I haven't blogged much this week. It's because Daniel was gone in Colorado backpacking near Boulder with Eric and Ian (his brothers). I thougth I would just sound sad and depressing if I wrote down all my "missing Daniel" thoughts. I was driving myself crazy the first 3 days - doing mad amounts of projects, errands, cleaning every nook and cranny of my house, staying up until 2 am, 4 am, it was crazy. I finally relaxed and got into a rhythm by Wednesday.

Now it is 2:11 pm on Saturday and Daniel flies in at 3:30 pm and I keep looking at the clock about every two minutes. It's so silly. It's the last hour and a half and I am ridiculously giddy and excited. I wanted to buy and wear a new outfit for the airport pick up (don't worry Daniel cakes, I thought it would stress you out, so I didn't spend the money). Liam is sleeping and Noah is coloring in a Welcome Home sign for the front door. Noah requested the "spider man song cd" (a Vocal Point CD that Liz gave us - thanks!) So Noah is listening to acapella music and coloring in the kitchen and I am deciding when is it too early to redo my hair and makeup and when to get dressed in the outfit I have planned out.

I already mowed the lawn, did all the dishes ... I still have to put some laundry away ... I should get on that. I already did grocery shopping and I have dinner planned, complete with Rosemary olive oil bread from Costco (mmmmm, dipping it in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, mmmm).

I guess I'll start doing the laundry, then getting gussied up for my sweet Daniel. I know he doesn't care and he'll barely notice what I'm wearing, but I have to do SOMETHING for the next hour, now it's 2:21 pm .... oh geez. This is taking forever.

Noah, Liam and I went to park last night to have dinner and play in the last rays of sunshine for the day. When we got to this park we noticed that they had recently updated it with a new play structure. This is a video of Noah explaining his favorite part of the new play structure. He's trying to say "skeewampus", meaning haphazard:

Ya know that saying, “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, did it make a noise?” ... I think, “If I clean the countertops and nobody sees it and then they just get messy the next morning, did I really clean them?”

OK, we had an awesome anniversary and I love Daniel very much, but the craziest part of our date was being in downtown Detroit and Dearborn (neighboring city).

I do not hang out downtown very much, mostly because it's pretty dangerous, run down and I have two young boys. Enough said. But driving downtown was really eye opening. Not only were most of the houses and businesses boarded up and destroyed, but many were burned. I don't get that. Why are people burning old buildings? It was like driving through a war zone. There were old brick buildings with all the windows smashed out. It was worse than Gotham.

Anyway, the thing that took the cake was on the way home. We were driving down the road and noticed that the right lane traffic was going significantly slower than the left ... slower than the speed limit ... slower than most cars with wheels on them. And then we saw why - there was some idiot driving on his rims in the right lane. Evidently his left front wheel had gotten a flat tire and instead of stopping (refer to the above paragraph and you might come to the same conclusion I did - he might have been scared to stop in this neighborhood), he was driving on his rim and leaving a scrape inthe road as he went - sparks flying, etc. It was crazy. I got all these pictures with my phone, so they're not great, but the best I could do. Check it out ... one memorable anniversary here in Michigan. Oh geez.

I took these pictures with my phone ... so they're bad. But look at the size of Liam's cookie in comparison to his head.


This is definately the sugar rush talking here.

Daniel is super busy these days. It's the end of his summer semester and he has assignments due and a final to study for ... so that means less Daniel time and more time with my two crazy boys alone. But let's make the most of it, right? So when Daniel got a reccomendation from a guy at work about a very yummy and wonderful pastry shop nearby, I took tonight to explore it with the boys.

Right after dinner, around 6 pm, I had 2 hours before the boys had to be in bed and Daniel needed the time to study, so I piled the boys in the car and headed off to Astoria Pastry Shop about 30 minutes away.

I think I need to preface my review of the shop - I have been spoiled for life after living near NYC, eating at amazing delis and restaurants and eating at Mike's Pastries in Boston (best cannoli besides the ones my mom makes). OK, now here we go:

The Pastry Shop is tucked in a cute and hip downtown area. Nice area but I was pretty much the only one on the block with kids and a stroller. The Shop itself was cool and aesthetically pleasing, but the customer service was not good and the pastries were only mediocre.

I bought: a chocolate cannoli, a plain cannoli, some rice pudding, a chocolate covered pretzel with sprinkles for Noah, a "black and white cookie" for Liam (white and milk chocolate dipped cookie) and a macaroon.

The cannoli - bad. Worse than bad ... they were filled with thick, disgusting cream. Overly sweet and the chocolate dipped cannoli had waxy tasting chocolate, ugh. By the way - cannoli should be filled with RICOTTA CHEESE PEOPLE. Just in case anyone was wondering. This pastry shop should be ashamed of themselves. They advertise themselves as having "European pastries". Europe would be gagging. Italy ... would throw up.

