Winter Fun in the Bailey House - Part 2

 Meh, it's still winter... still definitely not fun.

But we kind of had fun in the latter half of winter!

Over February break, we took a few days to tour some relatively close college campuses. First up was the University at Albany - and Natalie drove us there.  This was really a weird and surreal moment for me.  Why is this tiny baby driving me to a college that she might attend? No, that's not possible.

We all really liked the University at Albany!  It's one of the SUNY schools, and they give in-state tuition to Massachusetts residents so it's definitely a contender!

I think she fits right in!

We also made the long trek up to the University of Maine.  After we arrived, Natalie admitted it's a pretty long hike up there, but we really loved the campus. Even our UNH grad Todd (UNH is a rival of UMaine) liked it!

We stayed a hotel in Bangor at the Country Inn, and they had this little warning in the breakfast room.  He doesn't seem amused.

One of Natalie's favorite things at UMaine were these cute little delivery robots called Kiwibots that deliver food to the dorms if you don't want to go out in the cold. Kind of like a robotic Door Dash!

It was rainy but it wasn't overly cold in Maine, which it certainly could be this time of year.  Look, there's one of the little Kiwibots ahead of us!  Maine also gives a good financial package for Massachusetts students (if their grades are good!)

Our last stop on the three college tour was the University of Rhode Island.  This one might be a bit out of our price range, but we wanted to take a look anyway.

The URI campus is very hilly although it doesn't appear so here! It was a lovely day and a lovely campus.

Ranger Hall is the home of the Harrington School of Communication and Media, which if she goes there, is where Natalie would be having most of her classes.

URI has one of only like, two ZTA chapters in all of New England! They even have a house!!

I also spent a week in Rhode Island doing preliminary damage assessments from a couple of storms in January, which is always an interesting part of my job - and I got to see the ocean!

I also visited a pond where the dam had broken, leaving the pond completely and eerily empty. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before!

Someone found this on the ground and I took a picture to quiz my kids as to what it was.  Not surprising - they had no idea what it was!

On another weekend, Natalie and I took the train down to NYC to see Hadestown on Broadway! We left out of 128/Westwood and the whole experience was just so much better and less stressful.

We went through Mystic with the tall ships on our way down to NYC.

Hmmm. I think these structures might be in the coastal floodplain.

I have a literal mile long list of dumb little things I want to see in NYC, so right after we escaped Penn Station (and the naked man who was spread eagle passed out on the sidewalk), we headed over to the building where Nikola Tesla died!  If you recall, we saw his ashes in Belgrade! He died in this building in 1943.

The Empire State Building never disappoints, day or night!

I also really wanted to go to the corner of 39th and 7th to see Needle Threading a Button, an homage to the city's famous Garment District.

Also on this corner sits The Garment Worker, a statue modeled after artist Judith Weller's own garment worker father.

Come on, this is a pretty cool statue!

Natalie and I went to Gogi 37 for lunch in midtown for some Korean food and it did NOT disappoint! I had to try the Korean lager, Cass, which I opted for over Soju!

My girl, looking cute, waiting for Korean food before we went to the theater.

I had japchae with beef and it was AWESOME.

On our way north, we had to stop by the Line Friends store. WAIT. Are you telling me this is SHOOKY TOAST!?  I still can't believe I didn't buy this. I want this so bad.

There's an autographed Van in the store (yes, I know, we have seen this before) but I really loved that Jungkook drew a picture of Cooky and then crossed it out and tried again, HA!  His second version is actually much better, so I don't blame him!

Then we made our way through the always busy Times Square AND I SAW TAEHYUNG ON THE BIG SCREEN!!!!  It's so weird when I get more excited about these things than Natalie does (especially because he is her favorite!)

We finally made it to the Walter Kerr Theater to see Hadestown!

I didn't know what to expect - I had never heard of Hadestown, but it was incredible!  I mean, isn't everything on Broadway incredible??  The cast was magnificent... particularly Ani DiFranco as Persephone and Lola Tung as Eurydice. If you have a teenage daughter, you'll know Lola Tung from the show The Summer I Turned Pretty (one of Natalie's favorite shows, which is the whole reason we were here to see this particular musical). This was Lola Tung's last weekend in the role!  I really liked the spinning floor, much like the one they had in Hamilton. 

I particularly like the quote, "Hadestown sweeps you up in its joy." Only... it's a Greek tragedy.

Natalie *may* have also thought Jordan Fisher (as Orpheus) was cute!

I'm kind of partial to this guy (well, she is too!)

I was floored by the fact that Jameson whiskey was hosting a St. Patrick's Day green ball drop in Times Square, much like they do on New Year's. So funny!

I had never been to the big Macy's in NYC before, but they had a Starbucks inside where we wanted to go for one of the new lavender drinks. We had been to a couple of Starbucks that were sold out of it, but we were successful in our hunt at the Macy's Starbucks. I was ALSO successful in finding Jungkook modeling for CK!

No sooner had we gotten back from New York than I had to go to Orlando for the National Hurricane Conference. I really enjoyed watching the sign language interpreters - they would work for 15 minutes and then take a break, allowing another interpreter to work. It was fascinating for some reason!

I went out to dinner with the hurricane team - we were staying on International Drive where ALL the action is. No, I didn't partake in any of these!

One day for lunch at the conference, I went out by the pool and enjoyed this palm tree. Because it was still cold, wet and miserable back in Massachusetts.

My brother even drove over from Tampa to see me!  We had a most delicious meal of Indian food.

