New York, New York

For those of you who I haven't talked to in a while, I had the amazing opportunity to go to New York City for work last week. It was amazing! We (myself, my manager and a co-worker) left Wednesday morning for New York to attend lots of meetings and meet some of the people that we work with in out of our corporate office. My manager and I were able to stay over Friday night so that we were able to see more of the city. I will try to get some of the pictures posted later this week, but wanted to get a post out there.

Wednesday after our meetings, we headed to a Korean restaurant for dinner (yummy food) and then spent a couple of hours wandering around Times Square. We saw Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, St Patrick's Cathedral and Grand Central Station. Since it was later at night, we didn't actually go into any of the buildings (except Grand Central Station), but the sites were unbelievable. Grand Central Station is, I think, more beautiful in person than what you may have seen on TV shows.

Thursday we went to Little Italy for dinner and had a scrumptous dinner on the patio of an Italian (what else) restaurant. Afterwards, we went to a place called Ferrara's for some really delicious Cannoli and espresso. With all that food, we had to walk a little bit, so we went over a couple of blocks to Chinatown. Unfortunately, since it was after 9pm, most of the shops were closed.

Friday was a pretty short day for us, so Bridget (my manager) and I left the office about 1pm after the other Dallas people had left for the airport and headed to Central Park. Let me tell you, that it is amazing what a beautiful area it is! We hardly could believe that we were in the middle of a large city. It is huge, and without the help of a map and some friendly people, we would have gotten lost in the middle of it. We went back to the hotel for a little rest, then headed over to Grand Central Station to meet a friend who was coming in from Connecticut. We went to Greenwich Village for dinner (found another great restaurant) and then spent some time wandering and people watching. We had a wonderful visit and didn't get back to the hotel until about 2:30am. Would have been later, but Glenn needed to catch a 1:49am train back to Connecticut since it was the last train of the night.

Saturday we headed down to the World Trade Center site. They have started construction on the site, so there wasn't as much to see as I had hoped. Got some great shots of the Statue of Liberty and visited the Irish Hunger Memorial. This memorial is an actual Irish cottage brought over from Ireland and reconstructed on the site, with native Irish foliage. Then we headed back to Chinatown to see what we had missed on Thursday night. It was very crowded with all of the "bargain" shoppers and the booths were very tiny. Had another great meal and then headed to the airport to catch our flight out.

All in all, it was a wonderful time and I hope I get another opportunity to visit New York again. Don't think I could live there, but definitely could visit more. We ate a lot of good food, but also did a ton of walking and were exhausted by the time we left. Both Bridget and I were asleep in the plane before we left the ground.

Finally!

Well, the Munchkin has finally decided to cut some teeth. She now has two on the bottom, one on the top and one more coming in on the top. I kind of figured she would get a bunch all at one time since it was taking a while. It is very difficult to get some pictures of them, but here are a couple of tries. She doesn't like people putting their fingers in her mouth, even to rub on her gums. Strange, I know, since my kids loved to have their gums rubbed when they were cutting teeth.

Bits and Pieces

Not too much going on in the Whitehead household since Cami's birthday other than the usual everyday stuff. Sara and I continue to play indoor soccer together on Monday nights. She also plays on a co-ed team at Blue Sky which I sub for, and I play for a co-ed team at American Indoor. Outdoor soccer is supposed to be starting in a couple of weeks.

Sara is still working for the Allstate agent, but is going to be starting Dental Assistant school on Saturday. It is every Saturday for 10 weeks. She is carpooling with a couple of other girls from the area and Nona gets to keep an eye on Cami while she's in class. Her plan is to finish this class, get a job at a dental office, then go to TWU (Texas Women's University in Denton) to become a dental hygienist.

Jason is still working as a leasing agent for an apartment complex that is only about 13 miiles from the house. He and I played together in a softball tournament over the weekend and had a good time. His best friend, Ryan, is now back from the Marines, so I imagine that they will be spending as much time together as they can.

John is stilling delivering bread for Sara Lee. He and Rod Miller, Ryan's dad, are getting things ready to go for their deer lease this fall. They have spent a couple of Sundays getting an old camper trailer ready for the lease. He has also 'adopted' a kitten that was hanging out under the trailer. I warned him not to feed her, but he did, and now she has been hanging out on the front porch for the last couple of weeks. I have asked him to take her to Animal Control since we do not have room for another pet.

Cami continues to grow and grow. She still has no teeth, but has no trouble eating most of the foods that she wants. She is starting to learn some words although she doesn't always use them at the right time. She loves bossing the dogs around, and they seem to understand what she is telling them. I have tried to get some video of her "ordering" them into their cage where she likes to join them. We have caught her several times just sitting in the dog cage playing with her toys while the dogs look on. I'm sure we'll start losing some of those toys to their chewing.

All in all life goes on and things are good.

She's One!

Has it really been a year? Must be, because we celebrated Cami's first birthday yesterday (Sunday, July 20). We had to do it a day late as I was playing in a softball tournament on Saturday. Boy was it hot out!! It was hot for the party too, so it was a good thing that we planned it for inside. We had about 25 close friends come by to help celebrate and Cami received some wonderful toys including a wagon, money in a college fund and lots of clothes. We cooked some burgers and brats on the grill and had plenty of cake and ice cream. The cake even came with a smaller one just for the birthday girl. Here are some pictures of the birthday girl herself: getting ready to eat "her" cake, eating the cake, feeding Poppi and Uncle Jason adding in some ice cream. She was on quite a sugar high for a little bit, then totally crashed. Sara had to wake her up from a two-hour nap and she still went to bed easily.

Back Home Again!

What a wonderful time we had up north with the family! A huge THANK YOU to Cindy and Joe for putting up with all of us. Imagine - nine adults and six kids (all under 8) in the same house. If you have already read Dad and Rich's blogs, then you know all the fun we had: eating ice cream and watching fireworks; going to the lake and working on our tans; entertaining ourselves during thunderstorms; going to the lake again and eating delicious fish; and getting together with mom's side of the family for the 4th.

I'm not sure that we have gotten back into our normal (do we have normal?) routine yet, but we're pretty darn close. My manager is stressing out right now because I was on vacation last week, in a training class all this week and she is on vacation next week. We have several projects that we are trying to get into production before the end of the summer, so she stresses. Me, I'm not too worried about it at all.

Sara is back to work and Cami is back to day care. By the way Paula, we had to buy some chicken nuggets to keep in the freezer for her. She loves them with some fruit or just by themselves. And the trick of putting the fan by her bed works just as well here as it did in Michigan. We are now trying to get a small birthday get together done for her since her birthday is in less than two weeks. I still can't believe that she is going to be a year old already.

John and Jason were glad to have us back home. Even though they might not admit it, I think they were lonely without us. :)

Here are just a few pictures from the last week. I'm not posting a lot since Dad and Rich already did that.

Cami and Gabi got along well and shared the double stroller during most of the week:

Dad taking (another?) nap:

Sara and Paula with Cami and Gabi enjoying Lake Michigan before eating fish:

Getting ready to eat good fish (not the one Bart 'caught'):

The beautiful Lake Michigan shore line from the picnic area where we ate the fish. Isn't it gorgeous?