New Years

This was a holiday I was not looking forward to for two major reasons-seems strange to start a new year without my partner in crime and second, what do you do with yourself when you are a singlet?

Similar to my previous post, my friends came through big time!! My buddy Ed invited to me to have NYE dinner with his buddies. He told me there was a group of them that had known each other since undergrad that had a huge dinner party each year. Last year they all lived in Seattle and had this party on some island in a huge house they rented out. At first, I hesitated because I felt like it was a pity offer. After taking my pride away, I graciously accepted! Figured dinner started at 7, I'd be home before midnight-thus taking care of that moment when the year changes and it's time for a kiss. Sounded perfect, so I put on a cute new top from Christmas, curled my hair and headed out to meet new friends.

Ed's buddy lives in Murray Hill, which was fun because I started reading about this area before I went. Mainly planning my transportation on NYE in this city-bus, subway, cab?? Am I going to be safe?? Turns out this place is called Frat Hill sort of. Apparently there are a bunch of rich frat boys that migrate here and a ton of bars to add to the feel.

So, I walk in the door and meet 6 people (all couples), plus Ed and Krysten (who I already knew). Everyone is so nice and accommodating. There is wine already open with cheese and meat on the table.

I knew I was going to have a great night.

 Ed and Krysten

 Peter and Jeanetta-they live in Minnesota, he is an English Professor and she is a pastry chef. She is actually taken a class here in NYC right now with the Craft Bar owner!! This will come in handy in a bit

 Jeremy and Mary-they live in Chicago. He is an attorney (one of the chefs tonight, thus the apron) and she works for the city trying to bring healthy food to the underserved, writing grants etc.

 This is Nick, it is his house. He was another chef. He is a writer by trade and his first book is going to be published soon. I snapped a quick pic

This is Madeline. She is Nicks wife and a writer as well. Books are obviously important to them, check out this part of their house!! All books.

Ok, so the food. These boys are unreal. I was amazed at what was in store. I tried to take a picture of each dish before being touched, but missed out on one-you'll see. Seven courses with alcohol to match. It took all night to serve 6, and we had to postpone dessert until after new years which meant that I had to be there for the uncomfortable kiss-which was really no big deal. I got to text kiss my hubs at that moment!!

Course 1-Oysters and a light champagne

Course 2-Caprese Salad on toasted bread

Course 3-lightly battered shrimp on a mixed green salad with a light vinaigrette and broccolini. And, sardines for those who wanted them-all but me!

 Course 4-Vinison and endive with a spinach puree and my fav-sauteed brussel sprouts. This is the dish I missed-sorry!

Yay! Stole this pic from Ed!!

 Course 5-Red Mullet with a vegetable salad base. There are roasted radishes, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes with light olive oil dusting. Hope you can hear Nick in my descriptions. As he would present these, he would describe them as I am.

 Course 6-Goose, roasted potatoes, stuffing with fig and almonds, and swiss chard

New Years Toast!!!

 Course 7-(from the pastry chef!!) A sticky, toffee pie with ice cream

Oh my goodness! Thought this was pretty funny. Here are two pics I took literally right after we finished eating. Guess the chefs were worn out!

This is how I left everyone. Thanks Ed!!

What a great way to start the New Year. I am truly blessed!!

Back home

I have to admit that coming home was really hard this time. I felt like I left my "life" in OK. Guess if you look at it, it's all good-having a job, possible house and real future, just wish it was now!!

I also found out that I had Monday off for the holiday, which meant I could have had 4 more days with Bryan had we planned better. All these things were running in my head and I was pretty sad, and I definitely didn't want to start the new year like this. Luckily, I have really good friends here and they took me in and I've had the best couple days!!

Yesterday morning I went ice skating with the Tan's. What a blast! The kids are 7, 5, 3, and 8 months. The baby stayed home, but everyone else came. I met them at their house and each kid walked out the door in matching vests with backpacks on and their own personal ice skates around their necks! I was told with this many kids, it is actually cheaper to buy the skates-even if only for one time because renting here is so expensive.

