New house photos

I was terrible and didn't take a single picture while we were house hunting.  I was able to pull some pictures off the website.  Here are just a few pictures of our new home.  I wake up frequently in the middle of the night and picture where I'm going to be putting all our furniture, while it is fun to imagine where things will go, I'd much rather be getting some much needed sleep!

The only full size bathroom.

The kitchen.  I think my table will fit in here so I can make it an "eat in" kitchen.

Half of the living room and playroom.

I am in love with the big farm sink.

This will be Katie's room.

The steps are numbered.  A fun little detail!

This will be Mikey's bedroom.

The dining room.  While I really like the moldings on the wall it leaves little room to hang pictures.

New Beginnings

After a few stressful days of dealing with realtors and negotiating back and forth with the owners we got the great news that the house was officially ours!

Here it is, our soon to be new home in Stamford, CT.

The front.

The back/side yard.

The back yard.

Based on what we've seen on the market we had to compromise a little bit when it came to finding a home.  This home has lots of stuff we wanted: 3 bedrooms, a nice kitchen (which is the heart of the home for us), a completely fenced in yard, and a playroom separate from the living room and they have agreed to a dog (we get Bailey back soon!).  Some stuff we had to compromise on:  it doesn't have central air, there is only 1.5 baths (we were hoping for 2), there is no garage and it is facing a busier street (but the back of the home is on a quiet street).  Extra:  It has a nice sun porch with built in's perfect for putting some potted herbs and flowers and watching the snow/rain fall outside. I think I'll find Bailey in there a lot.

It's also close to the school I found for Mikey and Katie.  Within an hour of us hearing that we got this house I filled out the school applications for Mikey and Katie and got that in the mail and called the school to let them know the application was on it's way to them.

We have our possession date set, our move out/move in days set and also have Mikey and Katie signed up for some extra curricular activities come this fall. We are so excited to begin this new chapter.  Everything seems to be falling into place, just as we were hoping.  We got the home we wanted, the kids in the school we wanted, the location we wanted.  Too good to be true?  I hope not.

The Mad Dash is on!!

Scott had his initial interview at the new place he will be working at starting in August in Norwalk, CT so while he was doing that in the morning the kids and I toured schools in the area.  About a week prior I started my research, all over again for schools in CT.

Back in the beginning of February I posted a blog about my hairy experience finding a preschool here in NYC that you can read about (here).  Come to find out months later all that stress and worry and time spent researching, touring, asking questions, evaluations was all for nothing!  I have to laugh about it or I might cry. Pulling him out of school here in NYC also meant we had to deal with a heavy drop fee.  Scott keeps telling me that we need to think of it as an investment in his education and it was piece of mind that we had a spot reserved for him at a good school in NYC.  Okay, whatever but I could have done a lot with that money!!!

I zeroed in on schools in Stamford, Norwalk and Wilton to start and found a few options in each of those towns.  Researching schools in CT wasn't as hard or as stressful compared to finding schools in NYC.  Maybe that's because at this point I consider myself a seasoned pro, ha!  I knew what I was looking for and quickly narrowed down my options from about 30 to 5.  Most schools got crossed off the list fast because of their location, price, no availability or we'd have to switch schools for Mikey after only one year.  Then I crossed a few more schools off the list because while they may have had a spot available for Mikey there wasn't a school close enough for me to take Katie too or vice versa or their pick up and drop off schedule were at the same time and I obviously can't be at 2 places at once..... and before you knew it I had 5 options.

Yikes!  I hope I like at least one of them!  If I didn't like them, I don't know what I would do.  This was pretty much the last week for schools in CT and while some schools offered summer camps there was only 1 that I was looking at that offered that and I feel like you can't really get a feel or a sense of a school until you see it in action.  It feels completely different in the summer time when there is no one there! So this was my one and only chance at finding a school for them.

So fingers crossed and appointments made we hit all 5 schools one right after another.  The kids were troopers and really enjoyed checking out the schools.  Mikey was super cute and when asked told everyone his name was Michael and Katie's name was Katherine and he was 5 and she was 3.  I swear he has been 5 for the past year.  He really really really wants to be 5!  Mikey understood when we were going to check out a school for him and when we were checking out a school for Katie and kept referring to those schools as his school or Katie's school.

So out of those 5 schools I loved 2 of them and the 3rd one while I liked it, Mikey would have to go into their pre-k 4 program based on his age and we really wanted to put him in a pre-k 3 program.  I've found that most parents in CT who have kids with birthdays later in the year hold their kids back, especially boys which is exactly what we want to do with Mikey.  (I remember this was a big sticking point for me with schools in NYC.  They all wanted to put Mikey into pre-k 4 which we refused to do.)

