Nature, Food & Culture - What Else Do You Need?

Kevin just left this morning for a few days in Detroit, so I'm bracing myself for three days of non-stop kids.  I did have the foresight to sign the kids up for an all-day camp on Wednesday so I'd have some recovery time.

I made it to a favorite spot, Symphony Space, a couple times this week.  On Wednesday night a friend and I saw Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York speak.  Several actors (from shows like Orange is the New Black, The Americans, Sex and the City) read posts from his latest book.  In case you don't follow Humans of New York on Facebook, Brandon walks around the city everyday taking photos of New Yorkers.  What makes his work really great though is that he also talks to them for a little while and posts a quote from them, always very touching or funny or provoking.  He also recently spent a few weeks in Syria covering the refugee crisis.  I highly recommend following him.

 

Then I made it back to Symphony Space this weekend with the kids and Kevin to see Fantasia (the 1940 Disney movie set only to classical music) on the big screen.  For 30-plus years I thought I had seen the movie but it turns out that I had only seen the part with Mickey Mouse as sorcerer, which apparently is only a small portion of the entire film.  We were all really impressed and loved seeing it in a theater with loud surround sound.

 

After another great Friday night at the Met (Kevin and I sat in on an interview with designer Todd Oldham while the kids were in Mythology class), I was really feeling the weight of the city and needed a nature fix.  We didn't have time on Saturday to get all the way out of the city so we did the next best thing - found a big park.  We wanted to explore somewhere new so we took the subway up to the top of Manhattan to Fort Tryon Park, site of a big battle during the Revolutionary War.  We enjoyed a couple hours of hiking around and absorbing the last of autumn before heading back downtown to Holden's soccer game.  It doesn't take much effort to make you feel like you're out of the city.

That's the Hudson River to the left.

They never follow directions.

And finally, our fall CSA (farm box) started this week.  I think I may have bitten off more than we can chew :)

 

You may be surprised to hear that we actually just about made it through all of this amazing food from Lancaster Farm in Pennsylvania in one week.  I made squash soup, creamed spinach, smoothies, pasta with roasted cauliflower and broccoli, fresh scrambled eggs almost every morning with three different kinds of fresh cheeses, roasted potatoes, collard green chips (like kale chips) and many incredible salads (I even used the celery greens).  The kids loved having ants-on-a-log for the first time and the sourdough bread was gone in 24 hours.  Can't wait to see what we get today!

A "Big" Week

A quick end-of-week pictorial wrap-up.

Ella was in her Happy Place all week - her Make-A-Musical camp that she did last year.  Seriously, it's the happiest we see her all year.  It's a great small group of kids (almost all of which are the same kids from last year) and three awesome teachers.  She's been on a high all week.  I just wish we could keep her this way...

(Pictures are ones her teachers have posted on Facebook)

While Ella has been busy being creative and silly, Holden and I enjoyed a week of one-on-one time.  We did science experiments, played math games, read books, went shopping at the Farmers Market, checked out the new Spiders Alive! exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, and got lots of treats since Ella is on a no-sweets restriction this week (I won't say what her offense was but you know it was pretty bad since taking away Ella's treats is about the worst punishment you can give our sweet-tooth girl).

Discovered Macaron Ice Cream Sandwiches

A science experiment involving lily pads and surface area.

Discovered that our favorite ice cream shop on Cape Cod is also right down the street from us!

As a family we all had a great time on Monday night at the Central Park Film Festival.  This year's theme is movies filmed in New York City.  The only child-friendly choice this season was the movie Big with Tom Hanks.  It was so fun to watch it laying on the grass in Central Park in the dark, right down the street from FAO Schwarz, where several scenes of the movie were filmed and where you can still dance on the giant piano.

If you're looking for an easy and fast weeknight meal, here's what I threw in my blender and then poured (cold, straight from blender) onto hot pasta.  Total prep and cook time: 10 minutes (time for the noodles to boil).

A couple garlic cloves, 1/2 cup olive oil, several chopped tomatoes, 

big handful of basil and a handful of almonds (I toasted them first).

Eleven Years and Counting

Saturday marked the eleventh anniversary of our beautiful wedding.

