A Crazy Weekend

This weekend I was in New York Friday afternoon through about 8:15 Saturday night. Last night India had her first of what I’m sure will be many bar mitzvah’s to go to. Today was Jim’s 55th birthday, India played fiddle in a concert and Maia was displaying a piece of art in a local art show. Now we normally have pretty lazy weekends. The most we have going on typically is riding lessons for all 3 kids Saturday mid-morning through early afternoon. This weekend was nuts.

Crazy.

Hectic.

Exhausting.

Fun.

I do not need a weekend like this again for a very long time.

Friday afternoon we drove the kids to Brooklyn (what without traffic is a 45 minute drive took us 2 hours and 45 minutes!). We dropped the kids off at Kelly & Nicks apartment. I call Kelly my “my 5th daughter”, but we’ve all been so busy we haven’t really seen them since their wedding almost two years ago! Kelly & Nick graciously offered to watch the kids so Jim and I could sneak away to Manhattan for a night and day. We were running so late and were worried that we might miss our reservation at Craft in Manhattan that we practically pushed the kids out the door while the car was still moving.

Kidding.

We dropped and dashed into New York. We called the restaurant and managed to push our reservation back a half hour, so we had time to check into our hotel and quickly change our clothes. We stayed at the Bryant Park Hotel. It was really nice. Our room was on the 8th floor and overlooked Brant Park. Beautiful views. Comfy bed. Really great pillows (I am very picky about my pillows).

We ate dinner at Tom Colicchio’s Craft. Delicious. The restaurant was beautiful, the service was terrific and the food was really great. It’s not fancy food, just good food done really well. After dinner Jim took me over to see Mario Batali’s new Eataly. Wow. He opened a small market in Port Chester that my friend Justine turned me on to, but this place is the same but on steroids x 20. And at 11:00 at night in Manhattan it was packed.

This Connecticut farm gal was pretty tuckered out by then, so we went back to the hotel. Jim was asleep within 5 minutes and I was asleep before midnight. I cannot remember the last time I managed that.

We got up pretty early and headed out to the Union Square farmer’s market. I bought some of the first strawberries of the season that I plan on making strawberry pie with tomorrow, and we bought several cuts of bison meat. We eat a fair amount of bison in Wyoming, but have yet to find a good source here. Then we wandered over the ABC Carpet & Home and strolled around the many floors there. There’s always fun things to see there. Then we walked the High Line Walkway; the renovated elevated railroad tracks that have been transformed into a beautiful walkway with gardens and fountains and amazing views. It was pretty crowded and a large section wasn’t due to open for another few days, but it was lovely and certainly a great use of the old rail line. On to Purl SoHo where I bought some fabrics for a project for my sister’s baby shower gift, and a book for Cyrena who had bravely taken on farm sitting and bottle feeding for me. Jim even managed to find a few things for himself in SoHo, which is good because I’ve been so busy these past few weeks they would become his birthday gifts. We went back to Brookyln, toured Brooklyn Heights quickly where we met up with the kids, Kelly & Nick, and went back to see their apartment and have a quick dinner with them. Luckily our traffic wasn’t quite so bad heading home.

Today Jim turned 55, India had a fiddle performance and Maia had a piece in an art show. I was up past 2 AM baking his cake, wrapping presents and distributing birthday cards. Luckily Maia took over the 7 AM bottle feeding for me.



I don’t want to leave my house next weekend.