Summer in the city

Before Rob and I leave, in 21 short days, we are trying to spend time with members of our family that we don't see a lot. We plan to go out to Washington state on 8/17 for 5 days to spend time with Rob's grandparents, Bob and Norma.

This past weekend, we went to NY and NJ to visit with some of my family. We flew up on Thursday night, and got back Monday. We had a really great time. Friday, me, my mom, thea (aunt for those of you who aren't Greek), and papou (grandfather) took Rob to the Central Park Zoo. It is much smaller than the Bronx Zoo, but it was closer and Rob has been to the Bronx Zoo. They have California sea lions, polar bears, all kinds of penguins, snow leopards, snow monkeys, red pandas, lemurs, mongooses, and a WHOLE lot of tropical birds (my favorite was the hot pink Scarlet Ibis). While we were there we got to see the sea lion enrichment, which was super cute. Those guys are really smart! They could salute, smile, dance, flip, kiss, and bark on command. Of course, they all got yummy raw fish (bleh) as positive reinforcement.

After a few hours at the zoo, we went to La Bonne Soupe. It is one of my favorite French restaurants, and Rob and I ate there the night before he proposed. They have a really great au poivre sauce that Rob loves... really loves. After our late lunch, we headed back to my thea's house where we vegged out and had homemade pizzas for dinner, 8 homemade pizzas, to be exact.

Saturday, thea and Uncle Paul had all of our family and friends over for a big backyard bbq/party. We had SO much food: bbq chicken wings and thighs, 10-ish racks of ribs, spanakopita, pesto pasta salad, shrimp and orzo pasta salad, Italian cookies, apple pie, cheese cake, homemade tasty cakes, lemon meringue pie, brownie cake, brownies, fruit salad, butter cake, banana split pie, and a birthday cake for my dad and a keg. Oh, and at about 11:30 that night we made hot dogs until we ran out of propane. We had three grills going at once. There was beer pong and wiffle ball, gossip, chatting, drawing on faces, and fascinators. It was great. I love my family more than anything, and I am so sad they all live in NY, and we live in GA... soon to be further away in St. Kitts.

Sunday was another veg day. The boys decided they should finish the keg and my cousin Chris, Rob, my dad, and my uncle started drinking beer at, oh, 10am. Eggs, bacon, and beer. Breakfast of champions... and morons. I ran some errands with my yiayia (grandmother), and she was generous enough to get me and Rob some supplies for our big move.

On Sunday night we ate in the city at Carmine's, one of my dad's favorites. It is always packed and really loud. Carmine's is family style, and we ordered a lot. Calamari, salad, baked clams, stuffed mushrooms, scarpariello style chicken wings, two gigantic orders of linguini and white clam sauce, rigatoni with marinara sauce broccoli and sausage, veal parmigiana, and for dessert- a foot tall strawberry shortcake, and the Titantic (an enormous sugar coma with cake, ice cream, fruit, and whipped cream, kinda shaped like a boat). My family eats way to much.

It was really sad for me to have to say goodbye the family again, but at least I get to see them at Christmas!

Side note: I learned about geocaching yesterday from my friend Melissa's blog, and Rob and I found our first geocache yesterday! So fun.