Too much of a good thing...

In my opinion, it's quite possibly the best time of year right now. Being here on the east coast it just becomes more and more clear every year! There is something about having Thanksgiving in the heart of fall and all the hype here in the states, it just can't be beat. Being a Canadian, we celebrated Thanksgiving in October and it just isn't the same. We had all the turkey, stuffing and festivities, but it always felt like something was missing. Now we had the perfect Thanksgiving setting and we are missing the family aspect. I guess you can't have it all;) But this year we can, Tom and Marcy are joining us for ten days and arrive the day before Thanksgiving and now we have the family to celebrate with, perfect! I'm in such a Fall mood these days, pretty sure our house looks as though Fall threw up on it, just the way we like it! But we are also starting to get into Christmas. Now our only problem is trying to transcend to Christmas(the best holiday of all!!!) when we are heading to Canada for it. We've already started listening to Christmas music(restraining ourselves and waiting until November 1st) and watched our official Christmas Kickoff movie, Elf! I guess it'll just be a case of having the Christmas tree up with all the fall decor, worked last year I guess. Who ever said to much of a good thing was bad?! I am (apparently) all for it!

5 am...

The new time I will be getting up for the next four weeks. Why, you might ask, am I this crazy? Well, it was not my doing, I can tell you that much. Zach is doing a general surgery rotation in Manhattan and he was planning to drive in. Well, yesterday, after the 45 dollar parking charge(yes you read correctly, 45!!) that he was supposed to be able to get validated, we decided that was just a little on the stupid side... okay, a lot on the stupid side. So after a long hard look into all the options, or should I say lack there of, we were left with just one; Aubrey and I getting up and driving him. No trains run at that hour and the option of taking a bus would have him leaving home at 3am... and I'd have to drive him to the bus station!

The drive is not so bad, 30 minutes max one way(no traffic at that time!), but stressful still. A lot of random turns to be made while battling taxis(why they have so many out then is beyond me) and the ever loved Lincoln Tunnel(why is it so narrow??). At least this way I've done something on my list of 'random things to accomplish'--drive in Manhattan:)

Garage Saling.....

.... I just hear the words and smile. I blame this on my friend Lisa; it's her fault that I am the way I am. Around this time last year she started showing up at home(they live in the apartment below us) with car loads of treasures and it got me curious. Where did she find all these wonderful things?... beautiful chests, dressers, frames, mirrors...? How could she afford it(students, like us)? And that's when she told me two words that will forever change the way I think about a saturday morning: "garage sales". How could a person not fall in love with a type of shopping that could get you a beautiful armoire for $30?? A cute teapot for two bucks, books for 50 cents, a kitchen for Aubrey for $3... yes, you read correctly, $3!!! The Menno in me shouts "hurray!" at theses prices! And so does our budget. Now Lisa, she's in a league of her own, you see, she's been doing this for years and has also found a way to turn a profit, a real pro. Me, I'm just in it for a good deal, a bargain... a morning to myself with a coffee and a twenty in my pocket. Sometimes I find nothing, but then there are times when you find a jackpot, like the little side table that I got yesterday morning for a fiver! But the point is, you never know what you are going to stumble across and all these things add up to an interestingly furnished apartment, garage-sale chic ;), and a very happy me!

Another update post...

Well, here I am, blogging once again and feeling quite guilty for the lack of blogging that I've been doing... again. It always seems to be the same story, blog for a few days, fall behind, feel guilty, and repeat. When I do remember, it feels as though it's going to be too big of an undertaking to start up again. So the circle continues! Well, here's my attempt at getting back into it again. We'll see how it lasts, I'm not making any promises:)
Our summer has been jam packed. Aubrey's grown, we travelled to Canada for five weeks, Zach wrote another board exam... pretty much the same thing we do every year, the exception being Aubrey of course! She is keeping me busy as ever and on my toes. She loves to get into things and chat's my ear off every day(although I have no clue what she'd saying). She's become such an outgoing kid, she's constantly waving and saying hi to other people, especially the elderly. She has a way with old people, it's just too cute. It's as though she knows that they love it when little ones talk to them, clever kid!
Our trip home was great. Time spent with family and friends was awesome, but the only down side was not being to see everyone as much as we'd have liked. Five weeks sounds like a long time, but it flies by. Aubrey really got to know her Oma, Opa and Grandma and she's head over heels for all of them and was in her glory when she was with them! She spent a lot of time with her cousins and she got so used to having someone to play with, these last few weeks at home have been kinda rough in that aspect. I need to get her out more and that's when my tendency to be a homebody is not going to cut it!

