Reds vs. Yankees

This week the Reds were in New York, playing the Mets on Wednesday and Thursday and then playing the Yankees in a rare interleague matchup at Yankee Stadium.  In fact, this was the first time the Reds had played at the NEW Yankee Stadium, which opened up in 2009 after the original had stood for 85 years.

Yankee Stadium retained a lot of the old look - most notably the white facade across the top.

But while the new one is a sight to behold, the old one had all the history and just seemed better!  The seats and views are pretty neat.  We had left field seats, second row.  We got to see a good pitching matchup - Bronson Arroyo (warming up below) for the Reds...

...against Andy Pettitte, who was back for his third stint with the Yankees.  This was only his second start after a year in retirement.

Arroyo pitched really well, and had given up only 1 run through 7 innings.  Unfortunately, Pettitte was even better, and the Reds never scored a run off the Yankees - it was the first shutout of the Reds this year.  The Yankees got to Arroyo for 3 runs in the 8th inning, so the final score was 4-0.

It wasn't all bad - we did get to enjoy some of the fine (but expensive) fare at the game.  Charlie had the famous beef and gravy sandwich from Lobel's - which is a New York City butcher that has a stand at Yankee Stadium.  He also had a Nathan's Famous Hot Dog later in the night (not really in line with his counting calories - but oh well!).  Katie had barbecue from a stand that had "Brother Jimmy's", which is also some NYC local eats.  We also found a "retro" beer stand that left Charlie a little disappointed - Pabst Blue Ribbon and Rolling Rock aren't exactly old-school brews in our mind.  There was an ale called Ballantine, which used to be the best selling American beer before Budweiser - so Charlie tried that.

We must have been bad luck - the Reds lost when we went, but they won the next 2 games to take the series over the much-richer Yankees!  All in all, it was still fun though to see our team in Yankee Stadium!

Eaton Baby Shower - April 29th

After seeing all of our friends on Saturday, Katie had one more shower in Eaton hosted by her mom on Sunday.  Charlie dropped Katie off in Dayton at sister Abby's apartment where Griffey was staying and Abby, Katie and Griffey drove the rest of the way to Eaton.

Charlie wasn't invited to this shower because it was all women - he was crushed.  So crushed that he instead went to the Reds game with his dad and Grumpa. He later came up to Eaton to help organize all the gifts and visit with Katie's parents, but the Reds game was a good one to go to.  The Reds came from behind to win 6-5 with Joey Votto and Jay Bruce homering.

Katie's parents built a brand new house in Eaton a little over 2 years ago and it has a great big family room that was perfect for the shower.  Sue (Katie's mom...or maybe we should start calling her Grandma Carico) organized the whole thing and did a great job.  She had light snacks and a delicious punch made with pineapple sherbert and a cake decorated with Winnie the Pooh, which is going to be our theme for the baby's room.

Katie's aunt Debbie and great Aunt Mary were there along with Charlie's mom and sister, several very good family friends that had watched Katie grow up.  Each of them filled out a card labeled "Advice for the new Mom to be" with all of their combined years of experience, we collected some very good tips.  Including always check your son's pockets, because little boys like to store worms, rocks and other gross things there.

It was so great seeing so many friends and family from Eaton and they all gave us great advice.  We got even more baby gifts including lots of cute clothes and a hand-made knitted baby blanket.  Katie's mom passed down the receiving blanket that Sue used for Katie when she was a baby which was really nice to see.  

All these baby showers are really making us exited for our little boy to get here!

Columbus Baby Shower - April 28th

The weekend of April 28th, we went back home to Ohio to see family, show off Katie's baby bump, and for a couple of baby showers.  We rented an SUV for extra space, and Charlie took off Thursday and Friday and drove down to Cincinnati with Griffey.  He got some "Cincinnati Eats" out of the way - having Buffalo Wings & Rings for lunch and La Rosa's for dinner with Mom, Dad and sister Abby.  On Saturday morning, Abby took Griffey back to Dayton until Sunday, while Charlie drove back up to Columbus for the first of Katie's baby showers.

Katie flew in Friday night and stayed with her friend Sarah, then we had the shower Saturday during lunch.  Katie's friends did a great job organizing the event at Matt the Miller's Tavern in Dublin, Ohio (northwest of Columbus).  There were about 50 people there, including maybe a third of that being kids!  It was fun too see so many of our friends and their little ones running around!

We played a game where every time there was blue in the present, Charlie "had to" drink some of his beer.  This was all well and good for the rest of the day - but Charlie now seems to think that child raising will be a piece of cake (or a few swigs of beer)!

After the party, we went to Matt and Lisa's in Hilliard, where we even got a picture of the Miami University class of 2034:

It was great seeing so many of our friends and catching up and we really appreciate all the baby gifts.  Now we just need to find a place to put all these gifts and what they are all used for.
Only 2 more months till our little guy will make his appearance!

New Haven - weekend of April 21st

There are some things that we've wanted to do since we moved to New Jersey.  Some of them are the more obvious - the Statue of Liberty, a Broadway show, Boston, etc.  Some of them are more obscure, but still things we knew we wanted to do.  One of those was go to New Haven, CT.

