Mother's Day 2012

This year we had Dom and Kelly visiting over Mother’s Day weekend. We had a really nice time! Together with Dom and Kelly, we made Lavender Lemon Bars from Joy the Baker, using culinary lavender that my mom bought for me. 



We also had a lot of fun decorating the house before my mom’s arrival for brunch with flowers from my front and back yards. I had 3 big beautiful rose blooms that I brought in, and my clematis was also in peak bloom and I brought a few flowers inside as a little centerpiece.







After a nice brunch, we headed out on my back deck for some official Mother’s Day portraits with my mom and her progeny, which Kelly did a great job taking for us. 



I am going to include the other two solo shots because they showcase my 2012 clematis, and also because everyone looks great and I love all the spring colors.







We had a very nice Mother’s Day brunch with my mom, Dom, and Kelly. Later in the day, Ilya and I had dinner with Ilya’s family and welcomed home our nephew, as pictured in the previous post.

Welcome Baby Nathan!

As I mentioned in my last post, our nephew Nathan was born on May 9 while we were on our trip. We got to meet him the next day, and he was a super precious little perfect and squirmy baby. Here are a few pictures of him on Mother’s Day, the day he came home from the hospital.

Here’s one of us that really shows how tiny he was by comparison.

He has already grown and changed so much. Pretty soon he will be doubled in size! We can’t wait to see him keep growing, learning, and changing into his own little person.

Trip to Florida

This May we took a short, two-part vacation to Florida. The first part was a 3 night cruise to the Bahamas leaving from Port Canaveral, Florida. It was a Royal Caribbean cruise on their “Monarch of the Seas” ship. We flew to Orlando early on a Friday morning and boarded the ship in the afternoon. It took a little bit of convincing for Ilya to get me to agree to go on a cruise. Our first cruise together was my first cruise ever. It was in 2009 and was from NJ to Canada in late August. We were relatively close to a hurricane, which made the ship really rocky, and I got pretty sick. It was also 5 nights, and I got pretty bored, especially since it was too chilly to swim or do any typical cruisey outdoor activities. We decided that a shorter, fun and sun oriented cruise would probably suit us better. So that’s what we did! It was definitely a much better experience, with no sea sickness or boredom. We took almost no pictures on this vacation. It was a little freeing after our trip to Italy, where we felt the need to document a lot of stuff, to just have fun and not worry about that aspect of it. Here is one shot of us waiting for the “Meet the Captain” reception to start on the fancy night.


We had lots of fun relaxing, people-watching, eating, drinking, and swimming on the cruise. The food was pretty good, and the entertainment was OK. We saw some kooky juggler/comedians one night and a kinda funny stand-up comic. Ilya won a decent amount of money on the ship’s casino, which helped us not feel guilty buying a few non-included beverages here and there. My least favorite part of any vacation is...sunscreen. I really, really hate sunscreen. The way it smells and feels are both incredibly unpleasant for me. Also the fact that it makes sand stick everywhere is another downside. Each morning I stomped and threw a little hissyfit when it was time to apply. But we never skipped it, and neither of us got burned, and I know a burn is much worse than feeling goopy. 

As we exited the port to make way to our next stop, we noticed a sign that said that persons wearing Crocs style shoes were not permitted to ride the escalator. This was complete with a guard watching everyone board the escalator, who we presumed was the Crocs Police. We had a giggle about this and wondered what possible repeated incident was happening with Crocs on escalators. We soon got in our rental car and drove to Orlando for part two of our trip: the excitement excursion! We were pretty non-stop doing stuff and going on all sorts of rides and seeing lots of shows on this part of the trip. This post is going to be a general overview, but I think Ilya may write a post documenting all the attractions we did, with some comments, just for historical accuracy.

On the first day in Orlando, we visited Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We had lunch on Harry Potter Island and drank butterbeer. As two people who have never read a Harry Potter book or seen a single movie, we knew enough about the story to get a kick out of that “Island” in particular. It looks very much like a very old, enchanted magical village. We got dinner at Margaritaville in Universal City Walk. As we were leaving Universal studios and entering the parking garage, the escalator up to our level of the garage was at a standstill, and we had to take the stairs. We had a very “full-circle moment” at the top when we saw what had caused the escalator to stop: an abandoned pair of Crocs stuck between the top step and the ground! Now it all made sense!