The 2 schools that I loved were only 1.5 miles from each other and I was really happy taking Mikey to the one school and Katie to the other. The only problem was that their school days were on opposite days which meant that I'd always have one kid with me....which was fine because I was that in love with both of the schools.  But.....I was really looking forward to having some me time to workout, go to the grocery store, do laundry, clean the house, just shut my eyes and breath.  Bummer.  Guess I'll just have to wait another year.

The school I found for Katie, didn't have any openings for their pre-k 3 program for Mikey which I was totally fine with because I was so in love with both the schools.  I then got a call later in the day from the school I found for Katie saying they had an opening in their pre-k 3 program for Mikey.  It was their last day of school and one of the families said they were moving and had to give up their spot. What?!!!  Yes, the heaven's have opened!  Wahoo.  This was exactly what I was crossing my fingers and hoping would happen.  It's a really great, very friendly, small, private school that I can send both kids too for the next two years and they would both be in school at the same time.  I don't think I could have pictured a better scenario!   Found the schools....now we just need to find a home that's not too far away from this school and fast before someone takes those spots!!

Moving on to finding a house.  That afternoon we spent touring homes in the area.  We weren't thrilled with anything we were shown and we back to CT on Saturday for a full day of touring homes.  Long story short, we fell in love with the last place we found.

I later told Scott that we always end up in the last place we see and he said that it is because we've found it and we've stopped looking!  Haha.  That was true in Colorado, Chicago and NYC and now Connecticut too!  So now we just wait and see if we get this home and then we can cross that off the list too!

Dips

MY. KIDS. LOVE. DIP!

I go through so much ketchup it's ridiculous.  Katie especially loves it, I mean really loves it and I often find her just sticking her finger into it and licking it off.

Hummus....that's another home run.  Usually we have it at lunch time with baby carrots and Mikey usually dips one for one but Katie will sometimes triple or quadruple dip her carrot in the hummus before taking a bit of carrot.

They even love this lemon garlic aioli I make.....that's how I get them to eat roasted brussel sprouts!

Throwing some tarter sauce on fish makes it go down super easy and squirting a pile of BBQ sauce on their plates makes their chicken disappear.

I'm slowly learning as I go what the tricks of the trade are...I'm really trying to stick to my guns and make the kids eat what I prepare instead of me catering to their kid taste buds.  I want them to eat a variety of foods and not just chicken nuggets and I've been finding that adding dip to our meal means less protests from the kids and they happily eat what I make....usually, but not always.  We still have plenty of fits over what I serve and when.

No, you cannot have french fries at breakfast and a popsicle an hour later!  Speaking of french fries, a "hot," make their ears perk up word in our house seems to be a food they always want.  I noticed if I call something french fries they will usually eat it. Now obviously I don't call green beans french fries but if I make home fries for breakfast and call them french fries the kids will eat it.  If I serve veggie sticks for lunch and call them french fries the kids will eat it.

Wahoo!!  This momma is not above tricking her kids to get them to eat and learning what those tricks are is priceless!

Ernie and Bert

This book has been seeing a lot of action in our house over the past 2 weeks.  It all started when Scott read the book in perfect Ernie and Bert voices. He does a great impression of Elmo, Kermit the Frog, Bart Simpson too among other voices! The kids were mesmerized and have since requested he read it every.single.night.  Ut-oh...This might get old fast.

Jess's Birthday

The weather was absolutely perfect outside for once and it was a perfect day to celebrate my birthday!  When Mikey wasn't in school the kids and I spent much of the day outside exploring little nooks and crannies in our favorite parks.  It's so fun to just let them lead the way.  We looked for bugs, ants (one of their favorites), spiderwebs, butterflies, a butterfly in a chrysalis (Mikey just learned about the life cycle of a butterfly in school), dogs, leaves, sticks, and sprinklers.

We had dinner outside at a new burger joint called BurgerFi; very low key, just like I wanted and followed it up with a yummy cake from Two Little Red Hens Bakery!  Delicious!!

Chocolate Tour

Today a few girl friends and I braved the sun and heat to go on a chocolate tour.  We had a great time, got in some sun, laughs and sights. Ugh....sort of the last thing you want to do when it is 95 degrees outside is walk 3 miles stopping at 9 different places to taste chocolate item after chocolate item.  After about the 4th place and eating full menu items (not sample sizes) we all started to get the chocolate sweats.   But it was so much fun and we were able to take some stuff home to share with our families.  We started our adventure at about 10 am at Chelsea Market. An interesting fact about Chelsea Market was that it was the birth place of the Oreo cookie and it's also has the largest bakery in the country and they tape Food Network shows there too.

