Drowning in Greens

Cousin Michael and his wife Frances and their two adorable kids arrived yesterday!  Our kids are thrilled to have yet more kids from home to play with.  I'll tell you all about our visit after the weekend.

Meanwhile, I haven't posted a "creative" post in a while, so here's what I've been up to when not playing tour guide.

We're really enjoying our weekly farm box.  Due to a lot of rain recently, we're getting a LOT of greens (apparently they hold up to the rains).  I'm talking mesclun, spinach, bok choy, red lettuce, arugula, broccoli rabe, various herbs and this strange thing:

(garlic scape)

A big part of the fun of getting this box each week (and the kids do in fact think it's so fun - starting on Monday they ask constantly, "Do we pick up the vegetables today??"), is finding and trying recipes for things I've never eaten before, let alone cooked.  So if you have any garlic scape recipes, let me know.

As you can guess, we've eaten a lot of salad recently.  And since we've been getting a lot of strawberries, they make it into our salads too (even though Kevin HATES fruit in salads).

 

We're also getting the farm fresh eggs weekly.  And I'm not the only one who's noticed how much better they taste than store bought.  Ella, my non-egg eater, actually asked for scrambled eggs yesterday for breakfast for the first time in her life.  We're also eating them for dinner, with other farm box goodies thrown in, in this case asparagus.

We've gotten rhubarb for the last couple weeks.  I have never, never even touched rhubarb before.  Luckily, the CSA's website provides recipes so this morning I made homemade rhubarb, strawberry lemonade. It's still cooling so I haven't tasted it yet, but warning: do not eat raw rhubarb.  It's disgusting.

 

I've been doing a tiny bit of sewing.  Cousin Bonnie just got the most awesome Teardrop Trailer.  I'm completely jealous.  I've wanted one for ages.

Anyone who knows Bonnie also knows that to say she has a thing for bunnies is an understatement.  Her house is named Hare House.  Anyway, I saw this fabric and thought of her.  I decided she needed a toiletry bag for 'glamping'.

Apparently her cat approved.

(And how cute is that card I found on Etsy?)

There is much more sewing in my near future, if I can find the time and space between house guests, because my niece turns 8 on June 30th and I always whip up a few things for her.  Will post those pictures when I'm done.

Finally, we proved that it's always good to be flexible and spontaneous on Wednesday night.  At 6:30pm a friend of ours called Kevin and said he had two extra free tickets to see Willie Nelson play in Newark, New Jersey.  The show starts at 8.

Kevin: Let me see if we can find a babysitter.  

Friend: We'll send ours over.  

Kevin: Not sure how we'd get to New Jersey.  

Friend: We'll pick you up.

How do you say no to that?  

We had a great time seeing Ol' Willie.  And it was only slightly strange to leave our kids with a babysitter with whom we spent exactly 30 seconds with and then leave the state entirely.

Please post in the comments below, your favorite greens recipes!

The Amazing Race

Alyssa and her kids arrived on Friday!!  A little background since I really have no idea who reads this blog (I'm almost at 3,000 page views and I can only name a handful of people I know who are readers...).  Alyssa has been my best friend since I was on the playground in early 1979 and she asked me to come to her 8th birthday slumber party.  I had no idea who she was.  She and I were in different classes.  And this being the 70s, my parents had no problem with me spending the night at a stranger's house whose parents they had never met.  She's been my idol and role model ever since.

OK seriously people, all of THIS happened in about 60 hours:

Breakfast at Tom's (the famous Seinfeld diner) followed by a walk around Columbia University

A quick stop in front of the New York Historical Society

 A walk through Central Park with some Frisbee action

A walk down the famous 5th Avenue

 A stop at FAO Schwarz toy store

The piano from the movie Big

(We'll be adding the piano to the kids' Christmas list.)

A nap on the subway

 A walk down the High Line (my favorite spot in New York City)

Stopped at a rooftop bar to rehydrate and the boys played life size Jenga.

They got some pretty girls to help them.

Dinner at Mario Batali's pizzeria

And that was just day one.

New York bagels on our roof deck the next morning.

 Hopped on the Staten Island Ferry roundtrip to see the Statue of Liberty

 Grand Central Station

The Chrysler Building

The Empire State Building

Times Square

Swimming for the kids...

...and cocktails for the grown-ups.

There's more....a half day, day three:

Rose early for the Today Show.  Saw Al Roker, Savannah Guthrie and Natalie Morales...Matt Lauer had the day off!!  I'm going to have to return again on my own.