From here we checked into our hotel at almost 10PM and pretty much went straight to bed to rest up for another full day. On our second day in Orlando we visited Animal Kingdom and Epcot. We made a reservation days in advance to eat at a nice restaurant in “France” to make up for my high school senior trip when my friends and I did not make a reservation and had to eat in Norway, which was not the most appetizing option. We saw some goofy improv ladies and yet another juggler perform in “Italy”. We made sure to stick around for the Epcot fireworks show, which was great. Once again we didn’t get back to our hotel until around 10PM.

On our last day in Orlando, we got up early and as I was begrudgingly applying sunscreen to my face, Ilya checked his email on his Blackberry. That’s when we got the news that his sister had her baby, Nathan, early that same morning! We were now first-time aunt and uncle and couldn’t be happier for the whole family. And we were excited that our trip was ending that night, just in time to meet Nathan the next day. More on that little cutesie later! We checked out of the hotel and went straight to Magic Kingdom and then Hollywood Studios. Around 4PM, we left to head to the airport for our 7PM flight back home. Jackie-kitty was happy to have us back home, and we were glad to be back, too. All in all, we had a really fun trip!

Ilya's Horse Riding Adventure

Ever since Ilya and I obtained and fell in love with our cat, Jackie, Ilya claims to feel a special connection with all animals. This is to the point where I hear frequent whining about his desires to live on a farm and tend goats and cows. Every time we pass farm animals while driving, he gets a wistful look in his eye complete with a single tear. I am not joking, even a little bit. In 2008 we spent a weekend in Lancaster for my birthday, and this further solidified Ilya’s love for farms and livestock, and an especially strong desire to ride a horse. Off to the side of a large shopping complex in Lancaster, there was a sign for pony rides. Next to it, a sign showing how tall you had to be to ride the ponies. It was something like 4 feet. Ilya attempted to get in the line for a pony ride until I insisted that the two minute pony rides are not intended for grown men. I personally have always felt completely satisfied with keeping my distance from horses, but after 4 years of hearing, “I need to ride a horse!” I decided to make Ilya’s dream a reality. I originally was going to arrange for Ilya to live out his horse-riding dreams while I hung back and took a few pictures, but after doing some research and talking to some friends and family who’ve gone on trail rides before, I was convinced to join in on the action. I decided that I would arrange for this excursion as a surprise for Ilya. I called up Echo Lake Stables in Newfoundland, NJ. They seemed very friendly, and their prices were reasonable, so I decided this is where I wanted us to go. 



I watched the forecast and decided that Saturday, April 14 would be a good day for us to go. I told Ilya I had a picnic planned for us at a surprise location and packed us a lunch. I entered the address into the GPS and we set off on our way with Ilya driving, and not a clue where we were going. Here’s Ilya’s unsure face:


After about an hour of driving, the GPS told him to turn into a long driveway that had a sign about stables and trail rides, and he caught on to what the surprise was. Here is Ilya’s catching on face, followed by his tears of joy. His horse-riding dream was finally becoming a reality!




Note the tear of joy!

Once we walked up to the main area of the farm, we were quickly greeted and added to the queue for the day. We had a brief wait while they eyed us up and decided which horses would be best for our size. During that time, we were greeted by a friendly farm cat:


I enjoyed being blurry while scratching my new friend behind the ears:


Within 3 minutes of stepping out of the car, I was getting on a horse! My horse’s name was Barney. It took me probably a good minute to work up the nerve to throw my leg over him. I was afraid I was either going to kick him, or not have the arm strength to hold myself up, or pull the saddle off. Of course, once I threw my leg over him everything was fine. The people guiding me were very patient and encouraging.

Here is me, Barney, and our hunky trail guide, Chris:


Ilya got a small, very pretty white horse named Corona. Here is my gallant, even hunkier husband with Corona:


The next few pictures are of the trail ride from Ilya’s point of view. Our ride was just us, the guide, and one other couple, and we rode for an hour.

I was surprised that the trees were still as naked as they were. Near our house and for most of the drive there were lots of leaves on all the trees. But, the weather was so perfect, and it was still a really nice scenic ride. I think this would be a great thing to do sometimes to celebrate our anniversary in October, when the leaves have changed.


