Up and Running Again!

Please excuse my month long absence from the blog world. I got sick right around the holidays, was out for about two weeks and have been trying to make up for lost time ever since. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) life has been pretty uneventful. Due to the horrifically cold weather and tremendous amounts of snow in the city, we have been hibernating most of the month of January. So here is our month in review.

We rang in the year 2011 with Jon and Leah and some friends...and of course Pug (who was especially excited to celebrate with us)!

We had our first official guest. Greg's sister, Valerie, come to stay with us for about a week. We had so much fun taking her out around the city. We were especially grateful to spend time with her as she will be in Paris for the next 18 months serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These pictures are all of us on the Staten Island Ferry. It was so cold and windy outside...quite the experience!

Greg and I celebrated the anniversary of our first date (Jan 12) by going back to the same restaurant where we met for dinner. It was so fun to reminisce about that night and talk about how excited we both were to get to know each other better. It really has been such a great year!

We started sending our laundry out. With Greg and me both working full-time and wanting to spend all of our free time together (instead of doing chores around the house) we decided to send out the laundry. Nacho promptly came to the apartment to pick it up and delivered it that evening, all 50 pounds perfectly cleaned and folded! Not sure why we didn't think of this months ago!

And of course, we continue to work on setting up our little apartment. This month's big project: putting up the curtains. Good thing my BFF Natalie had a drill and level and was willing to come up and help me! We actually did a pretty amazing job...and had fun jammin' to some Bruno Mars tunes while we worked!

So I think I heard there is more snow in the forecast for this weekend. Today I decided to change my wallpaper to a photo from the honeymoon, just to remind myself that hopefully spring will be here soon!

Feliz Navidad

Since it was our first Christmas together, Greg and I decided to throw away tradition and celebrate on Christmas Eve - Mexican style! We made all the traditional Mexican noche buena dishes: tamales, posole and flan! Jon and Leah came over and spent the afternoon/evening with us. We ate until we were sick and then ate more!

We did, however, enjoy a traditional ham dinner, and of course I drug Greg out of bed early Christmas morning so we could see what Santa had brought us!

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

Since this is our first Christmas together (and at home in NYC), we decided we were going to do all the classic NY-Christmastime activities, so last weekend we went and saw The Nutcracker at the NYC ballet! Our seats were not the best, but the performance was wonderful! And ever since that night Greg and I have had the music from the show floating around in our heads...while we are awake and in our sleep!

It was Spectacular!

It really is the only way you can describe the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. This was my and Greg's first time ever going inside Radio City, and it really is such a beautiful building.
This is us in our seats (I think I have a few peanut butter M&Ms in my mouth...just a little treat before the show).
When the Rockettes came out for the opening number, I literally had tears in my eyes! They are amazing to watch...the skill and precision are incredible! And the costumes were so cool - we saw them dressed up as reindeer, toy soldiers, NYC tourists on the big red bus, and even as Santa Clauses.
The show even included a live nativity (and I do mean LIVE). Yes, those are sheep on the stage...just too bad we missed a shot with the wisemen and camels!
Overall the show reminded us how lucky we are to be in NYC at Christmastime....but it also created in me a new obsession. I spent the rest of the weekend in high heels practicing my kicks!

Christmas Tree, oh Christmas Tree

There is nothing like NYC around Christmas time, and nothing compares to seeing the Rockefeller Christmas tree all lit up! It brings holiday joy to even the most bah-humbug characters out there.
So at the first signs of Christmas in the city, Greg and I went to our neighborhood Christmas tree stand and searched for our first Reeves family Christmas tree. The friendly Canadian tree sellers educated us on the different kinds of firs, what to look for in a good tree and helped us pick out the perfect one! Here they are sawing and wrapping it so we can take it home.
My baby carried our tree the whole 1.5 blocks to our apartment and set it up in our entryway.
We spent the evening decorating the tree, listening to holiday tunes and drinking hot chocolate.

Some of my Favorites

My Uncle Lothaire and Aunt Connie and my cousin Chelsea and her husband Shane are some of my favorite people in the whole world, seriously! Because we live all the way on the other side of the country, I don't get to see them nearly as often as I would like. But a couple of weeks ago, Greg and I got a special treat. They were in the city, and we all got together for dinner! So fun to see them and catch up...sorry these pictures aren't the best (we realized we needed to grab one right before getting on the subway to go home).

Honeymoon Pictures

A lot of people have been bugging us for pictures from the Honeymoon, so here they are! St. Lucia really is a beautiful place, and despite all of the drama we had with the hurricane and trying to get home, we had a great time seeing the island and being together.