And finished with the 9/11 Memorial.

But don't get any ideas, people.  This tour was a one time deal.  If you come to visit us we will happily give you maps and a list of the highlights to check out.  But I don't think we have this in us to do again.  Take notes, you'll need to refer back to this blog post.

We sadly said goodbye to Alyssa, Shauna and Grant this morning as they headed up to Maine to meet up with grandparents.  The kids got to show them their school and classes this morning on their way out.

It also happened to be Authors Celebration day in Ella's class.

Safe travels.  We miss you already!

Now I have 24 hours until our next house guests arrive!

Still do. Always will.

Friday was our tenth wedding anniversary.  In some ways it seems unbelievable that we've been married for ten whole years.  That sounds sooooo long.  And it makes me feel soooo old!  But in many ways it feels like yesterday.  I remember every detail of June 7th, 2003.

We had an amazingly romantic day.  Really, even if we had done nothing other than just spend an entire day together with no kids and no family or friends, just the two of us, it would have been romantic.  But add in New York City...and wow!

It was a storming day...

But that didn't matter.  All of our plans were indoors.  After dropping the kids off at school we headed down to the Lower East Side for a quick breakfast at a spot we've wanted to try for a while: The Clinton Street Baking Co.  We had a delicious breakfast and jetted off to our 11 o'clock spa appointments.  For Mothers Day Kevin and the kids got me a gift certificate for a 30 minute massage and two hours of tub time at the Aire Ancient Baths.  It's a gorgeous place, modeled after Roman baths.  It's all underground with brick walls and lit only with hundreds of tiny votives.

 

They have a 'Thousand Springs' tub with what feels like a thousand jets going.  They have a calm, 97 degree pool, a hot, hot tub and of course cold plunge tubs.  Our favorite tub was the 'Flotation Tub'.  It is extra salinated so you float very, very easily.  It's like you're just completely weightless.  There's also a sauna and a heated marble slab for naps.  It's silent in there except for the New Age music.  The massages were wonderful but of course, too short.  It was such a perfect escape from the frenetic city.  I know we'll be back.


What I love about Kevin is that when he is tasked with finding the most romantic things to do on our anniversary, he comes up with The Morgan Library.  No one loves books like this guy.  It isn't a lending library but the personal library of the Morgan family (as in J.P. Morgan, the financier).  So it's actually a museum.  And you know what, walking around hand in hand, listening to the audio tour, walking silently through the museum, was actually quite romantic.

 In a new addition designed by the architect Renzo Piano.

In addition to very old, rare books, such as a Gutenburg Bible and an original Catcher in the Rye (I would have taken a picture if it was on display), they also have original music sheets from Beethoven and Mozart, hand written letters from Presidents and politicians - some VERY old stuff!

After a perfect dinner at Maialino, a restaurant Kevin has wanted to try for a few years, we ended the day seeing the absolute best show I've ever seen in my life, The Book of Mormon.  No exaggeration, the best.  Now I understand all the hype.  It's hilarious.  Seriously, my cheeks were aching by the end and I had tears coming down my cheeks.  It's not for kids, that's for sure.  Some very adult humor.  The music, the singing, the story - all fantastic.  Run, don't walk, to get your tickets.

Over dinner Kevin and I agreed that if we could teach our kids one thing, it's that the most important decision you will ever make is choosing your life partner.  You get that one right and everything else is easy. 

So glad I got it right.

The New Locavores

The big excitement this week is that our CSA farm box had started!  From now through mid-November we'll be picking up a weekly box of fruits, vegetables, fresh eggs and a bouquet of flowers from our local synagogue. 

Of course before the synagogue, it came from a farm called Garden of Eve in upstate New York. Not only is it exciting to be surprised each week with what fresh produce we'll be receiving, but it's also a great lesson for the kids to learn about what produce grows in this region and which seasons they grow in. I've already had to explain to Ella why her wish of getting mangoes next week won't come true (next week or any week for that matter).  

And the kids have started to notice the signs in Whole Foods that tell them that their apples were shipped all the way from New Zealand and their bananas from Mexico. It's good for me too to be reminded to pay attention to those signs and remember all of the energy (and waste) that went into getting that produce here - not to mention the fact that they were probably picked a week or more ago and very under ripe. Even the kids notice the taste difference in our new local produce.

And Holden liked the peonies.

My hope is to be able to take the kids up to the farm to visit before the growing season is over (yes, unlike California, the box isn't available year-round).