After our ride, we had our picnic lunch. Then we walked over to say hi to the horses hanging out in an enclosure. A horse with very similar colors and markings to Jackie caught our eye, and he came over to say hi to us.


Someone who worked at the farm told us his name was Cabalo. He and Ilya had quite the cute little photo shoot. I had a hard time narrowing down those pictures, so enjoy this extended montage: 




Ilya is clearly in heaven.


Here Cabalo is snotting up Ilya’s sleeve.


All in all we both really enjoyed our first trail riding experience. It was really fun to surprise Ilya, too! We plan to keep riding from time to time.

2012 Garden

I’ve decided to try to keep this blog going as a bit of a time capsule of fun stuff that Ilya and I do, to share with our families, and also for ourselves to look back on in the future. Now that we’re well settled into our home, and the wedding hubbub and excitement is behind us, I’ve had the time to get a little more into my garden than I’ve been in the past two summers that we’ve lived here. I find it hard to believe we’re already onto our third summer here! I already had a few perennials accumulated from the past two summers:

purple and yellow columbine
purple clematis
pinkish aster
thyme 
chives

I don’t think thyme and chives are actually perennials, but because of our mild winter, they stuck around. On April 5, I excitedly planted the following seeds:

cat grass
plain parsley
basil
lemon basil
green beans-Burpee's Stringless Green Pod, 50 days to maturity (May 25)
sugar snap pea, 70 days to maturity (June 14)
Mammoth sunflower- can be 12’ high!
Burpees Fun 'n Sun Hybrid Sunflower Mix, 4-6' high

In years past I’ve never had the foresight to plant seeds. I would just hear about everyone’s gardens in May and run out and buy a bunch of seedlings because I was too impatient to wait for things to grow from seed at that point. As my mom and many other people may know, I’ve never lost my biology-nerdy, kid-like sense of wonder about watching seeds sprout. I excitedly went outside daily to check the status of my sprouts and watch them poke up from the dirt. I’ll post an update and some pictures as a new post shortly.

Day 8- The Accademia and Uffizi Galleries

On the last day of our honeymoon, we took it a little easy. We woke up and had the hotel breakfast. We then made our way over to the small Accademia Museum which houses Michaelangelo’s original David sculpture.There were no photos allowed in this museum. We were pleasantly surprised not to have to wait in a long line -- we’d been told it can be really bad. We had a Rick Steves audio guide of this site, which we enjoyed. During the audio guide, we learned a good bit about the David statue. To be honest, I had always wondered what the big deal was. This helped me to put it into perspective, though I still may not 100% understand the hype. There was also a really interesting exhibit as you walk down a corridor that leads to David that shows a bunch of Michaelangelo’s unfinished sculptures in various stages. Some of them look mostly like giant chunks of rock with only the roughest shape of a person coming through, and then down the line they become more evolved. It’s an interesting insight into the process of the rock “coming alive” by the artist. They’re all unpolished so you can see every chisel mark intact.

Once we left the Accademia we stopped to get a snack at a small pizza place.

We shared a slice of pizza (this is what they call a slice) and a ham and cheese calzone. They were both really good!


Soon it was time to meet our guide for one final tour, this time of the Uffizi Gallery. Our guide was nice and very informative. She was half Italian and half British and had an interesting accent. There was a couple on our tour who were American but were teaching English as a second language in Moscow, Russia, so Ilya talked to them about that a bit and showed off his Russian skills. We saw a lot of paintings on this tour and learned a lot of history. I would definitely recommend a guided tour of this place. There was a large window in a hallway of the gallery with a great view that people are encouraged to take pictures of. Ilya got this shot of the Ponte Vecchio:


