Thanksgiving 2005

We had a really yummy Thanksgiving and it was a treat that my parents were here for it! The night before Thanksgiving I made two desserts. One was my Aunt Cheryl's Strawberry Cheesecake and the other was a Double Layer Pumpkin pie. Both turned out really well! I also prepped the turkey the night before. I always want a large turkey but this year was by far the largest. It was 20 pounds! I used the recipe from the most recent Cooking Light magazine. It called for a mixture of seasonings with parmesan cheese and sage. I pushed that up under the skin of the turkey. I also stuffed the cavity with celery, carrots and onions.

That turkey turned out really well. I'm definitely going to repeat that recipe. The most surprising part was that the veggies in the cavity did not get mushy. When I took them out, they were still crunchy! They were sooooo good! We also had mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes that I just died over, cranberry relish and I used a new cornbread stuffing recipe that turned out really yummy too. I'm definitely going to remake that as well as the candied sweet potatoes.

I'm attaching some pictures from the day. Everyone was well relaxed after eating that dinner! I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving as much as we did!

NYC November '05

Okay, so it's been awhile since my last post. My parents came into town a couple of days after I got back from New York and I just haven't had the chance to get online much. They are still sleeping so I figured now was a good time to catch up!

The trip got off to a rocky start. Delta cancelled our flight the night before and did not notify us. At hearing this, my boss wanted to just cancel the whole trip, but we ended up finding seats on Continental. Of course, the tickets cost just over $1K a piece, but we are apparently worth it. :)

We, meaning me, my boss and my first boss at Landstar met up with our CFO and our old KPMG partner for dinner at Ben Benson's. I had a terrible headache and it definitely showed. I had taken 3 advil as soon as we got to the hotel but it hadn't kicked in yet. As soon as we walked in to the restaurant, our CFO took one look at me and wanted to know what was wrong. So I obviously wasn't looking too good! Anyway, I think I had the headache because I hadn't drank much water at all that whole day and hadn't had much to eat. I felt nauseated from the advil on an empty stomach to boot. By the time the food arrived, it was probably around 9:30pm. Once I got some water and food in me, I felt so much better.

Thursday morning I got up and went to the conference. We broke for lunch and went to a pub nearby. Let's just say we didn't end up going back to the conference for the rest of the day! It was fun to hang out in NY. My friend Michele ended up meeting up with us at our hotel and we all hung out at the reception that followed the conference. It was so good to see her again! Only I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't get any pictures of us together. Too bad we couldn't have spent more time together. We also met up with some FASB folks, including the head honcho there and we all went to dinner at Ruth's Chris. The steaks there were fabulous. So much better than at Ben Benson's. We had to hang out there waiting for a table for quite awhile. There were ten of us. So by the time we finished eating there it was around 11pm. So we literally were out from around 1pm for lunch and didn't stop until 11pm! After dinner I was a gonner. I was so tired and just wanted to head back to the hotel, so I did.

Friday morning I got up and went to the conference. My boss was the only other one to make it up that early. He decided at 10am to go take a nap and said I could as well. Well, I wasn't really that tired and I hadn't seen the usual spots I like to hit while in NY so I decided to go for a walk. It was so much colder than I was used to! I got to see the tree being set up at Rockefeller Center. That was cool. I also did some window shopping down 5th Avenue and walked through the Diamond district. I've never seen so many jewelry stores that close together before! I don't know how you would decide which one to go into, because there were too many to want to go in all of them. I also went into the NBC Experience store to warm up. It's been years since I've been in there.

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and post some pictures that I took. I do love visiting NY. I would love to get Doyle there and stay a long weekend or something. Maybe next year.

Getting ready for NYC trip

I'm heading to New York City this week for a conference for work. I'm hoping for good weather. It's definitely going to be colder than here though. I head out on Wednesday. Doyle doesn't have to leave until Thursday. I get back on Friday so Kit will only have to be at Pet Paradise Resort for one night. I really like their facilities and feel very comfortable leaving him there when I have to.

