Grandma comes to town...

Sloan got a special treat in the middle of April with Grandma came to look after her for a few days. I was on the road for some work travel (LA, to be specific) and Vanessa (our nanny) was enjoying a vacation in Japan. It was a great chance for Sloan and my mom to spend some time together.

Here are some pics from her trip to NYC...

Couch time

Food training

Grandma showing off the city

There's a big world out there

Now let's go get it!

Big thank you to my mom for coming up for the week. It was great to have her in town and I know Sloan loved having her here.

Sandy

What a week it has been! Hurricane Halloween, indeed...

We were able to fix dinner, give Sloan a bath, then...BAM, , this happened:


We lost power at 8:37 pm Monday night. Once the power went out, it got bad. Once cell service went out, it got worse..We were able to keep up with most of what Sandy was doing thanks to our phones & Twitter. But shortly after we went to bed at midnight our cell service went. Tuesday morning we had a 15 minute window where my Blackberry worked, but after that we were unable to communicate with anyone. It's a strange feeling to know that you are living in what feels like the Stone Age, yet people one mile north of you are continuing life as if nothing has happened.

It is worth a quick detour in our story to talk about the NYU Langone evacuation. It was one of the last stories we read before we lost service, and we were devastated by it. Those were the same nurses that cared for Sloan for 5 weeks. They are the most amazing, wonderful, kind, caring people you can imagine - absolutely heaven-sent. I am not surprised to hear that all of their patients made it out ok...the care they give is simply outstanding, but I can't even begin to imagine having a child that needed to be evacuated from the NICU in the midst of the storm. I am so grateful for each and every one of those nurses.

Around 10 am Tuesday Barry ventured outside to see what it was like out there. He was determined to walk as far as it took to get cell service again. Lo and behold, he walked all of 5 blocks and his phone lit up with emails and text messages from concerned friends and family. Our cousins, George & Carol, who live on the Upper West Side had volunteered to take us in. We packed a suitcase and the bottom of the stroller and set out on our journey. Here is a photo gallery of our journey northward...

Tree damage Union Square East

We walked west on 13th a few blocks. There were very few people on the street and even fewer cars. By the time we got to University Place one of the more under estimated issues became apparent: traffic lights. Not just for cars, but the walk/don't walk signs for pedestrians. It is ingrained in a New Yorker's mind to look for the cross walk signs, but now there were none. They seemed to be telling us we were on our own...

Normally busy movie theater, shuttered.

The view down University 

Finally! A business that is open - selling coffee, but in the dark. 

The view east on 13th (our street)

ConEd trucks lined up in Union Square

 All the ConEd trucks in the world weren't going to fix our problem though; they had to fix the transformer before anything would come on. As we continued North, we noticed something very odd - all of the people outside appeared to be tourists. We guessed that most New Yorkers were holed up in their dark apartments. By the time we hit Madison Square Park - 23rd & Broadway - it was a curious site. LIGHTS!!

North: Lights! 

South: Dark. 

The first store we saw with lights...ironically, a lighting store. 

When we hit 26th & Broadway it waas like a different world. Lights were on and cafes were crowded. It was shuttered on one side of the street, and life as normal on the other. It was as if nothing had happened. Onward we strolled...north on Broadway through more tourists, past Macy's (with lights) and Herald Square. About an 45 minutes into it we hit Times Square

"Power is everything." Don't we know...don't we know. 

Baby's first trip to Times Square

View South - no cars!

Our next site was the infamous dangling crane! Talk about a tourist trap...

We were one of ~40 people taking pictures. 

 Around this time, George met us on the street to escort us the rest of the way. Their night had been pretty uneventful - high winds knocked down a tree across the street, but other than that they were unscathed (lucky for us!).

Tree down at Columbus Circle 

Another view of the dangling crane from Columbus Circle

 As you can imagine there were a lot of downed trees in Central Park. I was surprised there wasn't more damage, but there were quite a few. Crews were already working to cut and remove the majority of the mess. Likely in anticipation of the now defunct marathon, but alas...we were almost to our destination!

About an hour and a half and 4 miles later, we finally rounded the corner to George & Carol's apartment. Lights, hot water, and a phone charge were in our future! We could finally plug back into the world. 

