Baby It's Cold Outside

After weeks of "mild" weather, it is begining to feel like winter here. It hasn't been THAT bad yet, at least not as bad as I imagined. New York in the winter isn't so bad after all! Look at all the pretty views of the city this winter...

The other morning we were dusted with a light coat of snow. It was beautiful!

The Brooklyn Bridge


The Manhattan Bridge

Happy New Year!!

Welcome 2007!!

We rang in the new year with a small gathering at our apartment . Rachel's Sister Jill and our friend Steve from Church were our only guests. But that didn't stop us from having a blast! We made some delicious appetizers, played games like twister, catch phrase, and scrabble, then at 11:30 we walked down to prospect park for the countdown.

There was a band playing, then at midnight there was an amazing fireworks show. We brought our Martinelli's and cups for toasting at midnight.

Merry Christmas!

What an exciting week I've had. The girls came up to visit and we've been having so much fun! We've gone to see a show, saw the tree walked through Central Park, attended church (to hear Erin and me sing in the choir) shopping, eating, where does it all end? This is my last blog before I leave New York for a week. I will be home visiting family and friends in California. I can't wait to see everyone. I hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday. God Bless!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

A celebratory dinner after decorating our tree. That's Sparkling Cider... not Champagne!
Erin and Rachel outside Radio City Music Hall (Waiting on line)
The World Famous Rockettes...

What better place to be than New York City for the holidays? There is so much to see. I don't know how I am going to do it all before I go home. But I think I am off to a fantastic start. Just roaming the streets you can feel the Christmas-ness in the air. Lights, and wreaths, shoppers, window displays! I can't even begin to tell you about the amazing window displays. Macy's and Lord and Taylor put so much work into these brilliant window displays. There is me at one at Macy's- kind of blurry though.

We were also lucky enought to get free tickets to see none other than the world famous Rockettes!! The show was absolutely amazing- as you might imagine. It really brought in the holiday spirit :) And Radio City Music Hall was just gorgeous inside.

I plan to do many more NYC holiday activites, when "the girls" (Ash, Shan, and Britt) arrive tomorrow. So, until then...

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've had the best Thanksgiving Holiday. I went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!! I seriously watch it on T.V. every year, but there was something about seeing it in person. It was freezing and raining though. We were soaked and numb but we didn't care! Then we went to New Jersey to have Thanksgiving dinner at Rachel's Grandparent's house. It was really nice.
Friday my parents came up! I went with them to stay in Connecticut for the weekend at this beautiful resort. We had a really nice time. I am so thankful this time of year for friends and family. What a wonderful year it has been!

CANstruction

I went to this annual New York City event with my boss; its called CANstruction. Basically it works like a canned food drive but MUCH cooler. Instead of just collecting the cans, they have these designers construct these awesome displays! Cost to get into this exhibit... One canned food!

Gobble Gobble

Last night Rachel and I went to a Thanksgiving Potluck party. I brought funeral potatoes and Rachel brought Pistacio Couscous. It wasn't too far away, but walking down the street on a Saturday night with a large, hot casserole dish, wasn't exactly"fun".
Almost everyone attending the party was a musician or a theatre person, so needless to say there was a lot of entertainment. We had a great time! I am really excited for Thanksgiving though. My parents are coming up to visit me and I can't wait to see them.
By the way, it is starting to cool down here! Its strange because last week it was really warm... unseasonably warm. But today is starting to feel more like November. I am not taking any chances though. Last week I bought a nice long, warm coat for the winter coat. (Actually my parents bought it!)

No Other Road, No Other Way, No Day But Today.

Last night I went to see "Rent"- the musical, on stage. It was SO good!!! I loved it! (Although, I don't really recommend it for young children or some of my churchy friends)
Rachel and I bought tickets last week. She's seen it three times, and didn't mind going with me for my first time. We had really great seats. The theater was small, so all the seats were pretty good. The music was great and the cast was amazing. (Maybe Roger was a little scary) I was smiling the whole time because I couldn't believe I was actually there. I hope to see it again sometime, but there are plenty of other broadway shows awaiting...

Happy Halloween!!

So, I realize my last blog was really whiny and I apologize. I am, by no means, deprived while living here. I love it and there are so many great things about it. Like tonight for instance. They shut down our street and had all kinds of people, kids, and families walking along the street and trick or treating at the store fronts. It really was a fun sight.

Last night we hosted our ward young single adult (YSA) Family home evening (FHE) and we carved pumpkins. Rachel and I created this witch profile holding a jack-o-lantern.

This is me and my friend Manny at work. We were both in the holiday spirit today.
BTW I work on the top floor... you can kind of see our great view!

A Different Way of Life

So everyone "back home" asks me what it's like to live in New York City. The standard answer is "It's very different..." so I'd like to elaborate on the differences and the modern conviences I miss from back home and things I feel like compaining about...