This will be my third business trip to the Big Apple. I'm attaching some pictures of my previous trips there. My first trip we stayed at the Waldorf Astoria. The building with the flag out front is that hotel. The view of the buildings during the day was taken from my room. This will be a short trip this time and I won't really have much alone time to search the city. But hopefully I'll be able to get some pics worthy to post!

Some other fun pics from NY

Friends in NY

The first picture was taken on the Brooklyn Bridge this past June. Here we are on the subway last November... exhausted after walking all over the city. Michele & Ronnie were gracious enough to show me and Shannon the city! We were even lucky enough to catch a Broadway show with Matthew Broderick... and eat all the bananas we could get our hands on... ah haha!!

Michele now works in the city. We are planning on meeting up for drinks after my conference. I can't wait!

Serendipity

I was able to make it to Serendipity last November. I had the Strawberry ice cream drink. It was fabulous! They seated me upstairs, in the same section where they filmed the scene in the movie... Serendipity! My boss hadn't arrived in town yet, so I knew I had to go before he got there, otherwise, he wouldn't have wanted to go. I bought the Serendipity cookbook while there, of course!

Frosty Paws

Here is Kit enjoying one of his favorite treats... frosty paws! They come in various flavors but we've been sticking with the peanut butter flavor. Kit really likes it too. I think Kit looks adorable when he's eating these treats. Just wanted to share! Love, Aimee

Jacksonville Sea & Sky Spectacular 2005

These are pictures from the Sea & Sky Spectacular at Jacksonville Beach from this past weekend. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. We got there early (9:30am) and got a really great parking spot only a few blocks from the center of the action. We brought our beach chairs and got a great spot on the beach. About 30 minutes later they asked everyone in our area to move. So we got another spot but not quite as nice as the first spot. We watched the show there till just after the amphibian vehicles stormed the beach. That was really cool. Doyle had not seen that before, but I had two years ago when my mom came to visit.

After that, we moved our chairs to the Sea Walk Pavilion. There we could hear the announcements describing who was flying and which moves they were making. They also had music playing in the background. So that was really cool. We hung out there and ate and drank till about 4pm when the Blue Angels finished their show. We took so many pictures... but the battery ran out just after I took about 3 or 4 pictures of Fat Albert. For those of you that do not know, Fat Albert flies just before the Blue Angels! So I didn't get any pictures of them, but they were fantastic.

The only thing we weren't prepared for was the sun! We didn't think to bring any sun block with us as this is November and it wasn't supposed to be all that hot out. So of course, we ended up getting burnt to a crisp. Mainly just the top of our arms and legs. My makeup had SPF 10 or 15 in it, so my face faired pretty well. My neck in the front ended up getting red though. And I have a farmers tan on just one arm! Doyle's arms and legs definitely got scorched. We took a vinegar bath when we got home. I've done that before and it helped immensely. This time I only had regular white vinegar and the last time I had used Apple Vinegar. Doyle thought it helped some but I'm not so sure.

I'm not sure if the burn was the worst part of it or not... it took us 2 hours to get home from the show! The first 1 1/2 hours took us from our parked car back to Atlantic and A1A. Doyle did fairly well without getting ticked off too much. I was behind the wheel so that probably helped somewhat.

I'm attaching some pictures to show. If you ever get a chance to see an air and sea show... do it! Enjoy!

Love, Aimee

Aimee's b-day

I'm just now finally getting some pictures downloaded from my camera. These were taken on my birthday. Doyle did a wonderful job of surprising me by decorating the dining room table with my favorite flowers, gifts and birthday cards when I got home from work on Friday!! Then he had me open a present every couple of hours.

First thing Saturday morning he brought the rest of the gifts to me in bed to open. He is so sweet! One of the gifts he got me was a picnic basket. I have always wanted a picnic basket but have never had one! So on Saturday, we drove to Amelia Island State Park and had a picnic on the beach! Kit had a fabulous time of course. Here are just a few pictures we took from that day. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday weekend! Doyle got an A+++ for that day!

Love, Aimee

St. Augustine Wedding

These are pictures from the wedding I went to in St. Augustine. I car pooled with this group of friends because Doyle had to work. We met up at Applebee's then I drove down. Karen, the bride, was beautiful as was the entire wedding and reception.