Towards the end of our tour, the guide started talking about how in 90 minutes there was another tour that she was giving that about half of our group, but not us, were signed up for. A distinguished older couple asked the guide what was the best gelato place between the gallery and their next meeting spot. She very excitedly answered that the Gelateria Perche No! (translation: Why not?) was her favorite by far and raved for a minute about the best flavors. She described where it was to the couple, and even drew on their map how to get there from where we were. Ilya leaned in to look, because we had been planning to get some gelato when we left the tour, and wanted to take the recommendation of this local guide. Once we got outside, I asked him to direct us to the gelato place, and he admitted he had no idea how to get to it. We spotted the distinguished old couple walking ahead, map in hands, and we decided to follow them. Ilya made no effort to “play it cool” and keep a distance, but I hung back so it wasn’t 100% obvious that we were following them. It didn’t take long for it to become completely obvious that this couple also had no clue where they were going. They would take about 20 steps, stop to stare at their map, repeat. Eventually the woman stood at a corner to wait while her husband took off in search of gelato. I remembered hearing the guide say that it was by “the old grain mill church” which I knew meant the Orsanmichele church that we had been inside of a few days earlier, and we knew exactly where that was. So, we decided to ditch the old couple and take off to the church which was about 2 blocks away, and search in that immediate area for the coveted gelato shop. We found it right away, and toyed with the idea of running back to find the couple and show them where it was, but we were too shy and lazy to do that. We decided to walk back to the main square to sit and enjoy our cones. On the way there, we spotted the old couple once again, this time with gelato from someplace else! We felt a little guilty for not telling them before they gave up, and in order to avoid them recognizing us and asking if we found the place the guide talked about, we took a detour around the block to avoid them. It was a very Seinfeld-esque situation and we had quite a giggle about it. Here we are enjoying our hard-earned treats by the Palazzo Vecchio:



We walked around a bit as the sun set. Here is a shot of Ilya near the Ponte Vecchio:


Ilya took this candid, emo picture of me hanging out while he was across the street to use the ATM:


It was too early to eat dinner, but we were a little bored of walking around, so we decided to go back to the hotel to relax and pack for a bit before dinner. When we arrived in our room, there was a complimentary bottle of champagne waiting for us on ice. We had a little impromtu party with Beary and Lionel on our balcony:




At one point Ilya had gone back into the room for something, and this is the candid shot I got of him coming back out after I summoned him with champagne-induced silly noises:


Champagne makes everything great!


After this, we headed out for dinner. We decided on the Trattoria Lo Stracotto on the recommendation of our guidebook. It was a great least meal! They also had one of the nicest bathrooms we saw in all of Italy. We got a cheesey sausagey appetizer that was delicious. For my entree I got pasta with pumpkin and sage:


We can’t remember exactly what Ilya’s dish was, but it was very meaty and delicious:


That’s it for pictures! After this we walked around a bit more to soak up the city as much as we could before heading home. We hung out people watching in a busy square, with street performers playing music. We even briefly tried to dance some of our new moves that our friend Alex taught us for our wedding dance. Each night as we had been strolling around the streets, we eyed up these places that sold waffles fresh off the press with nutella spread on them. We kept saying we’d get one at some point, and this had to be the night! Ilya ran and got us one and we devoured it in about 30 seconds in the square. It was delicious! With sticky nutella fingers, we started walking back to our hotel to call it a night. I decided we needed one final gelato before leaving Italy, so we stopped to get one before we eventually went to bed. I think I slept possibly around 3 hours, but mostly tossed and turned. I was SO excited to get home! We had to get up a little before 5 to get a cab to the airport. We flew from Florence to Rome, which took about an hour. We got a snack in the Rome airport and finally boarded our flight to the JFK airport. I stayed awake the whole flight, partially because it was daytime and also, every time I try to sleep on a plane I wake up groggier than I was before, and with a sore neck. We entertained ourselves with movies, books, and games. The in-flight meal was a big diversion; the food on Alitalia is surprisingly pretty good. We enjoyed watching the interactions with this cute older couple who were sitting a few rows apart from each other, one behind us, one in front of us. Apparently the woman was pretty clueless and the man was very cute about taking care of her. As the flight crew was coming down the aisle letting everyone know their choices in Italian, this man made sure to make his way to tap his napping wife on the shoulder and whisper loudly, “It’s CHICKEN!”. It was really cute. We still repeat it to each other whenever we eat chicken. A little while later, as I was leaving one of the bathrooms, I saw him giving her a tutorial on how to lock the bathroom door. It must not have stuck, because once Ilya returned from the bathroom, I told him what I saw and he said “Oh, I guess that’s who I just almost walked in on.”
Once the flight FINALLY ended, we got our suitcases and took the subway into Manhattan to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then a bus to a few miles away from our house. Ilya’s dad picked us up where we got off the bus, and that was the last leg of our 24 hour journey home. We were deliriously tired. Our house was 61 degrees because the pilot light went out on the furnace, but we were SO happy to be home, and Jackie-cat was so happy to see us. She didn’t let us out of her sight for a while. We spent the next few days recovering from jet lag and putting away our wedding gifts. We used as many of our new kitchen appliances as we could, and we especially had fun finding ways to use up all the apples that we ended up with, left over from our wedding centerpieces.
I hope you all enjoyed my honeymoon stories! I am so glad I will always have this blog to look to for all the little details that I will definitely be forgetting before our first anniversary. I hope some people find it helpful in planning their own trip. Thanks to Ilya for putting in the majority of the effort for researching, planning, and booking this trip of a lifetime, as well as proofreading all my posts and helping me remember some details. What a guy!