This summer we also got to attend our friends Sean and Kristin's wedding in Alexandria Bay NY and it was amazing! The ceremony was in one of the most beautiful locations, the St. Lawrence River, and now we've been ruined for all weddings in the future:)

This fall is shaping up to be quite a busy one, we have three sets(plus possibly one more couple) of guests coming to visit and it's going to crazy, but great! The great thing about people coming to visit(other then actually getting to see people) is that we get to see more of the beautiful area that we live in, not just the daily stuff. Fall and Winter are mine and Zach's favorite times of the year(Grenada ruined summer for us!) and the East Coast is, hands down, the best place to be during those seasons. So lots of trips in to The City and many day trips are in our future. One in particular is a weekend in October where Zach, Aubrey and I are heading to Philadelphia because Zach's writing yet another board exam(actually, it's more of an oral exam) and we've never been there, so we decided to make a weekend of it. It will be a well deserved break for us all because Zach's starting a four week long General Surgery(translation--awful hours) rotation, in Manhattan at Lennox Hill Hospital, this coming tuesday. Good times all around... sure, right. After this rotation he has a few slacker ones so that will be a nice change. And now for some pictures!

Having a picnic with Grandma in Harrison.

One of many shoulder rides with Oma.

Random cute shot!

One of my favorite shot ever with Opa. If you know my dad even a little bit you know it is next to impossible to get him smiling in a picture!

Aubrey with Auntie Marcy on the day of her Nursing Graduation. We went to White Rock after the ceremony!

Sean and Kristin on their wedding day!

Father's Day

Aubrey with one of her favorite people, uncle Dennis.

Another Oma shot:)

The view from Sean and Kristin's reception(blogger's being weird and I can't figure out how to move this picture up by the other wedding shot).

Back tracking...

A lot has happened in the past few months! Easter, my birthday, a trip to Boston on/for my birthday, Zach's mom came to visit, Aubrey had her first birthday(!!!), a trip to Rochester for a vascular conference(Zach's but his mom, Aubrey and I tagged along) with a mini trip up to the Ontario border to renew our visas... always a fun time, Mother's Day... the list goes on and on! So to shorten this picture post up a bit I decided to do some random pictures of Aubrey, shots from her birthday and some from Mother's Day. I'll try and back-post some from our weekend in Boston some other time because it was just so amazing and we fell in love with it!
Things here are just moving along as usual. Yesterday Zach had his last written St. George's exam ever(YAY) and today he has his last oral exam for Pediatrics and thus concluding his third year of medical school!! He is officially a fourth year student now and that is just so exciting!! From here on out he just has to write the licensing and board exams(I make them sound ho-hum, but they are the big kahuna exam's that are eight hours long, at least, and he has a few more of those to go in the next few years), one of which he starts to study from on Saturday:) No rest for the weary! But the bonus is that he will be home and on his own schedule, something he, and I, are looking forward to! He also has a conference(again) in Chicago from Monday until Tuesday and after that, on Thursday, Aubrey and I are headed back to BC for my best friend Marcy's Nursing graduation! I'm so excited to be able to head back for that. We found a super cheap ticket on line and decided that even though we are heading to BC on the first of July, I can do this mini-trip beforehand. This types of trips are nice to do before Aubrey turns two and we then have to rethink our entire travel schedule do to the extra ticket. Not something I'm looking forward to!
Anyway, on to Aubrey's birthday! It was a lot of fun. Zach's mom scheduled her trip so that she could be here for the big event and I'm so glad she was! It's a lot of work to plan a party, even when you do simple finger foods and try and keep it low key with only a few people! Aubrey seemed a little weirded out to have so many people in her space and was content just to watch the other kids for a while. She was not a fan of the birthday hat and was more into smushing the cake, not eating it. All in all it was a fun, tiring day. It ended up being around 90 degrees that day(low thirties in celsius) so we had to install our AC's for the occasion! I'm pretty sure a hot birthday like that is not in the cards for Aubrey in the future!
Mother's Day was great this year, other then the fact that Aubrey was a little under the weather. We went down to the shore here in NJ, Long Branch, and we had awesome weather and it was just a beautiful relaxing and fun day! What more could you ask for?!
Well, I hear Aubrey talking in her crib, so that means my time is up!

