A Visit from the Cincinnati Mowry's

The weekend of July 24th, Charlie's parents and sister came to visit us in Jersey! We had lots of things planned for the weekend and they even helped us finish some projects around the house too.

After a little bit of drama with their flight, they arrived safely at the LaGuardia Airport Thursday afternoon. I drove in to pick them up, which was my first time driving into the city by myself.... it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. We came across a little bit of traffic getting onto the George Washington Bridge but overall, it wasn't too bad. So Thursday night, Charlie and I took them down to Hoboken, New Jersey for the 100th Annual St. Ann's Festival. The festival is a really popular italian street festival that had lots of food vendors and Jay and the Americans were the entertainment. For those of you that may not know, they were a pretty popular band in the 60's ...probably their biggest hit is "Come a little bit Closer". Strangely enough there were not as many "italian" food vendors as we thought there would be at an "italian festival" but we did wait in the long line for the famous "zeppoles", which tasted similar to funnel cake.

On Friday, Charlie went to a KPMG Volunteer Event for the day. And Tom, Leslie and Abby helped me do some things around the house. We got lots of yard work done and cleaned out the garage. Friday evening, we all went out to a nice steak dinner at The River Palm Restaurant located in the neighboring town, Mahwah.

Saturday, we took the train into the City. We saw The Addams Family Musical on Broadway, which had Nathan Lane and Lillith from Cheers starring as Gomez and Morticia. The musical was really cute and would highly recommend it. After the show, we went to the King Tut exhibit in Times Square. Maybe I should have already known this, but I had no idea that King Tut died at 19 years old. His remains are still in Egypt but the exhibit had lots of burial objects that were found in his tomb including the coffinettes that contained his mummified organs. For dinner, we took a cab down to Lombardi's Pizza near Little Italy. Lombardi's claims that they are the very first pizzeria in America starting business in NYC in 1905. And anyone that hasn't tried this pizza, it is a must. It is definitely my new favorite pizza (move over Plank's! ).

Sunday morning we woke up and went to brunch at one of Jersey's diners. Diners may have become extinct along time ago in Ohio, but Jersey has kept these blasts from the past alive and there are so many too choose from. We chose the State Line Diner which did not disappoint.

After filling our tummies with greasy eggs and bacon, we drove 45 minutes north to the West Point Academy and toured the grounds and cemetery, which had beautiful views of the mountains and Hudson River.

And last but definitely not least, Abby and Tom helped Charlie put together our long over due grill which was a wedding present 2 years ago. We were never able to use it in our condo in Columbus, so we were really excited to find a house with a nice back-yard and porch to start grilling. Once the grill was put together, Charlie enjoyed finally being able to fire it up and we had some delicious marinated chicken and hamburgers.

Overall, it was a great visit from the Cincinnati Mowry's, lots of fun and lots of help in getting us settled.

Momma Carico visits New Jersey

The weekend of July 17th, Charlie and his college buddies had their annual golf trip.  This year they went to Lexington, Kentucky.  I believe they played 90 some holes of golf in 3 days....Charlie will have to update you all later on how the golf rounds went.


So since Charlie was out of town, my mom decided to take her first flight since 2000 and come see me for the weekend.  I had a great time showing my mom around our new area and we got several projects done around the house...which was very helpful having another set of hands.  

A Visit to Chicago

On the weekend of July 10th, Charlie and I went to Chicago for a wedding of one of Charlie's fraternity brothers.  The weekend was a total blast and a big reunion for lots of our college friends.  The wedding was absolutely gorgeous at the Modern wing of the Art Museum, where we danced the night away and of course at the end of the night Charlie had to take a detour to his favorite burrito place in Wrigleyville (Taco Burrito Express #2....I think) 

Happy 4th of July

Hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend (well I guess it was a couple of weekends ago, I am a little behind).  We spent some of the weekend doing yard work and some of the weekend relaxing with friends. This is our first time having a yard and it is already wearing us out.  We hire the same lawn-care company that the owner's used to mow the grass every week, so at least we don't have to worry about tackling that task.  But the yard and landscaping hasn't been kept up in quite a while so to make it more dog-friendly we did quite a bit of weeding, a little mulching and patched up some areas of the fence that our little dog might try to follow a squirrel under.  After doing all this yard work, we had our friends Brian and Adrienne Holtmeier over for drinks, dinner and some yard games.  Unfortunately, Charlie and I lost in "Corn-Hole" to them, but it was still fun to enjoy the back-yard.

On Sunday the 4th, we went with Brian and Adrienne to one of their friend's cook-outs and then back to Ramsey to watch the local fireworks.  When we got back to Ramsey, we were shocked to see that everyone from the entire county was parked on our street and already walking to the fireworks.  Our house was in a prime location, for if it were not for our drive-way we would had been out of luck.  I forgot to take my camera to the fireworks show but believe me they were excellent.

We took a few pictures of the house so that you all can see our abode and how it is coming along.  It is pretty nice for a rental if we could only get rid of that ugly above ground pool...oh well I guess when in Jersey...

Oh yes, our bedroom has a skylight...at first you might think how nice you can lay and look up at the stars...ugh...whoever thought that this was a good idea for a bedroom clearly was a morning person because it gets really bright at 5am and there is no way you can put a curtain up there.

Fenway Park!!!

(Posted by Charlie)

I had another training for one day the past week - this time in Boston on Wednesday morning. Luckily, the Red Sox were in town, so I took an early morning train the train there. This was my first time riding a train of any sort since I moved here, and it was definitely a good experience. I drove from our house to the Stamford, Connecticut station. I took the Amtrak business class train, which was great - a fair amount of space (more than air travel) and free wireless internet. A co-worker drove to Boston for the training, and said the drive was fine - until he arrived in the city. If you've ever been to Boston, the streets aren't exactly a grid. So I was glad I took this option.

After working Tuesday from the Boston office - I took a cab to the best park of all - Fenway! The description I tell people - "this is where God wanted baseball to be played". And I do not like the Red Sox - though I root for the home team whenever I go to a park. The city blocks off most of the streets directly surrounding the park (Yawkey Way and Lansdowne), and there are vendors selling various ballpark fare. I got an Italian Sausage on Yawkey Way - this is hands down thge best ballpark food you can have!!!

My seat was in the outfield - about as far as possible from home plate as you can be. But that's OK; Fenway is relatively small and you get good views from out there. The Sox were playing the Tampa Bay Rays, so it was a matchup of two good teams. David Ortiz hit a 3-run homer for the first runs, and they almost blew it open, taking an 8-1 lead. The Rays came back though, and the Red Sox surprisingly had to bring in their closer, Papelbon, to protect the 8-5 lead with runners on in the 9th.

The Green Monster is definitely the most unique feature in any park - and a Red Sox player (Billy Hall) actually homered over the famous 37-foot left field wall. All in all - it was awesome to take advantage of the trip for work and be able to see a game at Fenway. This was the 2nd game I'd ever seen there, and, good or bad, the Red Sox have won both...