We've also officially adopted one of the garden beds at their school over the summer. That means we'll get to plant, grow and harvest anything we want this summer.

That is, if we have time.

And how cute is our Spanish tutor/piano teacher and her sea foam green guitar?!? She was singing a song that she wrote in Spanish to Holden and having him write down the color names as she serenaded him. [Especially for the Grandmas: don't forget that you can click on any photo to make it bigger.]

Tomorrow is my and Kevin's ten year wedding anniversary.  He's playing hooky from work and we'll spend the entire day together, child-free.  Our babysitter is picking the kids up from school so when I say the entire day, I mean the ENTIRE day.  I'll fill you in next week on our shenanigans.  Meanwhile, tomorrow also happens to be World Day at school.  The one day where both Ella and Holden's classes are having presentations that the parents are supposed to attend and ooh and ahh over their kids' masterpieces.  Kevin and I thought for about 30 seconds about still going even though this was supposed to be our child-free day to focus on each other.  Then decided better and stuck to our original plans.  So I went into Ella's classroom yesterday to help them set-up for it and get a peek at what we'll be missing.  Each class presents a different country to the rest of the school.  Ella's is Fiji and Holden's is Yemen (Holden refused to get a henna tattoo with the rest of the class.  Party pooper.).

Ella's homemade grass skirt.

And Sleeping Beauty

The Quiet Before the Chaos

We finally had a relatively quiet, uneventful weekend.  The quiet before the chaos.  For the next three weekends in a row we have company coming to stay with us in our micro-apartment.  We're thrilled to see each and every one of them, but we're getting a little nervous about logistics.  We can't even all eat together.  But I know it will all work out and we're so happy to have visitors.

So this weekend we laid low and took it easy.  Friday night Kevin and I saw Comedy of Errors in Central Park, which was amazing.  There were a ton of huge actors in it - most big on Broadway so probably not names that you would recognize but two big TV stars: Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern Family and Hamish Linklater from The New Adventures of the Old Christine.  It was hilarious and so much better than we even expected it to be.  We picnicked in the park for dinner beforehand and after sunset the weather was still in the 70s, so a perfect evening.

Last week I was chatting with my new mom-friend from the kids' Spanish class.

Her: You're so awesome, we should double date sometime.  (OK, I added the awesome part.)

Me:  Sounds great!  But it would have to be this weekend because after that we have house guests for the following 3 weekends and then we're in Minnesota/California for the next 3 weeks, then camping, then the Jersey Shore...our next available weekend is August 24th.

Her: This weekend it is.

It turns out she had her son signed up for a Lego robot building class (I know, only in New York) for 3 hours on Saturday morning and asked if we'd like to go out to brunch with them.  After twisting Ella's arm (Mommy and Daddy want to make new friends so you have to go to Lego class!), I signed them up for the Lego class too and we had a great brunch with our new friends.  We discovered we have lots in common and didn't run out of things to talk about the entire three hours.  I hope they still remember us in late August.

And guess what?  Ella had a great time building this remote control car.

She said the best part was learning how to program it from the computer.  Kevin and I sighed with relief.  Not only that Ella loved the class, but that she loves computer programming!  Needless to say, Holden loved it, too, although he was much more interested in the building part than the programming part.

We spent the afternoon cooling off in the air conditioned Natural History Museum.  This is now our fifth visit and believe it or not, we found two more halls we hadn't been to before.  It's like the Winchester Mystery House - it never ends.  The great thing about having a membership there is that we can just pop in like we did on Saturday, wander through a couple rooms, and head home.  No pressure to see it all or make it a big event.  This weekend the kids learned a lot about our ancient ancestors.

Sunday continued to be just as hot and humid.  We started off with a nice picnic in front of what has become the kids' favorite playground in Central Park.  All playgrounds in New York City have water play features and this is the first weekend where they're all turned on - sprinklers, sprays, fountains.  The kids are in heaven.

But even the water play and shade couldn't cool us down from the afternoon heat so we packed up and headed out to more air conditioning: our first movie in New York.  We saw Epic which while it has a terrible title, is a beautifully animated movie and a good story.  I highly recommend it to my mom friends.

And of course the entire weekend was peppered with many visits to the pool, before heading out, as soon as we arrived home, before dinner, after dinner.  It sure is convenient to have a pool in the building.

Now that I write it all out, it doesn't sound like a quiet weekend, does it?  But it felt relaxing to us and Team Skaggs is ready for the arrival of friends and family!  

Bring it on.