has become a big fan of the HBO Family show "Harold & The Purple Crayon" (based on a kid's book). It's available On Demand so we watch it almost everyday and there is a new episode available where Harold imagines what he will do when he grows up. One of his careers is a train conductor so of course Tony is now obsessed with this particular episode for it includes his beloved trains. Harold also imagines a high profile career in the city so now when Tony watches it he tells me "Mommy I want to go to the city". One day soon my son I will take you to a real city. Sorry, I am a snob about this, Albany just doesn't feel like a city to me. I'll take NYC or even Boston despite me being annoyed with Boston after living there for 10 years. Luckily I am so over living in an urban area so I do enjoy living out here, sometimes I just miss the ease of living in a city.

Nudist

Tony is going through his "nude" stage. Everyday this week he's decided at some point during the day to take off all of his clothes and his diaper, out of nowhere. I'll be doing something and I turn around and there's my naked kid. He even tried to go bottomless at our play date this week after he went "potty" with his friend. I am just hoping he keeps his desire to go nude under control when we are out in public! He's already got little to no shyness about him. I fear what this kid will do in school. I know he's not bad in a rotten sense but he's very mischievous/playful. He'll either annoy the hell out of his teacher's or be the teacher's pet (maybe both). I was told by the lady at the Y that he's the cutest kid. Well enough bragging about my cute son :)

In other news, I am getting sick of housewife duties again. Every time Tony and I have a busy and fun filled week my house hold chores suffer. I either make the poor kid suffer and sit inside all day and have a clean apartment or we go out and have fun and the laundry and dishes pile up (yes even with a dishwasher, I hate loading/unloading). Next week my 12 year old cousin is going to stay with us before school starts up for her so I hope I'll be able to get some stuff done quickly without him interrupting me so we can go out and enjoy ourselves. I'll also have to spend some time putting the finishing touches on my packing!!

The lack of take out/delivery options in this area is depressing me a little. I miss the days where I could order some Thai, Indian, Sushi or decent Chinese and have it delivered to me in less than an hour! There's nothing by us but some chain restaurants which are okay on occasion but there are only so many times I can stomach Cracker Barrel's chicken tenderloins. We were lazy tonight again and ordered from this hole in the wall my husband likes even though we took a vow of no take out/eating out for the month of August to save up for our trip but with the way food prices are and the deals offered at some places it is cheaper to eat out at times!

So my housewife days might be over sooner than I want but that would mean I'd have gainful employment. My interview went well I guess, I can never gauge how I do on these things, but, I have been contacted by my interviewer several times for more info on my resume and for permission to contact my references, all very good signs. I am happy that I might have a really great job where I'd actually be making some kind of difference in this world but also depressed about returning to work and losing time with Tony and all of the friends we've made. I am also worried about taking on a position with such responsibility. Ahh we'll see, we'll see, nothing is official yet and I've always been considered to be an outstanding employee in every position I've held so I'm sure I'd make out okay with whatever they throw at me.

WHY?

Why must my husband and his family be so freaking....I don't even know the word! They've already rearranged my plans once and now that I type all of this stuff into a beautiful loose itinerary my husband says I don't want to do this, I'm telling mom and dad we won't go with them (on the trip they surprised us with). It's so much nicer to have a semi-structured plan to follow when you have a kid. Please do not make my head explode by changing things on me again. I know this trip is just as much as Mark seeing "home" again as it is a travel experience for us but he is so uncooperative when I ask questions like "do you want to see this", "would this be a nice thing to check out" and just says sure then 10 days or hours or minutes later he says wait no, I don't want to do this or my most favorite "we'll see". Well if he's a lump I'll just hop on a tour bus and Tony and I will do what we want!

Trip to Old Forge, NY (Summer 2008)

Spent a few days up in Old Forge, NY, my families' old vacation spot from when we were kids. We were even able to stay in one of our old favorite motels. On our first night we went down to the arcade which hadn't changed a bit in the 10 years since we've been there. In fact half of the games were out of order! Since we are all grown up we pooled our tickets together to get stuff for Tony and he picked out a Spiderman doll-his latest obsession that bloomed after we attended a Tri-City Valley Cats game on Superhero night. Afterwards we enjoyed some yummy ice cream!

The weather wasn't that great for swimming or the water park at Enchanted Forest Water Safari but we still had a fun time.

It was kind of nice because there were no lines at the park and the crowd was pretty tame. Last summer we went to Water Country in NH and it was really a test of patience to be around a billion annoying and rude families in 90+ degree temps!

Tony enjoyed himself on the kiddie rides, especially the train of course. He picked out this Irish horse on the carousel all by himself, good little Paddy!

