Update

Life around here has been routine (work, eat, sleep - not necessarily in that order), but we have had some fun "adventures" over the past couple months...

Volleyball
Over the past couple months we have spent two weekends watching my cousin Leigh's team play in the city. In September her team, the Bryant Bulldogs, played in a tournament at St. Francis. In October, her team played at St. Francis and at Long Island University. The last game we saw, against LIU, was an especially great game! We love that we have the opportunity to watch Leigh and her team play!

St. Francis University

Dad and Wendy Visit
About a week ago, my dad and Wendy were in town. My dad has an annual meeting in NYC and Wendy decided to tag along. We also got to spend time with Wendy's sister, Bev, and her family, including their precious son Wyatt. Bev's in-laws live on Roosevelt Island. On the Saturday before Halloween, Roosevelt Island had a parade where the kids dressed in their costumes and walked down the main street. After the parade we walked to the new FDR memorial and then we took the tram back to Manhattan. (pictures below - sorry, they're out of order) It was our first time to the island and it was definitely a fun experience. Before my dad and Wendy left, we ate lunch with them at Guy Fieri's new restaurant in Times Square. It was huge and the food was delicious!

View of the East River from the tram

Leaving the FDR Memorial

FDR himself

View of Manhattan as seen through the granite at the memorial

Another view from the tram

View of Manhattan from the tram

View of Roosevelt Island from the tram

 

Outside of the FDR Memorial is the ruins of the old smallpox hospital

Guy Fieri's new restaurant in Times Square

Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy hit last Monday night. Thankfully our apartment was fine - no flooding, even though homes a block away were flooded. We did lose power and cell service for five days, but it was restored 24 hours ahead of schedule so that was a very pleasant surprise. We watched a movie on Friday afternoon (Hotel Transylvania, and we saw Pitch Perfect earlier) and when we came out of the movie, I got a text from a coworker that said we should have power back. We didn't want to get our hopes up, but we quickly walked home to find out for sure. On that walk, it was fun to overhear the chatter on the street of people with the same thoughts: "I heard we might have power" "I hope we have power, too" "So and so has power, I wonder if we do". When we got within a few blocks of our apartment and saw that the streets had power, we were quite excited! While we were without power, we walked around the city, saw the crane that fell, found places to charge our phones, showered at different branches of our gym, and saw movies. My office was also without power this week, so Bobby and I got to spend a lot of quality time together.

The crane that fell in midtown. 

The wonderful lights came back on Friday evening!
I cannot begin to express how dark it was on these streets prior to Friday!

Smile: We are very very thankful and blessed that the worst that happened to us is that I couldn't work all week and we didn't have power or cell service all week.

Frown: There are still many people without power and without a home. I have been catching up on news these last 24 hours and my hear breaks for all of those people!!