We wanted some ice cream, but weirdly couldn't find any ice cream shops so we settled on McDonalds - and strangely enough, their ice cream machine was actually WORKING!

Are you kidding me. I needed this empty row SO BAD for my flight home. Go away, everyone.  This is the nicest thing to happen to me on an airplane in a long time.

I thought this picture I took leaving Orlando was really cool. 

I didn't even manage any pictures of Natalie and her friend Kaavya when we drove down to Newark so they could see IVE at the Prudential Center. I did manage a picture of the Iron Man, which sits here because the New Jersey Devils play at the Prudential Center.

We celebrated Easter at Grammi and Bean's house. My kids are so thrilled that the Easter Bunny remembered them in their old age.

And last but not least, a nice Easter picture of the four of us at St. Peter's in Plymouth after mass.  

Let's move on to spring, shall we?

Winter Fun in the Bailey House - Part 1

 Winter isn't fun, that headline is hilarious...

I  have to go waaaay back to Christmas here - we had a nice holiday party at Grammi and Bean's house where Bean got to read Twas the Night Before Christmas to his three youngest grandkids (poor Seth is nearly 21 but he still gets lumped in here!)  Why do my kids insist on doing these faces??

Todd and I also went to see comedian Jim Gaffigan with our friends Cooch and Rob - super fun show!

Naturally, we had to do some holiday baking. These cookies are always everyone's favorite!

You already know that there is a big hole in the roof of our house (you can see the patch near the chimney in the above picture) but we had yet ANOTHER storm that caused our flagpole to snap in half only MOMENTS after my car had been parked there! I dropped the kids off at the bus stop and came back to find this!

The storm also caused our fence to fall over. And as you can see by my neighbors yard, we NEED this fence to be upright.

Todd MacGuyver'd it into place (but it's since fallen over again in the other direction).

Of course, we had the holidays and all of the traditions that come with that. Like Christmas Eve dinner at Uno's in Framingham.  Hilariously, we had the same waitress as last year!  How cute are my boys here?

And of course, a picture of me and my girl on Christmas Eve.

Family selfie at dinner! I couldn't decide between the two of these so I included them both ha ha. Grant has an alien hand in the first picture!

We went back home to try to take some family pictures in front of our (second) tree, and while Todd was playing with the remote feature on his Apple Watch, Grant decided to be funny and jump in front of us - silly guy!

Ahhh. Now that's more like it.

The traditions continued - with the kids throwing reindeer dust so Rudolph and Co. could find our house.

And of course, Todd read Twas the Night Before Christmas and everyone had to act like they were surprised by the story.

There's a lot of pictures I could have chosen to sum up our Christmas morning and Christmas Day, but this one was really something.

And of course, we went to the Cucci house for the annual holiday party. I felt particularly old this year because Michelle's daughter Kaitlyn joined us (and was able to drink with us!) This party is always a ridiculously good time!

I think my favorite Twitter account is this one.  Each day, they post that it's NOT Ted Danson's birthday (and I make this announcement to my family). Until... it WAS his birthday! Truly a reason to celebrate.

In January, we had a snowstorm, but our snow blower died.  Good thing we have four snow shovelers!

It was pretty the next day though!

I saw this meme and it was the funniest meme I think I have ever seen. Only because I had those salt and pepper shakers! And I literally thought I was the only one who ever had those.

I had to travel a bit for work, including a trip up to beautiful Plymouth, New Hampshire.  It's the home of Plymouth State University, so I took some pictures for Natalie in case she was interested.  There was a lot of snow!

And as if having a hole in our roof, a flagpole that broke in half, and a fence that fell over wasn't bad enough... our hot water heater started leaking!  So there's another unexpected expense!

This hole is still here in February, thanks for asking.

We had a little birthday celebration for my dear sister-in-law Kathleen, who had a (number with a zero after it) birthday in February.  Games were played, and Madison was NOT happy when she kept giving the right answers and not getting credit for it!

Well, it was bound to happen. And Madison is tall, too!

Girl cousins playing a hilarious game of Off Topic on KK's birthday.

We went out for a delicious dinner for Kathleen's birthday down at Mezza Luna in Buzzard's Bay with the whole (well, okay maybe only half of the) gang!

The view of the good looking people on the OTHER side of the table.

I know everyone was so excited to take a cousins photo after dinner.  Especially since they were all holding their leftovers. But they're such CUTE cousins!

After dinner, everyone was full, so Carole decide to do a little DJ'ing for us. Ok, maybe she wasn't - but it sure looks like she is!  She was definitely enjoying the new keyboard that Warren got her.

I have THE funniest story about these scratchies that we got KK for her birthday but I doubt that anyone else would think it was funny!  We laughed so hard we were crying! FOUR!

I've been doing a lot of running this year, but this was a first for me.  Apparently someone let their dog off of their leash and it chased this coyote out of the woods and into the street where I was running. He didn't seem to want anything to do with me, thankfully. 

We went back to Plymouth for Grammi's 85th birthday celebration and Todd made a delicious roast beef with an herb butter melted on top of it. Natalie was so blown away by how good the butter was on the roast beef that she literally started crying! ONLY Natalie!

I think this is Grammi's all-knowing look.  Once you reach 85, you can give people this look, too. Kathleen made this beautiful and delicious lemon meringue pie and a good time was had by all of the Bailey family celebrating our Grammi.

Stay tuned for part 2 of the winter fun in the Bailey house!