And the winner is...

We're finally back from the annual beach trip and carry with us the pride of having won this year's cookoff. Here's the winning menu, the credit for which mostly belongs to Kerri as she did most of the work.
-brie en croute
-grilled salmon with cucumber-scallion relish
-twice-baked potatoes with sauteed shrimp
-spinach strawberry salad
-strawberry shortcakes with ginger biscuits

It will be a challenge to top that next year but I'm sure we'll manage. :) The trip was pretty good. The house was gorgeous, a short golf-cart ride to the beach (you could walk, too, but usually we took the golf cart since we had so much crap to take with us). I'm proud to announce that I went for a run once while we were there. OK so it wasn't so much a run as a jog. Or 3 minutes of jogging and 20 minutes of walking. But I definitly did NOT have waffles for breakfast afterwards, if that's what you're thinking.
The Big Family Picture Fest went pretty well. The khakis and white shirts came out pretty well and we only sort of looked like communists. I got a lot of good shots, but I especially liked this one. That's my sister Kerry with my nephew Sam. To be fair, my friend Kerri (not to be confused with sister Kerry) took a lot of pictures and I honestly don't remember which one of us took this shot.
Tomorrow is the big day: back to work. I finally had to admit this week that my "I'm OK with a pair of jeans and two pairs of sweatpants until I lose the baby weight" wasn't going to hold up when trying to put together a post-partum professional wardrobe. Thank God for Target. I'll just have to be sure to hang on to the new clothes so I have some Thanksgiving Pants.

I can't really blame him, it tastes like cardboard

We recently attempted Ryan's first Big Boy Meal. The first night we tried to feed him rice cereal, more of it ended up on him than in his mouth. The second night, as soon as the spoon passed his lips he started screaming. Wondering what the big deal was, Eric and I both tried a bite and spent the rest of the evening apologizing profousely to the little guy and begging his forgiveness for forcing such foul nastiness down his throat. I think he would have preferred the beer (can you blame him?)
Just to ease your mind, he didn't really drink it. He didn't even smell it. Eric just thought it would make a funny picture. But that would be ONE way to get him sleeping through the night. Hmmm....
Ryan and I leave Eric behind on Friday morning for the Annual Thomson Beach Trip in North Carolina. As Eric has no vacation left, I invited my friend Kerri to join me, and seeing as she's a phenomenal cook, I am fairly confident that we will be winning the Cookoff this year. (You'll have to wait to find out the menu, it's top-secret.) Everything we're making has the added benefit of being healthy and low-fat (yet still delicious) to appease all of the mothers trying to lose baby weight. I'm thinking that we should make some sort of trophy to be passed off to the winner each year, perhaps something resembling the Geller Cup.

I will try to keep this post completely Ryan-free

Let me start off by saying this: I am too stupid to travel to NYC by myself EVER again. Had I not had friends to walk me to Grand Central at the end of the night, I think I would have ended up in New Jersey, I was so disoriented (and I try so hard to look like I'm not really a tourist whenever I'm there.) When I got back to the Stamford station, I forgot where the car was parked and wandered around for 45 minutes. When I remembered, I realized the car was in a garage that was already CLOSED and the security men will be laughing about me for weeks because they had to open it up just for me. The two quadruple espressos I had to keep myself awake on the 2 AM drive back to Hartford did not work too well. I still had to open my car windows and screech at the top of my lungs along with my Disney mix CD to keep myself from causing an accident. FYI however, Disney music is a very effective tool for keeping oneself from falling asleep at the wheel.
Despite all that, however, I had one awesome night. I got to the city a couple of hours early and was able to meet an old friend for dinner before the reading. I haven't seen her since my wedding almost 3 years ago. Pretty sad considering she's only a train ride away.
Of course I was there primarily to hear J.K Rowling, but I have to say I enjoyed Stephen King and John Irving just as much. I've always imagined Stephen King must be a truly demented individual to come up with that stuff, but he is ABSOLUTELY.HYSTERICAL. Seriously, I can't remember the last time I've laughed so hard. Seeing as his books scare the bejesus out of me, I haven't read a whole lot of his work, but I sure would like to sit down and have a beer with him sometime. Just as long as he never utters the word Redrum.
Our seats were very good- about 10 rows from the stage- and yes, in case you were wondering, when Rowling stepped out onto the stage, it took some effort to not start hyperventilating. It's quite an experience to hear Harry in her voice, and while all three authors were reading, I just kept thinking "wow, I'm in the presence of greatness." She read the chapter from the Half-Blood Prince where Harry goes back in time and witnesses Voldemort discovering he's a wizard. The readings were followed by a Q&A session with all 3 authors, which was also really interesting. Oh, and the celebrity guests who were there to introduce the authors: Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Bates, Andre Brauer, and Jon Stuart.
All in all, definitly worth the $100 (I would have paid five times that... shhhh, don't tell Ticketmaster!!) and it inspired me to check out some of the other authors' works.