Saturday, July 5, 2014

Yeva bought an apartment this year that has the most terrific views. She is on the 14th floor and you can see Manhattan, and most of Brooklyn and Verrazano Bridge too. So I knew that for 4th of July I wanted to come over to her place to watch the fireworks. She had a shift at work until 8pm yesterday and then went to see one of her private clients but she said it was fine to call her Mom, who lives two apartments down and her Mom would let us in and then Yeva would just come home closer to 10pm. Bear and I don't usually go out at night - we are stay at home types - but he loves fireworks and so we went. Yeva's brother let us in and then later, once Yeva got home, we were also joined by her friend Dasha from work, her Mom and her brother. The view was fantastic. The fireworks were just everywhere - not just the official Macy's ones - but plenty of local ones as well. I'm not great with heights - so I was mostly sitting on a chair on the balcony to watch them, while Bear was just looking at everything with binoculars at times. So we got to see the fireworks and be social for a while too.

Bear went to work for half a day - he volunteered for the day - mostly it was to put the soccer game on for everyone. In the meantime my parents drove over. My Mom grilled some steaks on the grill in the morning and brought lots of vegetables too. And we went to a walk and did some fruit/veggie shopping too. It was a little cloudy and started raining - we sent Papa back for the umbrellas and then walked in the rain. They stopped by a bakery, of course, as they like to do when they come to visit me, and got some little cakes and pastries to share for lunch. And then we watched "Dumbo" on Netflix, just because.

The weather turned nice and cool yesterday, which was very welcome after all the heat. I had jeans and jacket on last night for the fireworks watching and that was actually great.

Last week passed very quietly. I cross-stitched, read, finished reading "Silkworm" by J.K. Rowling - which was good but I liked the first one more, went for walks, watched original "Star Trek" with Bear during dinner (we usually just like music with dinner and no TV but we figure since our days in front of the TV will be limited with the baby coming, we might as well). I did get to cook a lot on Thursday, though. I made chicken, Ethiopian cabbage dish with cabbage and potatoes (it is spicy and fantastic) and my very first cookies - shortbread cookies. I already make a plan for next week to try three new recipes - one dinner recipe and two baking recipes.