• Dishwasher- we don't have one, we wash and dry ourselves!
• Washer/Dryer- another appliance we don't have access to. We actually have to lug our laundry bags down the street to the Laundromat and bring lots of quarters!
• Garbage Disposal, everything goes in the trash instead which brings me to the next point...
• Trash- picks up twice a week, but we cant just throw it in a dumpster any old time.
• Microwave- Something else we don't have :( No TV Dinners, No Popcorn, No way to reheat certain leftovers.
• Plumbing- don't worry we DO have indoor plumbing, the drains are just very slow. Plus we can only use 1-ply toilet paper.
• Air conditioner- this only applied during that first month we were here, but we should probably invest in a unit before summer arrives
• A Car- enough said
• We just barely got our cable hooked up, but for three months we watched everything in static
• 3 girls + 1 bathroom= Chaos
• BTW its freezing here now.

Those are just some of the things I've had to adjust to. But the people are also very different as you can imagine. Instead of saying wait IN line, people here say wait ON line... which is bizarre to me! They also have accents but they don't realize it. Some guy at Bloomingdales asked if I was from the midwest because of "my accent"- what is that supposed to mean. Then last night this older, bigger, italian guy at the security desk of a building said I was "beautiful, bellisima!" His son, who is 22 apparently brings home "skeletons", and he doesn't understand why he doesn't bring someone like me home. He was very difficult to understand but I got the jist that he appreciated my "healthy" figure. It was really funny to me. People are nicer than I expected, there are a lot of helpful people here, so hopefully that breaks your stereotype of typical "new yorkers".

Well, I've gone on far too long. I am off to a ward chili cook-off right now.

A Little Bit Of Everything

(Left)Me at Washington Square Park... when the weather was still nice.

(Right) The girls and I at Serendipity III. Yummy! :)

(Left) Rachel and me outside our apartment building, before a night out on the town. Yes I am wearing the same thing in the picture above on a DIFFERENT day. I am ashamed.

(Right) Me and my Vegas Roomies at Macayo's before I had to go to the airport.

Welcome Baby Maxwell

HEATHER HAD HER BABY!!!
So Heather was due October 4th, so I scheduled a trip to Las Vegas for October 5th... just hoping I would be there to see her son. But when I spoke to her a week before, she hadn't had him and thought she wasn't close. So I dealt with the fact that I wouldn't get to see her baby this time, but I could spend time with her before she went into labor. On Saturday we got to hang out and have dinner and we kept joking that she would go into labor soon... and I didn't for a minute think that she would! Then Leslie (her Mom) called me Sunday morning with the news that she went into labor! I couldn't believe it. So, I took my sisters car to the hospital (luckily Nathan showed me where it was the day before) and was there waiting all day for Maxwell to arrive. He finally graced us with his presence at 6:36pm. He was 7lbs 13oz and 20 1/2 inches long, and oh so adorable. I was so happy that I was able to be there and share in this amazing experience!

The Mouse Murderers

WARNING: This story is disturbing and may not be suitable for all audiences:

Shortly after moving here we discovered that we had a fourth roommate,we named Mickey. Mickey was a disturbing creature who would roam through the apartment at night, terrorizing us while we slept, rummaging through the garbage, waking us up. It was HORRIBLE!! I found traces of him in the bathroom in the kitchen; Rachel even saw him in her room one night. We were really getting tired of this awful creature and took matters into our own hands.
We narrowed down our options: A snap trap would be too gruesome to dispose of, poison meant it would die somewhere we didn't know until we could smell its rotting carcass, so we opted for the "glue traps" I don't know why we thought this would be any better but he left us with no choice.
So we strategically placed the traps around the apartment, two in the bathroom, one in Rachels room, one in mine and one in the kitchen. We even baited it by sticking cheerios and other goodies on it. But after a couple of weeks we never caught it and gave up hope. But, we hadn't heard him in a while so we thought that he moved out and left us for good. That is, until that fateful morning. I woke to the sounds of screaming girls. Shrieks and yells and the phrase, "go wake up Shilo!" And there it was, in the middle of the kitchen, on the glue trap, the bane of my existence... STILL ALIVE!! What the heck are we supposed to do now?
So I grab a glove, a bag and a frying pan. I gave the pan to Erin as she said she would "take care of it" if the situation arose. So after much contemplation, she whacked it with the frying pan. I placed him in his final resting place... two plastic grocery bags, and Rachel carried him outside into the trash.
Now we can be at peace. We are now free of the terrorizing from the little New York mouse we called Mickey.

September 11

It is hard to believe that 9/11/01 was 5 years ago, and there is somehting so surreal about being in New York right now. Although I didn't know anybody who died that day, I still feel affected by it. When I got off work today, I went straight to the World Trade Center Site where I found many people, mourning, paying their respects... and I found myself being very emotional. There were beautiful memorials and pictures on display. They had a quartet playing music and there were American flags diplayed everywhere. It was really touching.

A Flea Market Find!

We found this fabulous chair at the local flea market a couple blocks away. It doesn't look like much, but it's comfortable, it rocks, and it was cheap! After the flea market we went to the farmers market where we purchased all kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables. We used them to make a delicious dinner for our dinner "party" on Sunday.

HAPPY LABOR DAY!

New York 074
Originally uploaded by shilomayer.

Yay!! It is labor day! A day off from laboring!! We have had a very nice day. We went to brunch at this great cafe where we sat outside. (Where this photo was taken) The weather is beautiful, I can't get enough of it! Then we walked around, then went to this huge street fair/parade in Brooklyn.