Cousins in the Country

This weekend my cousin Becca and her son Theodore came up for a visit.  It was really neat to see Teddy all grown up at almost 11 months, and having a baby in the house was good training for me, Abe, Lily and Paws. Ted is incredibly happy and good natured so he makes having a baby look really fun, but we still all got a taste of the good, the difficult, and the exhausting.

I was so insanely proud of little Lily.  She's a really sweet dog, but can get a little sassy. We've been nervous about how she will react when our baby is born in November, but this weekend she proved that she's ready to become a big sister.  Teddy was in LOVE with Lily and couldn't keep his hands (or entire body) off of her.  Lily took all his affection like a champ and didn't get upset when Ted's little baby hands grabbed a handful of fur or whacked her in the nose. All her patience was rewarded by the piles of Cheerios underneath Teddy's highchair and lots of baby face licking.

Family Weekend in Philly

A couple weekends ago we had Green Family Weekend in Philadelphia. My sister and Ezra may be moving out of the city this summer so we wanted to fit in one more Philly trip.  On Friday night we laid low and went to a great Italian restaurant serving Napoletana style pizza called In Riva on the banks of the Schuylkill River in East Falls. 

Saturday we took the dogs swimming and watched a strange wedding take place on a bridge in the middle of the park.  They monopolized the only way to cross the river for too long and we considered letting the dogs make a break for it. 

Afterwards we went to Reading Terminal Market to pick up groceries for dinner.  My parents got us amazing steaks that my dad grilled, my mom made a big salad and asparagus, and the kids bought a selection of cannolis, tiramisu and eclairs for dessert.  All that was fun, but the biggest news of the day was that Comic Con was in town and one of the celebrity guests was Jason Priestly!

After Reading Terminal we drove home with a pit stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art so my mom and I (and a half naked man) could run the Rocky steps.

On Sunday we walked down to the river to watch the Pro Cycling Tour race. I was a little worried that the bikes flying by would freak out the dogs, but they just lounged and enjoyed the view.

Happy 1 Year Anniversary to Us!

Abe and I celebrated our one year anniversary on June 4th.  I can honestly say this was the fastest year of my life! We've been together and lived together for over six years, but this last year as a married couple felt different.  There is a very special change that happens when two people make a formal lifelong commitment to each other.

Not to mention that this time last year we were on our honeymoon drinking Coco Locos in the ocean all day long, but just one year later and I'm four months pregnant and buying assorted six-packs of non-alcoholic beer. My how the times are a changin'.

In honor of our one year anniversary Abe and I braved the rain and took a walk at our wedding venue.

Memorial Day Weekend 2012

Memorial Day weekend was a lazy one for me, but Abe and I managed to get out of town for part of Saturday and Sunday.  Our friends and their new baby were visiting family in Connecticut and were kind enough to invite us to join in the fun.  It was a good taste of reality to hang with a 5 month old baby for a couple days, both Abe and I left realizing having a baby is going to be a lot of work...I thought they slept a little more.  But after talking with Adriana (the new mom) I realized I'm prepared as much as I can be and the rest we'll just figure out come November.

Our friend's dog Chloe is Lily's BFF and both of them were in Dog Heaven USA with all the land, woods and giant lake with bull frogs. The humans spent most of our time watching the dogs wrestle and swim.  The best part was knowing we'd all leave with an exhausted dog. The rest of our time we played with baby Ben, ate amazing home-cooked Brazilian food, talked babies, drank non-alcoholic beer (well, I did at least) and swam in the pool.

The Martha Stewart Show

Yesterday I sat in the audience of one of the last tapings of the Martha Stewart Show. I am a HUGE Martha Stewart fan so I was super excited to be invited as an audience member on the Etsy episode.

The episode will air Thursday, April 26, 2012 and is all about Etsy!  All the guests and audience members were either Etsy sellers or employees of Etsy.  We learned a little bit about the operations of Etsy, did some crafts with owners of successful Etsy shops, and even watched an all-Etsy fashion show.  Plus we walked out of there with lots of presents from Martha - craft supplies, gift certificates to HP, and books - SCORE!

Going to a show taping is a lot of waiting in lines and being quiet and clapping for two hours, but loving Martha and Etsy so much definitely made it a very exciting day for the audience.  We all showed off our products to the cameras and Martha requested that we all have our individual photos taken so they can be put on The Martha Stewart Show website/blog.  That is huge to all of us small business owners and we really appreciated Martha's support.  It was obvious that she recognizes and appreciates that our group of people - craftspeople - are the ones who helped make her such a success. 

A little "behind the scenes" dish:  Martha is seriously no-nonsense when she is working.  No small talk during breaks and she is not interested in any delays, but then the camera turns on and she is all charm.  It was pretty awesome to observe.  I love that she is so successful and such a strong business person.  The staff of the show were hustling non-stop and I'm sure it's beyond tough to work for Martha Stewart, but they seemed to really respect her and were proud to work on the show.  What really made me like Martha was to see how she interacts with dogs and kids.  With adults she was all business, but when there was a dog in the room - or even when someone talked about a dog - she lit up and got lost in animal land.  As a fellow animal lover I really enjoyed seeing her in those moments.