We had a quiet day leading up to a fun night out.  Holden was invited to a birthday party and although it was a very difficult decision for him whether or not to miss soccer in order to go to the party, in the end the party won.  And it was such a refreshing birthday party.  He was dropped off at Nathaniel's apartment.  There were two other boys from their class there.  The four of them apparently played in Nathaniel's room with his toys for an hour or so, then they walked down the block for some pizza.  They hit the ice cream truck on the way out for some popsicles and then spent another hour or so playing in the courtyard next to the apartment building.  They finished up by watching a video in his living room.  No hired entertainers.  No expensive birthday cupcakes.  No wasteful goodie bags filled with crap to take home.  And Holden said "it was so awesome!"  I think I really like this Nathaniel's mom.

Meanwhile, Kevin and Ella took a bike ride through Riverside Park (no photos because the family documentarian wasn't present) while I enjoyed a nice table in the sun at a local cafe and caught up on some reading.  We were all in our happy place.

The babysitter arrived soon after Holden got home and Kevin and I walked down a few blocks to the newly remodeled Tavern on the Green.

The restaurant was originally a sheep corral with Sheep Meadow (the large grassy area where we spent the day a couple weekends ago) just across the way.  In 1934 it was turned into a restaurant and in 2007 it was the largest grossing restaurant in the United States.  It just reopened in April after several years undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation.  We sat outside on a gorgeous evening, overlooking Central Park, and had a delicious meal. 

And then because we live in New York City, we saw a Broadway play.  I have to admit, I wasn't blown away by the show, The Realistic Joneses, but it had some big name stars in it so it was fun to see them (Toni Collette, Marisa Tomei, Michael C. Hall).  It wasn't terrible but the story was odd and I've realized that when you see actors who are used to doing film or TV, they often aren't very good on stage doing the same show over and over and over.  They come across as bored and wanting to get it over with.  I found that with Jane Lynch when we saw her in Annie as well.  But we still had a great time and stopped for a drink on the way home at a hip rooftop bar above the Hudson Hotel.

Sunday was still sunny and beautiful so we spent as much time outdoors as possible.  I guess as a late anniversary present Kevin let me sleep in while he and Ella jogged around the reservoir in Central Park (Again, no photos.  Kevin hasn't learned that if I can't blog about it, it didn't happen).  With no plans we started the day slow in our back yard, Kevin and I reading while the kids worked on a science experiment.

 

I have the kids signed up for two new box-a-month subscriptions.  Remember our old Kiwi Crate and Little Passports, the art and geography boxes they used to get?  We loved those but they expired and we decided to try something new - both science related.  This volcano building experiment is from The Magic Schoolbus Young Scientists Club.  It was their first box and they had a lot of fun with it.  I found a coupon online to subscribe for a year at half price, so in case you're thinking of signing up, hunt for a coupon.  It also comes with a monthly email with links to educational sites related to the science topic of the month.  The second subscription is for Einstein in a Box (which unfortunately just changed their name to Groovy Lab in a Box).  Their experiments are all STEM related (science, technology, engineering and math).  Those boxes are filled with several activities and a lot of online resources and videos.  It may actually be a little too much because they haven't even finished the first box yet and we've already received the second.  Maybe they'll have more time in the summer.  Oh who am I kidding?  Our summer is planned to the gills.


When we all started to get restless the kids grabbed their scooters and we went in search of lunch, ice cream and the smallest park in Manhattan.

 

We learned about Septuagesimo Uno as it's called, from a movie we recently watched set in Manhattan.  It's 0.04 acres big small and sits in between two brownstones in the Upper West Side.  It's basically a cleaned up alleyway, maintained by the New York Department of Parks and Rec.  As you can imagine, it didn't hold our attention for long but it was fun to check it off our list.  We took the scenic route home through Riverside Park with a quick stop to climb a tree (the kids) and read (the grown-ups).

 

We ended the weekend with another yummy vegetarian BBQ - this time delicious BBQ portobello burgers topped with a BBQ slaw and smoked Gouda.

And as though on cue, we woke up Monday morning to a downpour of rain.  Mother Nature sure knows how to time her bad weather.

