2009 - Year in Review

It’s a quiet day at work and I’m stepping up to a blog challenge, summarizing my 2009 year.

January

31 years and counting. The fam came over and we played a little Wii.

February

I met up with Pablo, Pekka and Deepak in Amsterdam and we had a festive time together.

And, I bought myself some killer boots! This was my crepe with spinach, brie and cashews. It was delicious!

March

We kidnapped our nephew, Joey for his 9th birthday, and took him to the Everglades where we learned about the mangroves and watched the 3D version of Monsters vs. Aliens. I love cartoons!

 

April

Officially 6 months of raw and kickboxing 4 times a week. My digestive system, body and mind are glowing!

Dad, Mom, Sean, Kelly and I participated in a 5K run, we ALL made it!

 

We celebrated Mom and Ash on their birthdays at Tea Leaves and Thyme.

Pablo and I also ventured to Switzerland and dabbled around Winterthur, enjoying crepes!

May

A nodule was discovered on my thyroid gland this year, a nodule that was suspicious for Papillary Carcinoma. The docs said it had to come out.

I have some great friends and family. Mom and Janice were at the hospital with me, Pablo sent me flowers, Ashley brought me Gladiolas and Amy and Adam sent me chocolate cover goodness (aka fruit)!

Emily’s Getting Married! Pablo, Ashley and I took a little adventure to NJ to spend the weekend celebrating Emily, my childhood friend on her food filled wedding day.

Amy, Adam, Paul and I had a relaxing Memorial Day in Destin, FL.

June

Pablo and I discovered Arabia Mountain in Lilburn. It’s similar to Stone Mountain, but not quite as high and just as unusually magnificent.

July

We’re pregnant! Pablo and I are officially expecting our first child in March 2010.

Pablo and I took advantage of the beautiful Georgia weather and tried our hardest to take many picnics along the Hooch this summer.

Here’s one of our spreads.

August

Pablo and I spent our Labor Day holiday visiting Mickey, Minnie and our favorite troll in Epcot.

 

Dad and I also ventured out to visit Pablo in Kansas, taking in the friendly peoples of Wichita along our walk and seeing what a real piece of meat looks like, visiting a wind farm and also visiting with a real farmer – one who keeps his own cows and eats them!

September

It’s been a great year for my friends who are all getting married! My college roommate, Kelly got hitched this year and I was there to share in the festivities in NJ!

October

Pablo and I win the Halloween Costume contest for best couple. This is our 3rd or 4th year!

Juno and Pauly Bleeker baby! We even had the orange tic tacs and Sunny D for props!

November

Every Fall we visit North Georgia and Uncle Shucks Corn Maze. This year Sadie joined us for the challenge!

She took this picture.

This was Pablo and my first year home for Thanksgiving in a while, so we had a relaxing weekend and made an all white meat turkey, noodle kugel, apple pie and pumpkin pie together. Ah, I hear the laughter from the audience!

December

This month blew by but we capped it off by visiting with Jonny Z in NYC,  sipping on frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity3.  Straight down to Florida for a defrost, we celebrated Nicholas’ arrival with Jillian and Jesse and feasted on Janice’s turkey Christmas dinner. Santa even came this year, dropped off a fun new camera for Pablo and I to learn quickly over the next three months for lil Weintraub’s first paparazzi shots!

This month we also had a surprise 4D viewing of our lil one! We’re so excited to see WIP moving around and making faces!

2009 in Review

I’ve been pretty impressed with myself. I see that there’s 63 blog post for this year vs. the 33 posts we had for 2008. That’s a definite improvement. Let’s just hope that with WIP on the way, I can keep it up and keep the fam and friends up to date on our Weintraub Tales.

Christmas in NYC

Pablo and I decided to spend the weekend before our Florida trip in NYC to visit with Jon Z. and see some Christmas in NYC.

We convinced Adam to join us for the weekend and as soon as we landed and had a bathroom break, we bolted off to Katz’s Deli for some matzoh ball soup and Pablo’s corned beef. Jaffe and I shared a warm fresh turkey sandwich.  The recommendation from Darren was to stop at Mudd Coffee on 13th and ________ where Jaffe had hot cider and Pablo and I had hot chocolate. Dare we eat our way through the city?

 

 

 

We met up with Jon Z and his girlfriend, Dominque at the Gotham comedy club where we watched 3 comics bomb. It was a sad sight. We called is a night and decided to catch back up with Jon and Dom Saturday.

Saturday Pablo and I grabbed bagels at Ess-a Bagel on 50th and 3rd. It was yummy! Their cream cheese is the best! We caught up with Adam and ventured into Times Square where we had a hot chocolate with Adam at The Roxy where we learned to speak Deli.

We stopped into Magnolia Bakery for a quick peak and then caught up with Jon and Dom for a Saturday matinee of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular.  The venue is grand, but again the show went a little off the Jesus end with baby Jesus and 2 camels and a mule. The Rockettes were leggy and fun to watch and part of the show is now in 3D.

 

 

Jon took us back to his new pad and showed us all his tech gear, Lutronix lights and his Toto toilet that wipes your tush for you. It was quite an experience. We dined Italian with Jon, Dom and Adam just a couple of blocks from his house and then Adam, Pablo and I tried to go to Serendipity where even in a snowstorm, we found an hour wait. Oy vey! We picked up some hot cocoa at Dunkin Donuts and called it a night.

On the way to dinner, we spotted this cute lil dachshund. Check out the booties!

