"quotes"

One of my favorite things to ask Hannah is if I'm scratchy or smooth. This is in reference to my facial hair. One of the things that makes it so fun is that she'll come close to my face in seriousness and feel my face with her hand to see. I'm usually scratchy.

One day Minna was teaching Hannah about gender...
Minna: Is Thomas a boy or a girl?
Hannah: Thomas is a boy.
Minna: Is Joey a boy or a girl?
Hannah: Joey is a boy.
Minna: Is Hannah a boy or a girl?
Hannah: Hannah is a girl.
Minna: Is Daddy a boy or a girl?
Hannah: (long pause) Daddy is scratchy.

We bought a new bed last year that made the mattress pretty high. This week one morning before Hannah was up Minna took the box spring out of our bed to make the bed lower. Hannah woke up and walked in, looked at the bed, blinked and said "It's too little Mama."

It's always fun when grandma comes!

It's fun for mommy when grandma comes too!
I've had so much fun this past week while my mom has been here. When we got back from Boston, I was able to go out with some friends to Serendipity. I had the frozen hot chocolate, but there are other amazing desserts there as well.

Friday, my mom took us to the Bronx zoo. Hannah loved it! She really loved the bug carousel and the gorillas. We spent about 5 hours there and we still didn't see everything. Here's Hannah as a bumblebee outside the butterfly garden.


Friday night, Dan and I went out on a date- a rare occasion for us. Dan took me to this great little cafe in Greenwich Village called Florent. I had the most interesting salad I think I've ever had. It was called the Special Salad. I love trying new and different things.

We walked across the island to the East Village for dessert. This is where I rave! It is nearly impossible to describe the experience so one must go there to really know, but I will do my best. The place is called ChikaLicious, named after the dessert chef Chika. It is small, seating only about 18 people, and it is minimalist in design- all white and nothing on the walls- but still quite comfortable. The number on staff- four.
We ordered the Prix Fixe, three courses, with Amuse, a choice of dessert, and Petit Fours. The Amuse was a honeysuckle parfait in strawberry soup- WOW!

For our choice of dessert, Dan got the cheesecake (nothing like any cheesescake we'd ever seen). Dan describe it as a cheesecake cloud for its light, airy texture.

After he ate it, with my help, Dan said, "I wonder if the ice even tastes good." It did (it is crushed to order after all)!
I chose the bread pudding with tangerine sorbet on the side. INCREDIBLE! It was so soft, smooth and flavorful.

Finally for the Petit Fours, we were served cinnamon shortbread, coconut marshmallows and chocolate bars which tasted like very very soft, perfect brownies.

We sat at the counter so we got to watch the artists at work. They make it look so easy.
I would recommend this place to anyone and everyone who comes to New York. It is definitely an original and well worth the $12 per person. The menu changes daily so don't expect the same items, but you can expect a delicious experience!

New England

My mom, the girls and I took a trip up to New England. We spent most of the time in Boston for Patriot's Day weekend which was quite fun despite the rain. On Tuesday, we drove up to Maine to go lighthouse hopping. Again, there was rain, but we were able to see a couple of lighthouses. This one is the Nubble lighthouse in Cape Neddick- very picturesque.

Go-carting in Boston

This past weekend we were in Boston and Tadd invited me to go go-carting with his MIT group. I've never done it and didn't know what to expect. Now I know. It was some of the best money ever spent. It's kind of expensive but the thrill is totally worth it.

The carts go maybe 40 mph which doesn't really seem fast... until you are only 2 inches off the ground and heading at a hairpin turn, using all your strength to turn. A yellow flag would come up, meaning we have to go slow cause someone spun out, and I would be breathing so hard that the shield on my helmet would fog up. It was so hard core out there.

The race was a team effort. 6 of us raced for a total of 2 hours and we traded off. Kind of like a relay race. We had a safety briefing and we had to get suited up and get helmets.

This is me or one of my teammates finishing the corner just before the uphill.



The course was in a warehouse and was really fun. It went uphill then to a slightly banked and downhill hair-pin turn. Then around a couple turns to the straightaway to the big wide turn and up the hill again.



I'm proud to admit that I had the fastest laptime for our team which was 20.75 seconds. Frankly it's even pretty good for the track. The track record is 19.something. My team said that I had the big corner down pat.

This is me or one of my teammates coming around the big turn.



We were team Dunder-M. We were neck and neck with the Renault guys but then our cart broke down and we did a couple laps that didn't count cause the track didn't "track" our cart right away. This was pretty early in the race we were tied at 69 laps each, and someone had just performed a decent lap of 22:66.