Spring is a Tease in NYC

After the busyness of Grandma's visit and me with a bad chest cold, we laid low this weekend (which for us "laid low" means we only visited one museum and went to one street fair).

The weather was beautiful and sunny for the most part, except when it wasn't.  Saturday started nice so we visited the annual Tribeca Film Festival Family Fair.  It's a fun street fair that we went to last year that focuses on film making.  The kids got to do some fun activities and we enjoyed wandering around Tribeca with the streets closed to traffic.

Then it started to rain.  So we headed home and spent a fun afternoon warm and dry inside, playing Uno and my family favorite, Qwirkle, and continuing with the Cosmos series.

With my cough a little abated on Sunday morning and the sun back out, we wandered down to the Farmers Market in front of the American Museum of Natural History.  It's as though an invisible force of nature pulls us inside whenever we're within a half block of the museum because of course we couldn't be that close and not peek inside.  But what amazes me is that after dozens of visits we still manage to find new rooms that we haven't seen yet.

This time we made sure to find the Costa Rica section in the Latin America hall.  This would be a good time to tell you of our summer plans.  The kids will be going to a Spanish language summer camp in Costa Rica for three weeks!  The kids and I will fly down first and then Kevin will join us for the last 12 days.  We are all beyond excited.  The camp has a couple hours in the morning of classroom Spanish time, and then the rest of each day is filled with various fun activities such as surf lessons, soccer matches with local kids, visiting a local school, field trips to the rainforest.  I'm told that the camp counselors and teachers all only speak Spanish with the kids, so I'm hoping this will really bring their Spanish to a new level.

While at the museum we also tagged along with one of their hourly free tours, which is always fun.  They are called Highlights Tours and each docent gets to decide where they want to go and what they want to talk about, so it's different every time.

On this week's tour we learned about the tragic great bison slaughter of the 1800s.  You can (and should) read more about it but basically the railroad companies wanted to lay their railroads through the west which until then had been left alone by the white man.  The Native Americans who inhabited that land were in their way so someone had the brilliant idea that if they could get rid of all the bison (upon which the Natives depended for just about everything - meat, hides for clothing and tipis, horns and bones for tools) that that would solve their "Indian problem".  So shockingly, the US government encouraged the slaughter of American Bison.  There were contests to see who could kill the most and even special train rides where passengers could just lean out of the window with a rifle and kill as many bison as they could.  The American Bison population went from the hundreds of millions to about 800 in just 15 years!  I don't know the numbers of Native Americans that died as a result of the bison slaughter, but it must have been devastating.  This is tantamount to the Holocaust as far as I'm concerned and can't believe I hadn't heard of this before.

Again, we spent a leisurely afternoon at home, me drinking large amounts of tea to try to get my voice back, and the kids doing homework and practicing piano with Kevin.

Here's a duet Kevin and Ella have been working on.

The Big Test is upon us again this week.  Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be the math portion of the dreaded state tests for Ella.  She's been struggling a little with fractions (specifically, putting a bunch of them in order), so we played with Legos for a while.

 

It seemed to help.

I also forgot to post photos of our impromptu visit to Kevin's office last week.  I realized while out on Ellis Island that I had forgotten our apartment keys and we had our piano teacher coming over before Kevin was to get home.  So that meant a trip to midtown to see Kevin's office and get his set of keys.

 

Frankly, I don't know why Kevin ever comes home.  His offices are absolutely gorgeous.  His company just moved into new digs a couple months ago that were designed by a famous architecture firm.  There is a beautiful fully stocked kitchen (the kids found the drawer filled with gummy bears) and a large screen TV with the most comfortable couch.  From his desk you can look right out onto the Chrysler Building next door.

As Holden said on our way home, "He's so lucky to work there!"



And finally, I just wanted to share two quick things with you.

First, this brain fart I had this week when I was about to pour out a half pot of leftover coffee: coffee ice cubes.

 

I've been tossing them in the blender with milk for latte smoothies.  I add some ground flax seed for some extra Omega-3s and occasionally a banana for some potassium and extra flavor.  Delish.



And this was my walk home this morning from school drop-off.

Today is a beautiful spring day although the forecast for the rest of the week is rain.  But with 70 degree temps... Not sure if I'll ever get used to the weather here.