Summer Travel: New York

This summer I took my first trip to New York for a family reunion that coincided with the 100th anniversary of our family's immigration from Italy.

Dad, Mom & Rivers in Little Italy

It was a wonderful trip, and a great chance to be with my family.

Rivers lives in Wonderland

Rivers, Mom & me: Empire State

Mom on the ferry

We all took a trip out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty 

Central Park Duck

You knew I'd get a picture of a duck, didn't you?

Third Time's a Charm

I often find myself wondering why I haven't posted to the blog lately and I can usually come up with a list of reasons.  I didn't have time, I was too tired, or I just didn't feel like I had anything to say.  But I'm going to try to be better about it because frankly there's a lot going on!

We're trying to buy a house, and hopefully this time it will work, they do say the third time's the charm.  Is it really our third go round?  It certainly is.  Here is one of those horrible quality realtor site images, but you get the idea.  It's quite the little house with three bedrooms and 1.5 baths and a full basement just inches from being finished.

We've been busy here too.  I've been working quite a bit and when I'm not working I'm usually visiting Mom.  This past week we were helping Marilyn clean out her house and pack up for her move, and I'm working hard on getting her slides scanned.  It's slow going, but I've got one box down and just two boxes to go and they're big boxes!

The last of the 2010 Fleas

Well, Maxwell Street Days last Sunday was quite fun, and rather successful as we got rid of quite a few things from our basement and made a bit of money doing it.  Plus it kept me so busy at the flea market that I only managed to buy lunch and not any stuff.  We came across a great chrome kitchen table with six red chairs (we've been searching for a chrome kitchen table for a while now) but we didn't buy it because it needed quite a bit of work.  Lots of rust to be buffed off, and the chairs would have all needed to be reupholstered. But all it all, it was good to get up before the sun and spend a day outside wheeling and dealing.

Now that I've started nannying again I'm doing a lot more driving these days, and the drive to work or to my parents' house is typically a thirty minute drive, so I've tuned back to books on tape.  Or rather, books on cd/ipod.  This week I started Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and I finished it last night.  It was a sweet and rather sad story.  It was one of those stories that actually makes my chest tighten with emotion, and it was beautiful.  Next week - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.  The best place for audio books is the library, and our library provides digital downloads of books as well so you can load them on your ipod.  The digital download only last two weeks, and after that the files won't play anymore, but its really handy when they don't have the actual cds available.

It's official.  Fall has begun.  Let's break out the sweaters and yarn.