New Haven is most notable for being the home of Yale University of the Ivy League.  It's known to be a beautiful campus, and the city is supposed to be pretty neat, too.  We left in the morning on Saturday, April 21 to spend the day there.

Our first stop was nothing unique to an Ivy League schools - like all colleges, Yale has some interesting restaurants around campus.  We got to Louis' Lunch for... lunch!  Legend has it that this is place gave birth to an American favorite - the hamburger.  Back in 1900, Louis Lassen was in his 5th year of operating a lunch wagon.  A customer needed to eat his meal to go, so Louis put his ground beef mix in between two slices of bread - and the burger was born.  We heard about the local favorite on Man vs. Food - a great show on the Travel Channel.

We got there right at noon when the tiny restaurant opened, and there was already a line.  Louis' Lunch has a very limited menu - basically you get a burger that comes between two pieces of bread (not a bun - toasted white bread), and can order it with cheese, tomato and onions.  But no ketchup or mustard - that would ruin the burger :)  You can get an order of potato salad (we got some), and aside from the beverages, that's it.  We both got the burgers and split an order of potato salad, and we thought they were a great start to our day!

We figured we should walk off some of that lunch, so we next headed to East Rock Park - which is a preserved park area just East of Yale and downtown New Haven.

East Rock is basically a cliff where you can look down on New Haven and see the city below, and Long Island from across the water.

There's a pretty cool monument at the top - this honors all the soldiers from New Haven who have died in various American battles.

You drive up to the top of East Rock, but we also did a little walking on the trails around there - we wondered what our dog Griffey would do if he got this close to a deer?!?

After enjoying the park, we grabbed some ice cream from the local ice cream place - called Ashley's Ice Cream - and walked around Yale's campus.  It's a pretty campus, with unique architecture.  

The Old College at Yale was the one that got our attention the most.  Old College is a block of dormitories where the first building of Yale College was built in 1718.  It's not there any more, but Bingham Hall is where that first building was located.  Connecticut Hall is the oldest building still standing - it was built in 1752.  Connecticut Hall used to be a dorm - and Nathan Hale who died in the Revolution uttering the famous words "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country".  He has a statue in the quad.

All of the different dormitories on the campus are called "colleges" - Katie was excited to see the "college" that Gilmore Girls was based on - Calhoun College:

Charlie, however, was most excited to see that Yale students are about the same as all other college students.  We saw some pledges being hazed - they had to crawl across the quad of the Old College while dressed in slacks and a shirt and tie.  Most importantly to Charlie - it is clear that Yale students, like all college students, still drink cheap watered down beer like Keystone Light!

After looking at some of the shops in New Haven, we ended the day going to a local pizza restaurant called Frank Pepe's.  Pepe's was founded in 1925 and was the first of the New Haven style pizza - known as "Apizza".  According to the always correct Wikipedia, what sets Apizza apart is the thin crust.  The pizzas are cooked in brick ovens and bakes the crust to a crispy shell on the outside while leaving the inside soft.  Also, at Pepe's, the mozzarella was originally - and still is - considered a topping.  So if you just ordered a plain pizza, you would get dough, tomato sauce and some parmesan sprinkled on.  They are also famous for their "clam pie" - which, yes, has clams on it.  We got the Mozzarella pizza with some pepperoni - it was delicious.

We stopped by the Yale Bowl, which is a famous venue that hosts the famed Harvard-Yale game every other year.  After a long day, we headed home to our lonely dog Griffey, tired but happy we'd seen another part of the Northeast!

Easter Weekend

Man, it is easy to fall behind on this blog.  We were caught up to speed, and then we went a few weeks without any posts.  We've got some catching up to do, but the first post we need to do is from Easter weekend - about a month ago.  We went to our friends' Brian and Adrienne's out in Somers, NY for Easter.  It was fun.

Their daughter, Charlotte, is getting bigger pretty fast!  Griffey is a pretty good measure.  A few months ago, we brought him and Charlotte was probably 3 months old.  As most 3 month old babies go, she was not very "mobile".  So Griffey kind of ignored her - he was more interested in sniffing out where the cats were hiding (in the basement)!  Well, now she is starting to roll over and Griffey seemed to think she was much more interesting - and she had toys that he wondered about, too!

We had a fun time at Easter; Brian cooked Lamb and we had a nice Easter dinner.  Charlie and Brian watched the Masters, but Charlie blew it with the DVR!!!  We were watching it on tape delay, and around hole 16 he hit "live" on accident and we weren't able to go backwards - so we were live to the last putt of the playoff hole where Bubba Watson (the notorious jerk - but that's a different story) won the Masters.

It was a fun visit to the Holtmeier's for all the family, dog included!  We got a good snapshot of Katie at week 25...

Bad Mommy and Daddy

Hello, Griffey here again.  My mommy and daddy forgot my 3rd birthday.  I still love them, but they forgot it was my birthday this weekend.  My 3rd birthday was April 29th and there was a baby shower instead of a doggie party!  Mommy got a bunch of presents for some dude who's not even born yet!!!!!

I think I am getting some treats soon to make up for this indiscretion!!!!  Hopefully a cake like this!