Happy new year!!

We are wishing everyone a healthy and happy new year. May all your wishes come true, may luck be with you, and may you spend many joyous moments with your family, friends and loved ones!

P.S. check out Jennifer's etsy site right here - i absolutely adore the card she designed for us!

Snow day(s)

On Sunday night, we were hit with a crazy blizzard. For which the city was clearly not prepared. So here we are, two days later still pretty much stuck at home. We took Sasha out to play in the snow yesterday, but she wasn't too thrilled (and it seriously took us longer to get her dressed than we were outside). Z is working from home for the second day in a row. And we are trying to figure out if we'll be able to get out on the 31st to make it to our New Year's Eve party.

How we spent Christmas

Well, since we're not Catholic and few places are open (although the poor FedEx people have to make deliveries: our delivery guy was ringing our bell when we were coming home at 10pm!) we decided to go visit with Z's parents in Staten Island. While we finished up some last minute shopping, Sasha napped and then we helped decorate their tree!

 

And then we headed to my cousin's house to hang out with his family (Sasha just adores her cousin Emily, who gave her one of her very sweet little teddy bears!) And then we danced, while the guys fixed the lights for their tree.

And on Christmas day, we went to see Christmas lights (we do this every year, and we were so excited for Sasha to take it all in this time, but she was too cold and too grumpy to appreciate the beauty of pretty lights!)

Another day in the city

On Wednesday, I had to go into the city to deal with passport issues at the Russian consulate. And since Z was home with Sasha, I decided to take a little detour and stop by the fabulous Guggenheim Museum!

And then I met this little guy - I was walking though Union Square Park - on another detour to finish up present shopping. He was just sitting there, posing, almost waiting for somebody to walk by and take his picture.

My little snowflake

Since Sasha missed her holiday party this morning, we decided to play dress up (ok, I decided to play dress up). Sasha looked adorable in her little outfit (even though the snowflake on the shirt is a little crooked, and the shoes are a little big, and the smile is a little fake):

Who brings sick kids to school!?

Remember Sasha's cold a couple of weeks ago? Yeah, well, she got to go to school for exactly one week since then before getting sick again. All because some lady decided to bring her sick kid to school on Friday! Who does that anyway? How did she think it was better for her kid or for all the rest of the kids to bring him in? To top it off, I had two wisdom teeth extracted on Friday which made me more whiny and aggravated than usual. So my sick Sasha was with my parents, and we rested a bit. Then went to Ikea for a dresser for Z (which we happily built right away since we had the time!) And tomorrow morning is supposed to be Sasha's holiday party, for which she memorized a little rhyme to recite and I almost finished a snowflake costume. Needless to say, she's not going to school and I stayed up this late for no good reason. Except that I'll probably make her wear it tomorrow anyway. Because it's cute.
Oh, and speaking of cute, my parents watched Sasha on Thursday while we went to Z's holiday party and we came home to these adorable shots:

 

The tree is up!!

Yesterday, we decorated our tree. Papa wasn't feeling so great, so it was mostly Sasha and I, but he did help too. And took pictures. This year, Sasha was really excited to actually put the ornaments on the tree. We of course gave her the non-breakable ones, but she had such a blast with them!

Another weekend in pictures

Our weekends are busy, what else is new! But I, for the life of me, cannot remember what we did on Saturday. Z went to Staten Island to get a haircut (because he only goes to the place in SI where he's been going for the past 10 years). He also picked up a New Year's tree for us there (the difference in prices between here and SI are unreal!). So Sasha and I stayed home and cleaned up a bit. Sunday, my sister and I went to the city (again!) to do some holiday shopping; we got quite a lot of presents, so overall the day was a success (minus me stupidly wearing sneakers in a pouring rain, getting completely soaked, and having to stop by Payless to pick up some new boots, which turned out to be both warm and comfy!) We then headed to my parents' house for a belated Hanukkah celebration (hey, you can never have too many latkes)

I almost bought a hat - ok, I didn't, but how cool is it!?

Looks like Aunty Anya is trying to eat the poor kid!

 A very serious conversation with grandpa

 Sasha enjoying a funny picture of herself!

A girls' night out

On Wednesday, my sister and I (as well as two of my sister's friends) headed into the city to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and wandered around the area for a bit. And when I say "wandered around", I mean went to see the tree in Rockefeller Center for about 20 minutes and then headed for some drinks. And when I say "some" I mean, I got home at around 2:30am. Mother of the year here, I tell ya. Anyway, the show was fun, nothing uber-exciting, but fun nonetheless.