The Day After...

It occurred to Felix and I that after Thanksgiving, we had nothing to do...absolutely nothing for the next three days.  How was this possible?

Given all our free time, we ventured out to Brooklyn Heights to see Felix's cousins Flavia and Walfri and their kids.  

That big kid in the middle?  He was the ring bearer in our wedding..remember him?  He was six at the time, he's now a pre-teen and almost up to my shoulders!

Afterwards, we headed over the bridge to Manhattan

We had all intentions of going to the Seaport and just walking around in the warm evening air.  The ships were there, but the seaport was closed, still ruined by Sandy :(

So, we headed to Rockefeller Center, and watched the ice skaters...

And posed with the angels....Lucas looks like he wants to punch someone here.

And then it was off to the LEGO store...on Black Friday...what can have been more insane...maybe only FAO Schwartz.

Stopped at Applebee's for dinner...

And then some more lights before heading home.

Thanksgiving 2012

Our Turkey Day was quite laid back...just like I like it.  We started the day off with watching the parade in the morning.

Around 1 pm, everyone came over.  Mom, Dad, Connie, Wendy and Wendy's friend Theo came as well.

We recorded the parade in the morning so that we could watch it again when Connie arrived!

Talking via Skype with Pete and the Nashville clan.

A fine looking bird!

Everyone at the table..

And a little table for the little ones.

We had lots of pie and cookies and ice cream for desert.  The Cowboys didn't win, but it was still a great night to spend with family and friends.

Movie Night...

It was time again for Movie and Pizza night at Norwalk library this week.  It was a Tinkerbell movie to boot!  Liliana was thrilled.  Lucas seemed to like it too.  From this pic, you would think they were the only kids there....not the case.  There were about 30 other kids there.

Little Sick One....

He's been out of school all week and every night in our bed.  A cold has gotten the best of him and his asthma is acting up.  Today (Saturday) was the best day in the past seven days.  Hopefully back to school on Monday.

Snow!

Without sounding like an alarmist....this weather thing is getting a litte weird.  Just as we were getting back on track after Sandy, we had a nice little Noreaster come and visit.  Sure made everything pretty for a little while at least.

Getting out of the house...

After a while, cabin fever really was getting to us.  Not to mention that most of the neighborhood was back up with power and a few select houses were without-our house being one of them.  We showered at a friends house one day, which was nice...scrubbed the kids real good.

One of the other days we ventured out to a new park. This one is at King's Highway School, a elementary school in Westport about 2 miles down the road.  The kids LOVED it!

On the fifth day, the power came back on and life started returning to normal.  The twins were great sports through it all and I actually read more in four days than I have in four years!  

Everyone still in the dark...

Although the power was not on...Halloween was!  Well, kind of.  Aiko and her family were also in the dark and Halloween was cancelled by them so we invited them to come up to our neighborhood to trick or treat.  We all enjoyed some Chinese take out for dinner.

All excited and ready to go.

Only about 15 houses were participating in Halloween, but that was plenty for the kids.  When we got home and Aiko and the family left we realized that in all the excitement, although Lucas and Liliana were at the table, they didn't really eat...OOPS!  So they tore into the Chinese food before bed.  

The morning after....

Around 3 am the storm subsided and I was able to sleep much better.  When we got going in the morning we ventured out to find this...a hug branch sitting in our yard.   This was the extent of our damage, but we didn't have to go far to see much worse.

Feeling a bit of cabin fever, we headed down to the church to play on our favorite swing.

On our walk home, we saw our neighbor's house, along with this big tree, ripped from the roots and draggin all the power lines down with it.

Home in our warm house, we decided to do a gingerbread Halloween house...after all, Halloween was the next day (although they didn't know that)

Sandy...oh Sandy!

Two days before Sandy hit we went down to Compo Beach and here we saw the sand berms being built in hopes that they would absorb some of the flooding and protect the houses just on the other side.

I went home and packed bags, just in case we had to get out in a hurry (you know if a tree fell on the house or something!  ACK!)

And then we waited....we heard the winds pick up and howl all around us.  We put all the blinds and shutters down so that the twins could not see everything blowing around.

The twins were great, making up games to play with each other...like this one when they created "tunnels" with their legs and let the trains go on the track...

They played on the Wii with Felix a bit....

And colored together (in a very cute manner I might add)

Felix did some arts and crafts with them...

And we left them eat dinner at their little table.

And sure enough, about two hours into the storm, the power went out.  We were well prepared with all sorts of alternative light sources (very few of which involved candles).

And as the storm got worse, we all hunkered down in the living room and tried to sleep....as you can see, it wasn't hard for these two.  In fact I think I was the only one for whom sleep was an issue.  

Next post.....what we woke up to the morning after the storm.....