Our tour guide in the green shirt was really informative giving us lots of info about buildings and the city and a group of about 20-25 people.

 Our first stop was at Lilac Chocolates where we sampled two different chocolates.  A super rich dark chocolate and their famous butter crunch chocolate (amazing!..off to a great start...just what I was craving; a little piece of chocolate!)

After Lilac was a stop across the street at Chocolate Bar.  We sampled two more chocolates...a dark sea salt chocolate and a coffee chocolate. (Yum!  Chocolate tastes so different with a little extra salt sprinkled on it! Moving on to the next place.)

Next on our stop was the Original Magnolia Bakery on the corner of Bleeker and 11th Avenue.  Here we got to sample a full size chocolate cupcake with decadent chocolate frosting.  Wow - Did I really just devour that?  I don't remember a thing the tour guide just said.... I just wanted that cupcake. ...yum.  Yikes...maybe I shouldn't have eaten the entire thing.  How many more places do we have to go to? Gulp. (My weakness are cupcakes...it's your own little personal cake that you don't have to share with anyone!)

Jen, Kelly, Heather and I in front of Magnolia Bakery.

After Magnolia Bakery we went to Milk and Cookies.  It was such a cute little shop on a nice quiet street.  Here they handed out giant dark chocolate cookies with milk chocolate chocolate chips.  (Usually it's the other way around.)  Ok, super glad I could take one bit and stuff the rest of the cookie in a wax paper sleeve to take home. Phew.  Saved by the wax sleeve.  Not sure I would have been able to eat the entire cookie without feeling sick. 

Milk and Cookies Store Front.

 Right around the corner from Milk and Cookies is the narrowest single family home in Manhattan. It was built right where an alley way used to be and measures a whopping 9.5 feet wide.  You can see just how wide it is by comparing it to the car parked out front.

Narrowest house in the city.

 A block away is the famous building from the sitcom Friends.  Scott and I had dinner in the Little Owl back in the winter which is on the ground level of the building.

The Friends Building.

 Next stop was at Bisoiciao.  They have delicious macarons...not to be confused with macaroons.  They had a cakey texture and were sort of like an upscale oreo cookie.  The flavor combinations at this place were pretty cool too.  They had matcha tea, lavender honey, pistachio, gianduja, sour cherry and espresso among lots of other flavors.  (I really wanted to take some macarons home but they would have melted within about 2 minutes.  I would have loved to save mine for later as I was super full and already feeling 5 lbs heavier.  Ugh....just exactly how many places are we going to?!  It was good but I was on chocolate overload at this point and dreading the 3 more places we still had to go too.)

Lots of pretty macarons to choose from.

Our 6th stop was at Bruno Bakery.  They were on Throwdown with Bobby Flay and Bruno's beat him with their cannoli. Which we got to sample our very own.  It was super rich, decadent and had a little zing from their lemon zest.  (Oh my God....just how much more chocolate do I have to eat.  I don't want to waste it...so I just better eat it!)

Bruno Bakery in the East Village.

Our second to last stop was at Xocolatti...the owner a young man from India had really interesting chocolate.  The owner is also the only chocolate-er in the U.S. named one of the top 10 chocolate-ers in the world.  His shop has also won numerous architecture awards for their creative use of space.  Their chocolate boxes line the walls floor to ceiling of their 250 square foot shop.  The natives of India use lots of fruit in their desserts and chocolate.  We sampled two chocolates...one of which was a white chocolate with mango and spicy paprika.  It was super delicious, light and spicy.  (Phew.  Only one more to go...you can do this.  Must do hot yoga sometime this weekend!!) I didn't think I would like it but I purchased a small piece to take home and share.  It was so different from any other chocolate I've tried.  Katie loved it!!!

From Xocolatti.

Kelly, Jen and Heather in Xocolatti.

Okay, we have finally reached our last destination....the 8th stop on our list; Vosges.  This place was like an upscale beauty bar and they were very strict about taking pictures inside.  You had to actually be in the picture to take a picture.  You couldn't take pictures of any of their products....they have had other retailers try to steal their packaging ideas.  Here we sampled two more chocolates one of which had bacon in it.  I couldn't really taste the bacon though.

As you can see I didn't follow their picture rule.  This is what I took home to Scott.  A dark chocolate bar with hickory smoked uncured bacon and alderwood smoked salt.  

A final picture of the girls and I at Vosges.

Okay I'm swearing off sugar starting now....must do hot yoga sometime this weekend, drink a gallon of water a day and go on a juice detox.  Oh and a shower ASAP is a must!  I really felt like I was 5 lbs heavier after this tour.  Thank goodness we had to walk in the heat!!  

Eating my way through NYC!!

I had so much fun ladies!!!