Long birthday celebration

I had a  very very long birthday celebration this year. Not that I'm complaining. Although Z did say on Sunday night that he's quite tired and would like a break.
Thursday, I was in the city most of the day, and had a lovely lunch with Z, followed by a Chinese takeout picnic in our living room. Friday, we went to see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying - it was fantastic!! People, go see it! It was hilarious, beautifully made, the songs were excellent, the jokes - witty. And Daniel Radcliffe was amazingly good - and the guy can sing!!

On Saturday, we went to Beer Garden with some of our friends - which was quite loud and dark, but really fun!

And on Sunday, to round up our long celebrations, we had dinner with family at a cute little Greek place here in Brooklyn.

 

Man, that was long. The post and the birthday itself. Sorry for the picture overload, I'll be sure to post a cute kiddo-pictures-post to compensate for these soon ;)

Happy birthday to me!

I had a very happy (and a ridiculously hot) 27th birthday today! I had a couple of doctor's appointments, errands to run in the city, of course, stopped by Barnes and Noble for a few new books, and a lovely lunch with Z. We had a picnic on our living room floor, since the weather suddenly changed and was very stormy. And then, after Sasha's bath, she sang me a birthday song!

I got so many messages on my phone, phone calls saying "happy birthday", and my FB wall was going crazy with awesome birthday wishes. I feel so loved today!!

Beach day

This morning, to beat the heat, we headed to the beach. Wasn't completely spontaneous since I started packing the night before, but let's just say it was pretty spontaneous. And really really fun!

When it's too hot to go outside...

We stay in and do crafts. Sometimes involving toilet paper, sometimes paint-covered kiddo (funny side story: we were attempting to make Father's day presents today and as we were crafting, I told Sasha that these are going to be surprise and not to tell papa or anyone what we made. So as soon as we sit down to eat dinner, she looks at papa very excitedly and says "We were making presents today". Sigh. She will not make a good spy)

Family time

As promised, some pictures from yesterday's family gathering and today's playdate.

Playing with animals and picking strawberries

Although this weekend is not as intense with activities as last weekend was, we are doing quite a few very exciting things. Yesterday, we went strawberry picking (and got to play with adorable little goats). Then we went out for my grandma's birthday. Today, we had Sasha's cousin Emily and her parents over for a playdate (which created the biggest mess our living room has seen to date - but was so worth it!) - which totally deserves a post of its own. Tomorrow, my good friend and her boyfriend are coming over and we're grilling and watching Harry Potter, while Sasha hangs out with her grandma.

Ice cream date with my girl

On Thursday, after picking Sasha up from school, I decided to take a little detour and go have some ice cream with her... as an official welcoming of the summer, you could say (or possibly simply because I wanted to go have some ice cream with my girl). She loved it. She shared with mama and was generally very well behaved (and even ate her dinner later that night)

Today, we're heading to Long Island to do some strawberry picking and to play with some animals, so excited!!

Welcome, summer!

As per usual, the spring never arrived in NY: the long and cold winter (and this one has been a particularly snowy one too!) has morphed into a sweltering hot summer. We've had temperatures in the 90's the past few days. And now we're under a tornado warning... fun times!
Last summer was a bit chaotic with us randomly deciding to do something, so this year I came up with a plan, if you will, a rough list of things I'd like to do this summer (when Z saw the list, he looked at me like I had two heads and declared that there aren't enough weekends this summer, but I'm determined to do as much as we can):
Rye Playland
Washington DC (done!!)
New York Aquarium
The Bronx Zoo (already went once, might go again)
Staten Island Zoo
Botanical Gardens
Children's Museum (Brooklyn and Manhattan)
Central Park and the zoo
Jersey shore - a long weekend sometime this summer
Coney Island - love this place!
Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty
Intrepid Museum
Jones Beach (can totally go more than once)
Liberty Science Center
NY Hall of Science
Queens County Farm Museum (or really any other farm where we can play with cute little animals)
South street seaport - love this place!
Camping - this idea was just brought up a couple of days ago and I'm trying to figure out if Sasha's fear of bugs will outweigh the fun we'd have

So yeah, that's quite a list, huh? I'm really excited about all these things. I'm also looking forward to doing a bunch of non-kid things, like multiple birthdays, Harry Potter weekends with Marina and her boyfriend, going out with other adults, my mom's family coming to the States for my sister's wedding at the end of August. It's going to be a good summer!!

Happy first (unofficial?) day of summer!!