Mini Couch

There are lots of great toys for little kids to play with at my mom and dad's home.  Growing up we always teased my mom as to why she kept most of our toys from childhood.  Her response was always the same....."they are for the grandkids."  I'm definitely glad she kept them now. Besides a pack n play, highchair, little house, endless books, toys, puzzles, blocks, legos, an entire army of G I Joes, bikes, trucks, videos....there is also a mini couch, that folds out to become a sleeping bag.  Papa got it out one day (as if there isn't enough to stimulate Mikey) and Mikey and Katie had so much fun sitting/standing/jumping on it.

Enjoy :)

Katie sitting like a lady on the mini sized couch.

Not sure what he's laughing about or looking at.

Another one of him smiling.

Another rare photo of him smiling.

Work. Dirt. Truck. Tree.

Mikey has an affinity for trucks.  He spent lots of time when at Papa's and Nana's playing outside with the trucks, working, and digging dirt.

Work.

See the darkness in the upper corners. 
It was dark out and he's working via flashlight.  He's putting in extra hours.

My little Valentine.

Valentine's Day this year is bitter sweet.  My Grandma Cichy, passed away this Valentine's Day around noon.  My family thinks she couldn't live without her Valentine and so she went to be with him.  She suffered a stroke in mid-December and has been cared for by nurses and family all the while doing rehabilitation since.  We'll miss her dearly and a few days before she passed and the last moments I shared with her while she was still communicative, were with her and Katie.  She sang 2 nursery rhymns - twinkle twinkle little star and humpty dumtpy.  It was lovely and very sweet and Katie sat there on the bed with her and just listened.

The sweet part of Valentine's Day was spending it with 2 little ones.  Katie (like all females) loved Valentine's Day.  She had fun slobbering on all of Aunt Jamie's candy!  (Surprise Jamie :) )

My sweet girl.

She's so pleased with herself.

I hope she has a big heart.

She didn't want to give this bag up.

I assume all males feel like this on Valentine's Day.

He got a sucker and was a happy boy.

Reading

We are a reading household.  We love to read.  There is no such thing as too much reading in our home.  I find great pleasure whenever I see Mikey reading on his own. :) He was very focused!

Chrysler Building

Gorgeous views of the Chrysler Building right outside of our hotel room.  We always stay at the Marriott East on 49th St. and Lexington Ave.  It's so pretty, I thought you'd like to see them too!

Looking downtown from our hotel room.

See it, in the background?

Chrysler Building on a cold, blustery Saturday in Feb. I still love architecture (which I studied in college).

Woke up early to see the Chrysler still lite up in the morning sky.

Apartment hunting trip to NYC.

We finished off our weekend in NYC by going back to our new neighborhood on Saturday to get a better feel for what is around.  Finding grocery stores, dry cleaners, churches, parks, restaurants, etc.  We also decided to keep our car for a few months and saw the parking garage across the street from our building where we will be keeping our car. 

We then went to Cornerstone Bar to watch the Syracuse / U. Conn game and for dinner we went to Dos Caminos!  It was delicious.  I normally don't drink but the magaritas were awesome.  I had the passion fruit margarita and the special which was duck (cooked perfectly) with a corn flan and roasted onion on a cauliflower puree. Yum!

It was nice to actually have uninterrupted  adult conversations and conversations that didn't revolve around what I did with the kids today.  All in all, a great and accomplished trip! Thanks Mom and Dad for watching the kids!

Oh - I should probably also mention that we tried to go to a few broadway shows, however I think we waited to late as the were all sold out.  We first decided to see The Book of Mormon (won a ton of awards last year) but tickets were more than $500 a pop.  Definitely, way out of our price range.  Next on our list was Wicked (soldout) and The Phantom of the Opera (soldout).  We want to eventually see the Book of Mormon but will wait a while until it's not so in demand and popular.  We have 2 years, so we'll see!

My yummy, lightly salted passion fruit margarita!

Our NYC Apartment!