The water rides were a different story-he likes to swim and play in the water but if you get his face wet forget it. I took him on the lazy river ride and they have an elephant that spits out water and we were right in his path and apparently that has traumatized Tony for life! The 2nd time we went by the evil elephant he started freaking out and pulled my hand up over his eyes and kept saying "cover Tony eyes mommy". If we ask him about the water park he says "go on slide and go ahhhh" and then makes a noise about spitting out water and says something about the elephant and then says "Tony cover eyes".

I think Mark may have enjoyed himself even more than Tony did. He is not scared of the big rides like I am and he was the only one to attempt the highest slide there, the Killermanjaro. It was so funny to watch him running around from slide to slide like a little kid. His fun quickly came to an end because he's got no fat on his body to insulate him from the cold Adirondak air and he was shivering after about an hour! By the time it started to rain we were ready to head out anyways so our timing was great. We even got a small window of sunshine while we were there.

Tony was so well-behaved all weekend which is always nice. I think he's starting to come out of the terrible twos a little. I am hoping his screaming phase will die out in the next few weeks before our flight to Ireland!

Trying to pick a hotel & other travel planning

I have been obsessed with planning our trip to Ireland for a few weeks now and since it is almost just a month away my obsession has kicked into high gear. I have never been to Europe or anywhere really fascinating until this year when we went to California so it's something very new and exciting for me so I just have to obsess! I am an organizer by nature and was much more so before motherhood took my brain but I still like to have plans and ideas. I think motherhood actually gives the planner in me a more "worrier" persona as in I think about everything that can go wrong when traveling with a kid so I like to anticipate these things and plan for them as much as possible. I'd like to think that if we were traveling without a kid that I might just let us go without a plan and pick hotels when we get there but we'll have T-man and I want to make sure that when we stay somewhere it's the best possible place we could pick in terms of value, kid friendliness and other amenities.

We actually had a loose itinerary planned out with our fist two days involving overnight stays in two different towns on the way down to M's parents' house but then in true family fashion M calls his parents after booking our B&Bs and finds out they had planned a surprise trip to one of the towns for us in the middle of our trip. At first I was annoyed at this wrench in my planning because it involves driving way back up to the area around the airport right in the middle of our trip but I've been able to re-work the itinerary around it. Also, they will be paying for our room so I can't complain about that (although fuel costs over there are outrageous so I am sure I will be able to rant about that). So now our plans are as follows:
Day 1: Land in Shannon, visit nearby castle/amusement park, drive to Dingle Peninsula (~3 hrs) for overnight stay at B&B
Day 2: Drive down to Allihies (~2 hrs) and explore Ring of Beara along way, possible stops in Killarney and/or Kenmare

Next few days are spent in Allihies until we head out again back up to the Shannon area to spend the night in the town of Lehinch which is near the town of Doolin, where we originally wanted to spend Night 1. M's parents have a wedding to attend so we'll explore and hopefully not get suckered into going into this wedding. IF WE DO NEED TO ATTEND THIS WEDDING - I want to know, like YESTERDAY, because that obviously changes my packing plans and means I need to buy something to wear to an Irish wedding and possibly also bring a new liver from what I've heard about Irish wedding!! See what I mean about obsessive planner? The next day instead of heading back down to Allihies we'll drive to Cork City and stop at Blarney Castle on the way down. This is where my hotel picking has driven me nuts. There are just too many reviews out there and I want to keep costs down but I also want to be in a good spot. M hasn't been home since 2003 and he warns against scary parts of Cork and of course the hotel I love which also offers babysitting is quite pricey but I am thinking it's one night and we've just gotten one of our planned overnight trips paid for so why not? Well I've got a topic started on TripAdvisor's forums (I heart that site, btw) and their resident "Cork expert" is agreeing with me about my hotel pick so I just need to decide if we want to spend a little more and enjoy one night of semi luxury. Check it out for yourselves. The cost would be about $200 (US) without breakfast which isn't that bad considering hotels are more expensive there and to get a hotel right in the heart of NYC or Boston you'd pay that much or more! Ahh someone decide for me, do we look for something cheaper or go with this??? Magic 8-ball where are you???

Resurrection?

At the beach today our mom group got on the subject of blogging. I brought up my good ol' (now fairly inactive) LiveJournal that got me through some boring times at work and I remembered that I had also started a blog where I could post more family oriented stuff. I thought I would try and see if I could remember the user name and password but somehow when I directed my browser to the blogger website I was already logged in???? As you can see I started this thing in 2006 and I haven't used it since then so I was quite shocked. Then I remembered that blogger is affiliated with google and I'm always logged into google so I am assuming that is how this happened and that blogger does not have some super cookie that survived two hard drive dumps and multiple "Clean browser history" events!

Anyways, I'll take this as a sign that maybe I should start this up again so I can give my family and friends updates on our life since, especially because it is easier to only have to tell some stories one time!