What a lousy historian I turned out to be...

I know I've been absent for nearly a month. I don't know what to say about that. I have a lot of catching up to do I guess. I'll start with Thanksgiving. We had a lovely one, as usual. We spent Thanksgiving day with my family here in Atlanta, and then, as is our tradition, we jetted off to New York the next morning. At the crack of dawn.

We spent Saturday morning at Mohonk Mountain House. It was bitterly cold. Despite the fact that Evan had been coughing his head off for days before we left (and was likely still running a fever), he insisted on doing the Rock Scramble for the second year in a row. He is such a little monkey and loves to climb, so it was the highlight of his trip.

Later that afternoon, we went to see the Alpacas that belong to Kerry and Kate's friends, Bob and Ian. We'd never met Bob and Ian before, even though this was our 3rd or 4th trip to visit their Alpacas. Since they were home this year, we actually got to go inside the fence and feed the Alpacas. Well, Evan fed them. Pressley was not a fan of being on the same side of the fence with the Alpacas. Then, we went inside to warm up and Bob and Ian provided the gift that has just kept on giving. They gave Evan and Pressley each an Alpaca finger puppet, made out of Alpaca wool. The kids have played with those finger puppets tirelessly. They were a much bigger hit on the plane ride home than the Leapsters or the DVD player. Seriously. Who knew?

On Sunday, it was off to NYC for a 24 hour, whirlwind tour. We went to the M&M store, ate some awesome burgers and shakes at the Shake Shack, toured the Museum of Natural History, took a carriage ride through Central Park, and swung by FAO Schwartz (where Pressley was reunited with the Big Piano that she loved so much two years ago). After FAO Schwartz, the kids were fading fast, so we headed back toward the hotel for a quiet dinner at a little Italian spot around the corner from the hotel. Poor Evan promptly fell asleep on a pile of coats in the corner of our booth. Bless his heart. For a little guy who'd been fighting a cold for over a week, we really didn't cut him much slack.

The next morning, we met up with Kerry and headed over to the Today Show set to say hello to Matt Lauer. We are pretty sure the kids made it on TV when Michael Buble was greeting the crowd on the Plaza. After we had some breakfast and sent Kerry off to work, we headed back over to Rockefeller Center for some ice skating. I kinda figured it would be the most expensive 10 minutes of entertainment in the history of my parenting, but as it turns out, the kids loved it. And they stuck with it for much longer that we might have guessed.

Finally, it was time to head to the airport for a 1.5 hour flight delay and then finally home. It was a great, great trip and we are so blessed to have such fun traditions to kick off the Christmas season.