Ruth, Benny and Rebecca

We went to Bryant Park, a place I had yet to venture to. This park is fantastic. For the holiday season, they have a huge Christmas tree with tons of small local booths selling any and everything you could ever want. The best part, is skating is free. We skated around for about 30 minutes as a family, then we had a family lesson with Mr. Manny (yes, he looked like that sounds!!), then free skated for another two hours. These kids have so much energy. The older two are really talented and can skate independently, but loved holding my hand as we made laps. Rebecca is a little young, and she just hangs on to where ever you take her. So much fun.

 Zamboni

The Tan's are some of the neatest people I have ever met and I love that they include me in their kids lives. They are here for this year just because David wanted to expand his knowledge base. He is originally from Singapore, where he has been working as a boss for over 5 years. Anyone that could take a pay cut like that and more take the loss of respect and status downgrade just to learn, is pretty impressive to me! His wife works as an oral surgeon back home, but has taken the year off to enjoy her kids. In addition, her parents are here helping raise the kids. All 8 of them live in an apartment the size of mine. Talk about close quarters!! I love this family so much!! One of the best NYC blessings.

Bryan's Birthday

Bryan's birthday falls in that too close to Christmas range that I hate. I love birthdays and think everyone's should be really special. I hate that his is so close to Christmas and sometimes gets overlooked. I have tried to make it special each year. This year was no different. We planned a family celebratory dinner at Upper Crust (uppercrust.ehsrg.com). I love these times with all of us. One of the things I miss the most about being home! Then Chris and the White's came up and met us. We watched the entire Thunder game and it seemed like everyone just got there. Nice to have friends to come home too and nice that they all get along-as throughout the night the boys were planning our destination vacation round two for this summer! Another nice surprise was that Shar and her family happened to be eating there that night. I got to catch up with her too.

Upper Crust is one of my okc favs because you can share everything, except your drink-the sangria there is too good to share!! Bryan and I split a market fresh salad and a numbers pizza along with the calamari and wings for the table. All really tasty!

The next morning was his real birthday. I surprised him with his gifts in bed when he woke up! Bryan's favorite meal is breakfast by far-so I figured since this was our last day, he and I would grab a bday breakfast to celebrate. We ran up to Classen Grill, just like old times. Normally I order the Colorado, but B did this time and I had quesadilla. Talk about some great, filling breakfast. This was it!

 Took a pic of the Colorado because I was trying to tell my step bro, Jeff, about it and didn't do it justice. Now, here it is!

After breakfast, Bryan and I drove around OKC returning gifts, shopping for more and driving by the house we are hoping to buy. Such fun, quality time. My love language used to be QT, and after days like this, I can tell it is still close to the top. There isn't anything better for me, alone time with my hubs!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that my mom and I made Bryan a homemade ice cream cake, his fav. So after getting home from playing in the city, we ate cake for lunch! We only had a few hours left together, so we took a nap together and didn't really separate more than a couple feet at any time. It will be three weeks before I see him again...Think he had a good bday though.

He drove me to the airport and then headed south to Houston. I switched planes in Dallas and got on one of the coolest planes I've ever been on. It had blue ambient lighting, see below. Also, the overhead bins were airplane ergonomic, tons of leg room and space in general. Plus wifi-always a bonus on flights over 3 hrs. Unfortunately, as we were about to taxi, the pilot came on and said there were dents in one of our engines and we all needed to deboard. ugh...We ended up leaving about 2 hrs later and I got home around 2.30 am to work that next morning.

The nice thing about my Friday work was that it was light! Only a couple things to take care of. Since it was light, my boss invited a few of us to a bar called Bemelman's in the Carlyle Hotel. This place is the ultimate in swank! Supposedly, the hotel is where JFK used to meet Marilyn. My friends went on a random Saturday afternoon this fall and one of the Olsen twins sat right next to them.