However, the next night we opted to eat somewhere close by so that we could put our name in at Serendipity, eat dinner and then have little to no wait upon returning to Serendipity. It almost worked. We had a little wait at Serendipity, but we started it off with a fabulous dinner at Scalinatella on 61st and 3rd. Funny thing was, we sat at a table right next to Brooks and Dunn and their daughters. What a small world! However, we would have never known if it wasn't for Adam. Serendipity was delicious and although I couldn’t do a frozen hot chocolate (too much chocolate) I couldn’t pass up dessert. The hot fudge sundae was delicious!

Sunday morning we ate at Ess-a Bagel again and then taxied to Chinatown to search for some knock off sunglasses and a bag for moi. Three alley ways and hidden staircases later, Pablo bought me a killer black Chanel bag. This one even has a certificate of authenticity in it! Gotta love it! We dined at 69 on Bayard Street and I feasted on my Almond Cookie ice cream. Yum!

The LaGuardia airport was a nightmare on Monday, since many people were still delayed from cancelled flights during the snowstorm Saturday which dropped  inches in the city.  Thank goodness Pablo’s been to this airport before and knows the layout. After 10 hours of traveling, and a 3 hour delayed flight, we made it to Florida by 715pm. And the weather is 65 and perfect. Ah!

WIP makes an appearance!

Pablo and I got to peer into my belly today to see our darling little child. Look at these 4D photos!

This is just the cutest!

Thinking or sucking it’s thumb

This looks like a soccer foot!

 

Entertainment, Sleep (lack of) and Learning

Pablo and I are really enjoying our new TV set up. We killed cable Saturday and have been loading up on our movies. We watched No Country for Old Men – why? Who knows, I heard good things, but good things are always said about weird movies and this was surely one of them. Leave it to the Coan brothers, I should have known better.   Our Netflix comes to us on demand and is unlimited through the PS3 and TV. Now if I could only figure out how to make playlists on the server using itunes. Complicado!
Pablo and I made dinner at home last night and watched the movie Wall Street with Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas. I had not seen it before and Pablo apparently saw it when he was 9. I barely understood all the buying and selling parts, I’m amazed that Mr. Weintraub at 9 was able to comprehend it all. Michael Douglas got an Oscar for his performance as a greedy stock trader and spec real estate guru.

Lil Weintraub must be a night own and is already getting me used to less sleep. Yes, off to the bathroom we go and then try try try to get back to sleep. Tossing and turning, I didn’t want to wake up Mr. Weintraub, so I plopped myself down on the couch around 430am and turned on a documentary called Following Sean about Sean Kendall, a 4 year old who was living in Haight-Ashbury and his parents took in wanderers. Within 45 minutes of the movie, we’re already seeing a grown up Sean. About that time, my eyes became heavy and I passed out on the couch. Ah, so good to sleep and really no need to finish the movie.  Pablo woke me up at 7am. Although I wanted to sleep longer, I thought it best to get up and going, thinking that I might try to get to bed a little earlier tonight.
This week is officially 26 weeks and I’m sure my tummy is larger than it was at 24 weeks. I’ll post some side view photos tomorrow along with our ultrasound photos. We’re going to see WIP dance on TV again!
Not to make a complete detour, but I read Dr. Mercola’s blog and the article today is about yeast being the initiation of cancer. Italian Oncologist Dr. Tullio Simoncini believes that those with Candida are most susceptible to cancer since their body is constantly craving sweets and carbohydrates. Sounds like me! No wonder my body was feeling so great on fruits and veggies with little grains. I’m going to try to be more cognizant of eating better over the holidays. Making smoothies in the morning and eating lots of salads. It was amazing how much my body changed eating a high raw diet. I need to get back to it!

Ultrasound #3 – Checking Size

The doc told me that my belly was measuring large at my last visit two weeks ago and requested that we go for a 3rd ultrasound.  I was 24 weeks, but measuring 28 weeks. Maybe I’m just gaining too much weight? Regardless, it’s always fun to watch the little one dancing on TV. Pablo’s home this week and will be joining me for WIP’s show.   Thursday I get my sugar test to see if I’ve caught the dia-betes. Gestational that is. If I do test positive, my endocrinologist may put me back on Metformin. Which isn’t such a bad thing, I’ll have to take that again when we try for Weintraub #2.

Thursday of this officially market week 26 and WIP is definitely not being kind to me on the sleeping front. He/she is probably taking after me during my 20s – I was a night owl! WIP’s supposed to be about a pound and half at 26 weeks, but we’ll see for sure on Wednesday.  I’m most excited to see how the genes meld and who WIP looks most like. Will he/she have dark hair and eyes like the Weintraub’s or fairer skin and eyes like the Harris’?  Then again, Pablo has a speckled goatee with red, blond and brown so for all we know, we could have a blondie!

Wednesday is going to be an action packed day – my sister in law, Jillian is going in for a c-section that morning.

Little Nicholas will be just in time for Christmas!

Jillian in Nicholas’ room

Wow – Momma!

Harris’ Channukah 2009

Pablo and I hosted the Channukah party this year and served up Goldberg’s bagels with eggs, Lash brought the bacon (bad Jew - jk), Mark made homemade apple pies (yum!) and Kelly made some delicious Latkes! Dad was teaching his real estate Cram Class – but we missed him being there with us!

Kelly’s so good at getting Sadie psyched up!

Nathan preferred to lay on the presents, but here we catch him unwrapping some!

Evan’s already got his two step kicking!

Partial Family Photo – Missing Dad

It’s so much fun to see the kiddies grow up.

We look a little bit different than last year – huh?

Sadie and Nathan zonked out.