The rice pudding - not flavorful.

The stuff for the boys - who cares. I mean really, is anyone out there going to go out and buy a chocolate covered pretzel at a pastry shop except for Noah? I think not. I'm pretty sure the only reason why he picked it was because it was also covered in sprinkles. And the black and white cookie was tasteless and the chocolate was also waxy.

The macaroon - the first one I got from the girl at the counter had a fruit fly smashed into the bottom of it. Yummy. I brought it back to the girl at the counter and this brings me to the customer service ... I showed her the macaroon and she took it from me and said, "you want another one?" ... no "I'm sorry" or "That's disgusting, I feel bad about that" or anything remotely helpful or kind. Hmmmm. And when I asked if they had a restroom she flatly responded with "no". I would expect something like that from a NYC bus driver, not a girl at a pastry shop serving her ONLY CUSTOMERS in the ENTIRE SHOP. lame.

Probably won't go back. But the boys .... you guessed it: LOVED it. Liam's cookie was bigger than his head and Noah was so excited and full of a little sugar rush after scarfing down his pretzel that he did a few laps running around the empty shop. All in all, we killed time before bedtime and Daniel had an hour and a 1/2 to study before we came home and got the kids ready for bed. Not bad.

1. This is Day Two of finding a used hand towel hanging out to dry in our bathroom. This means Daniel couldn't find any clean towels and instead of saying something to me about getting the laundry done, he has simply suffered in silence and dried off with a hand towel ... for two days now. I love him. I did laundry today and there are now clean towels.

2. Yesterday while we were at the grocery store getting a few items for a little picnic we went on for dinner, Noah was very tired and hungry and hot. So Noah turns to me and says, "Mommy I am boiling hungry. Do you know what that means? It means I am very hot and really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hungry" (I may have forgotten a few "really"s). Poor Noah. He suffers so.

It was sunny today. That was all I could think about this morning at the gym. I looked outside and it was sunny. Actual sun. This is weird in Michigan, to have blue skies, hardly any clouds and sunshine - pure sunshine. It feels so good and warm on my skin. I was intoxicated with the idea of just basking in it all day at a beach somewhere and so, right after I finished working out, I went home, packed up the boys, showered and headed off to a beach about 1 1/2 hours north of here. The really good beaches are about 3 hours away, but I had been to this one in Port Huron before and I knew where it was (sort of) and that a park was there too. It sounded perfect to me on this sunny day. I do not think I really thought it through carefully though. I don't think I really weighed the pros and cons at the beginning of this trip, so now, at the end of the day, I am weighing it out ... was it worth it?

PROS
1. It was beautiful and sunny with a light breeze, perfect beach weather.
2. On the drive there, both boys fell asleep.
3. After checking with Daniel about whether or not he thought the Honda could make the drive and putting radiator fluid in the car, we had a safe drive there and back, no hiccups.
4. Because we had the Honda and no air conditioning and the windows rolled down on the freeway, I couldn't hear all of Noah's "why?" quesions and therefore, didn't have to answer them.
5. We had yummy snacks - whole wheat fig newtons, fruit leather, fresh strawberries and Pringles.
6. Even though we didn't have "Hugh" (our GPS system) - because that was in the Escape - we made it there and back without too many detours.
7. The boys LOVED the beach. They played in the shallow water, there were no waves to worry about and they had there shovels and pails - 1 1/2 hours of fun on the beach.
8. Noah made a rock collection by lining up rocks along the shoreline.
9. Noah and Liam chased seagulls and scared away any that got even remotely close to me or the food. It was like having a personal set of bodyguards against pesky seagulls. It was awesome.

CONS
1. On the drive back, both boys were wide awake, yelling, kicking my seat, screaming at regular intervals, throwing things back and forth between themselves and I was trying to drive and yelling threats over the sound of the freeway, because all of our windows were rolled down.
2. We had the Honda. It has no air conditioning. We drove with the windows down the entire way there and back, with 70 mph winds flying in our faces.
3. I felt guilty after spening $14 just on treats "for the road".
4. The one "detour" we had was an added 30 minutes of waiting/driving because I missed my exit (because of bad directions from the google map I'd printed off) and ended up on the Bridge to Canada. We had to make an illegal U-turn on the bridge and explain to the customs guy why I was such an idiot and explain why I didn't have a passport on me or birth certificates for my boys .... embaressing and 20 minutes in a long car line waiting to cross the border, back into Michigan.
5. Four hours in the car for 2 hours at the beach/park.
6. We ate McDonald's for dinner ... ugh.

I guess the pros outweigh the cons. But the cons were still pretty significant. I think the cons were harder on me than the boys, so I'm sure the boys considered it a worthwhile trip. I hope so. I am pooped. But we got out. We did something. We went somewhere and I fit a "beach trip" into our Michigan summer before it was over. Here's to the pros :)


Noah's rock collection.