You suffer due to my ineptness...

Well, I officially have a love/hate relationship with our Mac. I love how easy it is to use, some might say idiot proof...but it's not quite Jenny-proof. My beef with this computer is that you have to buy specific accessories for it, and often times they're more expensive then regular PC stuff. And I, being the not too bright one, often forget this and buy any old computer accessory and most times it's the wrong one and end up having to return it... assuming I have the packaging and receipt. You'd figure that having had this computer for three-ish years now, we would have ironed out all of these kinks... well, you'd be thinking wrong. Now, I'm saying all of this because I'm pretty sure that I bought the wrong external hard-drive and I'm peeved that it is apparently not, in fact, Mac compatible... and the packaging was already thrown out(again, you'd figure that we'd learn by now). ARG! So I go on not posting new pictures due to my stupidity... and thoughtlessness. In my defense though, we've bought other external hard drives that have been no problem and have not been one specifically for Mac's.
Anyway, I guess a verbal update is in order then. Aubrey has just turned 11 months and her first birthday is fast approaching... crazy! I can't believe that I have a one year old, now that's weird. She's in her own room now, sleeping in her own crib(she was in our room for a long time and in a playpen. Still nursing=getting up often at night and I for one am not a fan of getting up and going into another room five times a night!). So now she's finally in her own room and only getting up one or two time a night... on a good night that is!
She's FINALLY started crawling and it is awesome to watch her explore! It took her about a week or two to figure out that this was an actually mode of transportation and is now going from room to room.
She's saying more words and her favorite, or perhaps it's just the one she hears most, is no-no(with vigorous head shaking while still trying to keep you in sight!)! Too cute:) She also signs 'please', says 'mama', 'dada'(while looking at the door, or Zach's office), 'whoa', 'wow' and 'Baaa'(in a scary way when playing peek-a-boo). She meows, claps, gives kisses, hugs(mostly just grunts with hands on you) and waves. All of these things, however, are never done on command, just when she feels like it. She's become quite the picky eater; not liking anything mushed up, but prefers to bite into things ie. bananas, cheese, mango, chicken, avocado, peaches. The thing that she LOVEs to eat is plain whole milk yogurt. It is quite possibly the most disgusting thing to eat ever, but she loves it for some reason and can't get enough and has it pretty much for every meal(along with other things, but not in it... nope, she hates flavored yogurt or if I put things in it). So her pickiness has taken some getting used to, needless to say, and I've just been winging it.
Last time I weighed her she was 22lbs... having said that, that was before she started to crawl and she's also been sick since. So I think she weighs less now, but she's still our little moose!
So that's my Aubrey update and hopefully I'll get the whole hard-drive thing worked out and I can upload some pictures. Wish me luck...

Some pictures...

These pictures are not really that recent because our computer is full and so is our external hard drive, so Zach and I decided to buy another external hard drive. Well, for some reason it's not working so I can't get the pictures off of my camera. Thus not having recent pictures to post so you'll just have to make due with these! These are for you Kristin, I hold up to my end of the bargain:)

My little Forest Gump:)

She's scooching around on her tummy, she gets herself stuck and quite angry!

Bundled up for a walk

She loves her blanket...

and her daddy!

mid-sneeze

looking around me to see the tv!

Stuck again!

how she did this is beyond me!

on a walk in the City

She just saw her daddy come home!