Day 7- Day Trip Part 2- San Gimignano and Pisa

Our next top on our day trip was to the hilltop town of San Gimignano. This town is tough enough for an English speaker to pronounce sober, so in our tipsy state we quickly gave up and called it “San Quibbus” for the rest of the trip. Not sure where it came from, but it was funny at the time and it stuck. The term “hilltop town” is extremely literal, and we had to do quite a bit of climbing to get to the main part of town, which, like most towns, included a main street with lots of shops, leading up to a square and a church. Once we reached the top, we saw quite the view:



We stopped and got gelato at our guide Stefano’s uncle’s shop. This was one of my favorite gelatos of the whole trip. They had really interesting flavors at this place. I ended up mixing 3: grapefruit champagne, raspberry rosemary, and blackberry lavender. They were all really interesting and delicious.

Here are the steps in the square where we sat and ate our gelato:


Here is Ilya with his gelato in his favorite flavor: chocolate!


Here I am wandering about the town:


I think we also went into a cafe and got a hot chocolate so we could use their bathroom. Here is a picture that shows just how steep this town was:


We ducked off on a side street and found an overlook with a really nice view of the countryside and saw a kitty. After our short visit to San Quibbus, we made it back to the bus to head over to Pisa. This was a bit of a long drive, and as the wine wore off, everyone was pretty sleepy. It was a struggle to stay awake, but the scenery outside the bus was too good to miss. It was just endless rolling hills. Once we arrived in Pisa, Stefano got very excited because we were going to ride a “choo-choo train” into the main area of Pisa, and it is one of his favorite parts of the day. It was this little dinky...car type thing with a few “train cars” attached, and it drove us around on the streets. It even said “Tchoo-Tchoo Train” on it, and Stefano sat in the front and yelled choo choo into the microphone and we all giggled. Once we got to where all the action was, Stefano showed us around and gave us a little tutorial on how to take the best picture of yourself holding up the tower:



Oh Stefano!

Here are our best attempts:




And here is the scene where tons of people gather to get the same shot:


It is quite leany!



Lots of people opt to climb the tower. Not us! We wandered around a bit through the town. There was a public garden but it was closed for All Saints Day. To be honest, Pisa was a bit boring. I am glad we got to go and take pictures and see the tower, but that’s about all there is to do there, so I’m glad we didn’t spend any more time there than we did.


We played around and tried to get some pictures of Ilya mid-jump, with varying degrees of success:




On the ride back to Florence, the Texan honeymooners sitting in front of us overheard us trying to figure out where to eat dinner. They turned around and recommended a place they had already eaten at twice, called Ciro and Sons. We decided to give it a try, and we headed over once we got off the bus. We got a little lost on the way but actually ran into the same couple who had just left the place -- they stopped by a third time to buy a bottle of the house wine to take home and drink on their first wedding anniversary -- and they pointed us in the right direction. We sat outside and enjoyed a nice meal. Of course, we shared a bottle of house wine that was so highly recommended to us. I got the tomato soup to start:


and I finally got to have pesto pasta as my entree:


That’s nutmeg around the rim of the plate. My second nutmeg-laced meal. Ilya got some wacky seafood pizza:


After this we did our usual walking around. I am sure we got gelato before heading back to our hotel to call it a night after our favorite day of the trip.