One of the first things we did was turn on the TV to watch the storm coverage. We were amazed at the devastation in our little corner of the world. We were simply without electricity, hot water and cell service...that was nothing compared to so many folks along the East Coast. This is such a densely populated area that the devastation is felt times over. Ocean and Bay met all along parts of Long Island, taking homes and transportation with them. The majority of people were not able to get to work - which for many was the only place with electricity. Basic public services were rendered useless up and down the coast. It seems trivial when so many are without power, water & heat in November, but in NYC there is quite a lot of garbage piling up on our streets. I'm sure things will get back to normal soon, but I feel for those that have lost their homes and are still without power as we brace for a Nor'easter that is supposed to hit mid-week. As is the New York way, we will get through this & be even stronger for it - but we have a long way to go. 

Barry was downtown checking on our apartment when the power came back on Friday evening. There were many hoots & hollers on the street when it happened. We are eternally grateful to George & Carol for taking us in. They were so kind to have us for the entire week (and even babysit Sloan one night). I will have another post soon about our week as Upper West Side residents, but for now wanted to post our story about the storm. 

You can take the girl outta the South...

...but she is bound to return any chance she has! That's how the saying goes, right? Spurred by back to back wedding weekends, we recently embarked on a little Tour of the South. Our trip started in Mobile, Alabama for our dear friend Ann Taylor's wedding. Mobile is a nice little sleepy city and we really enjoyed our time there. The weather was perfect and ATR made such a beautiful bride!

The happy couple and their first dance 

After a weekend in Bama, we headed over to New Orleans to spend our next 3-4 days. As one tends to do when there is good food around, we ate our faces off. Day 1 Highlights:

 

 Coffee & beignets - the breakfast of champions (or all New Orleans tourists)!!

 

Barry and I met Randy and his daughter at French Quarter Fest, which held around 300k people.

 

My #1 priority of the festival was to eat a New Orleans style SnoBall as soon as possible. This one was Chocolate Cream flavored from Plum St. Snoballs. Pretty much tasted like a Yoo-Hoo.

Day 2 was a little bit more low key, but we had a very special lunch at Commander's Palace. Commander's is a local institution in NOLA known for $.25 martinis, turtle soup and bread pudding. I had two out of three, Barry had all three. Sorry no pictures of this one, but trust me when I say it was all delicious and totally lived up to the hype. For dinner we learned a very important lesson: anywhere you want to go to eat on Monday night in New Orleans will be closed. We tried Johnny's Po Boys, Palmcourt Cafe, and Central Grocery - all closed Mondays. Coop's Place had a tourist line outside of it, so we headed outside of the French Qtr to an up and coming area of Freret St. We had awesome Chicago style pizza at Midway Pizza and like all food places in Nola, I highly recommend.

 On Day 3 Barry had to go to Dallas for a day trip, so I hung out with a dear college friend the whole day. She has two little boys of her own (one was barely 8 weeks old) so she was full of really great baby advice for me. I left her apt with all kinds of pregnant lady snacks, a belly band, and a book full of baby product advice! I topped the day off with a shrimp po boy from Domilise's...according to the locals its the best you can get.

 Finally Day 4, our last day in New Orleans. As you can tell from the original picture, we made the mistake of only ordering one plate of beignets at Cafe Du Monde. Well, we made sure to fix that error and went back for more coffee and beignets...this time each with our own plate. Lunch wasn't really lunch as much as it was 'where else have we not been yet?'. We had not been to the other 'must do' Sno Ball place! Hansen's Sno Blitz - Barry had Cherry and I had a Satsuma and nectar flavored one.

We saved the best for last and went to Jacque Imo's for dinner that night. Again, another New Orleans establishment with awesome cajun food.

Outside of Jacque Imo's 

Soft shell crab. Massive portions! 

My fried chicken...I swear this is not to size, it was huge. 

Oh, I'm sorry did I imply Jacque Imo's was the last place we went? There was one more thing on the list...Krispy Kreme bread pudding. Yes, despite our massive dinner we went a few blocks over to Boucherie and ordered the sinfully delicious desert. It did not disappoint! 

And with that, we were off for a long weekend at the beach. I will write about that one in a separate blog post and leave you with a few other snapshots from our time in Nola... 