As you can see, it started off kind of slow, but by the time we left-there were people standing outside the door waiting for seats. Great drinks, great conversation. We talked about the 6 drinks that changed the world-good book apparently. I googled it after, it is kind of interesting!

After drinks I was really feeling the late night before, but knew the OU game was coming on at 10 here. I had to push through. I went for coffee to aid. Here are my cousin's seats. My little brother went to. So jealous!! Really glad we finally won.

I couldn't make it through the entire game unfortunately. I had these guys waiting on me and we fell asleep in the living room after the first quarter. Boomer Sooner!

Christmas

Christmas this year was pretty fun. Bryan and I met in OK for a quick day of my family stuff. Love coming home, it is one of the best, most warm feelings in the world. I've got 2 pretty good sets of parents!! Here's my mom's tree and fire place-don't have one of those here. Love being with my family. I am really blessed to have sister-in-laws that I love. And, I basically got to spend a full day with my brother. He was here sans girlfriend, so we got all the attention. He was in such a good mood and I just cherish time like this. He is such a neat guy, just wish he lived in OK.





After exchanging gifts with both OK families, we hopped in the car to big MO. We had essentially four Christmases with Bryan's family. He has so many relatives and they are all so close! Neat to see, one of the perks of a small town. The other nice part of coming home to B's fam, is how they all roll out to see him. The get together was an ugly sweater party this year. Bryan bought ours online. Thought they were pretty cute, given
the options. The best part about his was that when he bought it,
it said unisex-clearly this is not a man's sweater. It was perfect. I had to add the side pony to add a little flair to mine, to keep up!
















Here are the runner up, Bryan's cousin Kenny, and the winner, his uncle Zeke!

We headed back to OK for a couple more days of family time. Since I blog about NYC food, I had to about my OK food too. Tuesday night we met my dad and Kim at MamaVecas. Great Peruvian food, great beer (they serve the big schooners with lime on the edge), great salsa and great service.

During dinner Kim told me about a skin care line at Target called No.7. It is supposed to be the best money can buy, and it is not crazy expensive. So as a pre-new years resolution, I bought it and vowed to actually use it. Hope it    

works!!

Giants

Most of you know that the New York Giants are my favorite NFL team. I have loved them as long as I can remember, before my little brother was born. So, moving here-going to a game was on my nyc bucket list. I don't even know where to start, but my boss that I am working with now is one of the Giant's team consulters. I started hinting when I started the rotation about my bucket list. Somehow through all this-he scored me a sideline pass to for the game against the redskins. Never been done in the history of my work and his 15+ year history helping the G-men out. Holy cow-better than my dreams would even allow me to imagine. First question was what will I be doing? Second, what will i wear? Neither of which my boss could help with. So, I meet up with the guys like me that normally help with Giants each week for the day of play by play. I also consulted my fashion guru Becky for outfit help. Have to say-all took great care of me!!! Here's a pic of my top half, wore leggings and ankle boots on bottom. Oh yeah, that's part of the locker room!

Here's my badge that I had to wear to have all the access I did. Day started by walking into the locker room, the first people I saw were Eli and Brandon Jacobs. I was not only star struck, but overwhelmed by how big these guys are in real life. They are huge!! We hung out in a room in the back where all the players swing through, so I got to meet and talk to more than 3/4 of the team. What an experience and the game hadn't even started! Next we headed out onto the field to meet the guys like us for the skins. I literally walked across the field that my favorite team plays on. My boss took a pic of us (I'm trying to get it, if so-I'll add it!) and then we went back to our sideline to start the game!! The actual game stunk. They lost. Got to hear Coughlin's post game speech, you know why they won the next week after hearing that!

Here's my souvenir, they gave us all these pre-game. I actually never wore mine, but will wear it proudly in the future!

This day was literally top 10 in my life and maybe top 1-2 here. Really shows how dreams come true, no matter how big they are!