Wow - So we did it! We found an apartment in NYC.  It was such a whirlwind of a day.  We basically had 1 full day to see roughly 15 apartments.  It was jammed packed, with appointment after appointment.  We did find 10 minutes to scarf down a delicious piece of NYC pizza.  Ahhh - so much better than deep dish Chicago style.  I digress. Okay, so back to our search - here's how our day went!

Our day started at 9:30am when we met our realtor at our hotel. We took the subway to LIC (Long Island City; an up and coming part of Queens) to see roughly 9 apartments.  Out of those 9 there were only 2 that we saw ourselves living in. One of those 2 apartments we had a few questions on.  It was the biggest we saw at 1200 square feet but technically it was only 1 bedroom.  They put up a temporary wall to create a second bedroom, but ultimately that wall would have to come down according to NYC law and we wouldn't be able to put up another wall.  So that got checked off the list.  The other apartment that we liked in LIC was 1000 square feet and had a washer and dryer in the unit.  To save space we wouldn't have a dinning room table and we'd have to eat at the kitchen island.  It would have worked but ultimately we went with one we found in the Upper East Side.

By 1:30pm we were looking at our first apartment in the Upper East Side.  It was on the corner of 80th St. and 3rd Avenue....they were asking $4,600 for 980 square feet....ummmm NO THANK YOU!  We then saw 3 or 4 more that were okay but didn't feel right.  Then the final 2 apartments of the day that we saw were in building that are managed by the same company. 

The apartment that we settled on and can already picture ourselves living there is in a building called The Hamilton.  It's on the corner of 90th Street and York Avenue.  The building has a washer and dryer, gym (they just redid 2 months ago), locker rooms with saunas, a solarium, roof top deck, kids play room and outdoor confined kids playground.  I'm so excited I could just squeal.  Oh, and we have a fancy doorman, dressed to the 9's. 

Some more pluses I'll just list off:
1) Asphalt Green right across the street - the biggest swimming pool compound in NYC.
2) Asphalt Green - huge standard sized soccer field and basketball courts and a playground that has water sprays in the summer time, right across the street
3) both 1 and 2 can be seen from all windows of our corner apartment!
4) amazing views of the East River.
5) I just mentioned that we have a corner apartment.  We only share one wall with our neighbor and that's in the master bedroom so we don't have to worry about being quiet.
6) The building has a free shuttle that takes you to the subway.
7) We have 2 buses M-86 and M-31 that START right in front of our building.  Important because you can always find a seat.
8) Is in a very quiet, feels like a neighborhood part of the Upper East Side.
9) Carl Schwarz Park (a huge park) starts at 89th and East End Avenue.
10) Perhaps the largest apartment we saw in Upper East Side.
11) Gracie Mansion right around the corner.
12) Our building will store 4 pieces of luggage for us (luggage within a piece of luggage) so we don't need to take up space in our closets. For free!!! :)


I remembered to take pictures of our empty apartment that they are currently fixing up and will have ready for us on March 1st. Enjoy!

Our Kitchen - Galley Style.

Our Living room with lots of light.

The soccer field I mentioned.  Taken looking out of windows from our apartment.  It is open to the public!

The parks and water park, looking out our living room.  The building on the right is Asphalt Green - where the swimming pools are.  Mikey can take swimming lessons there.

This was taken with me standing in the corner of the living room. The windows are to my back and you can see into the kitchen (pass thru) and the entry way.  The door ajar in the entry way is a W.I.C.

The master bedroom.

The kids bedroom.  They have the second walk in closet.

The hallway/kids bathroom.  The master bathroom is exaclty the same.  I like the storage under the sink vs. a pedestal sink.

You see our entry way in the forefront and living room is where our realtor is standing.  The entry way can fit a table.

Our building at 1735 York Avenue.

I realize I should have put this picture first. It's our floor plan.

Cross Streets right outside our building.

We both realized how tall our building was once we took this picture. 
You can see our apartment from here.  See where the shorter buildings roof is? Go up one more story and the 3 sections of windows on the right is us. Still don't know what I'm talking about?  Count up 5 stories starting where the windows begin (our lobby is 2 stories) and we have the right corner apartment.

A closer up view of our apartment.