Me on Bourbon St.

Jackson Square early in the morning

Either I shrunk or this chair is huge. 

Brad & Angelina's New Orleans house

Awesome sign outside of a bar

One last photo of Hansen's

NOLA

Last post from the Adventure Archives!
Early January we were lucky enough to attend the BCS Championship game in New Orleans. It was a heck of a trip, made especially fun because so many of our friends are either LSU or Bama fans. I had not been to New Orleans since the 2002 sUGAr bowl, and that trip was mainly for work, so this was quite the treat. A friend showed me the town from a local's perspective on Friday, but Sat-Mon was full on BCS insanity. A few highlights include:

-Spending a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon in Jackson Square
-Running into old friends that just happen to be throwing a party on the balcony of legendary Pat O'Brien's
-40 yard line club level seats at the game!
-All the delicious cajun food you could handle

Cowboys & Indians...and Aliens? The Premiere!

From all of the other activities we did during our trip to San Diego, one would have thought we were just there just 'because'. The whole reason we went is because our friend Jen has a kicka** job. Her client, Universal, gave her 4 tickets to the red carpet world premiere of Cowboys & Aliens, starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde. Making it all the more fun, San Diego hosts Comic Con that same weekend. (For those that don't know, Comic Con is a huge convention for sci-fi, comic/graphic novel, or general Geekdom fans. Folks dress up in costumes, go hear their favorite author on a panel, or in our case attend a world premiere. So, we dressed up in our best red carpet attire and made our way downtown.

The red carpet as we rolled up

As you can see from the photo above, we got to walk on a bit of the red carpet, however the real Red Carpet was reserved for celebrities only. So, we snuck over to the side to watch the famous folks roll in and snap a few photos.

Ron Howard

Becky's Boyfriend from Roseanne...or Leonard from Big Bang Theory

We have an Olivia Wilde sighting!!

Heath & Jen on the Red Carpet

KerrBarr on the Red Carpet

Once we fulfilled our press duties, we went into the theater. They handed out waters, Cokes and big boxes of popcorn for everyone in attendance. Jon Favreau (the Director, also in  Swingers) got up on stage and presented the cast and we kept our eyes open for additional celebrity appearances.

Seth Green and Charlie Day. Danny DeVito was just over from them

Bald guy wayyyy down there is the Dean from Community, and that's Joel McHale's arm just in front of him.

 Finally, around 8pm the lights went down and the movie came on. I actually really enjoyed the flick and would give it 3 out of 4 stars. However, I must have been swayed by the atmosphere, because all of the official reviews that have come out since would beg to differ with me. There were about 3k fans that got to sit in the first five rows of the theater, so it was quite a sympathetic crowd. The story itself is obviously not very plausible (what do you mean there weren't aliens in the Wild West!) but I'll give anything with Oliva Wilde, James Bond & Hans Solo in it a shot.
Once the movie was over, the red carpet was magically transformed and the after party began...

One of the alien ships from the movie over the red carpet

We found him!

Group Shot!

You would think after eating, surfing, a trip to the Zoo and to Sea World we would all be tired by now. But, no! Not this group. Our San Diego adventure was only part complete, our next mission was to get into a private Girl Talk show. For those that don't know Girl Talk is a DJ (of sorts) that mixes every song you ever loved into one long continuous rip. He seriously puts on the best shows, its non-stop music and dancing (and a lot of sweating). As I'm sure you will see for yourself shortly. We made the trek from the Civic Center to the club and thanks to several slick moves (being dressed to impress didn't hurt) we soon found ourselves among 200 people in our very own Girl Talk show!

One day I, too, will make a leaf blower that blows toilet paper

Girl Talk

Insanity

But we did not settle for simply attending the show...no, we had to see the star!

Creeping up on Girl Talk

Finally, for good measure...one last group picture:

Lougle!!!!!

We came, we toured, we conquered. San Diego (and Coronado Island) has been crossed off of our Travel List. It was one of the most memorable trips we have ever been on. Awesome weekend with tons of stories, memories, and celebrity sightings (Reggie Bush & Allessandra Ambrosio were on our flight home).  A big shout out to Heath and Jen for inviting us along with them!