Monthly Archives: November 2009

The Pickerts Take New York

This past week my entire family flew to New York and my brother took the train down to meet us in NYC. We stayed at a little vacation rental house in Brooklyn and took the train into Manhattan. Here are just a few of the things we did….

The Pickert Family

We ate at Lombardi’s Pizza, the first pizzeria in America. I’ve eaten here with JMO before but it was a fun place to share with my family. The day we went my friend Bonnie was with us, so we were able to get a picture of the entire family.

Mike and Meg on Ferry

We took the ferry from Battery Park to Liberty and Ellis Island. It was VERY COLD.

Emily and Lady Liberty

Emily looks adorable on the ferry. She took close to a million pictures of everything New York had to see. Our family only makes it into about 5 of her pictures. Check out her Facebook to see how little she cares about us.

Octopus and Me

We walked around Chinatown and SOHO. Michael found some spicy sauce he likes to put on all his foods. He thinks it will spice up the bland food on the farm. In this pic I am holding up a dried octopus. I have no idea what these are used for.

Bull and Parents

We walked around downtown, Wall Street, saw the NY Stock Exchange and fought other tourists to take a picture with the bull.

Black and White cookie - Emily

We ate black and white cookies, Emily was the only person who would let me photograph them eating it.

Overall, it was a fun trip. We were exhausted from walking everywhere, but we saw a lot on the four days we were there and not a lot on the days we traveled to and from the city. Michael is back at his farm and the rest of us have made it home safely.

If you are interested in the complete collection of our vacation photos, check them out on Flickr!

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Giving Thanks

I may have spent my entire day traveling from New York to San Antonio, but I traveled with my dad and we ate hamburgers in an airport and it was quite enjoyable. I live a pretty great life and I am truly truly thankful for all my blessings.

So, in no particular order, these are the things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving.

1. I got to spend time with my family this week. All of us. We are all healthy, together, and we don’t want to kill each other. The more people I meet, the more I realize that what I have is precious.

2. I am thankful for my job. I get to laugh at work and hang out with a 7 year old who says he wants to turn the school to cheese. It is a much happier existence than my former life of financial communications.

3. I am thankful for all that I learned in my first job from college and for the good friends was able to keep from that career. I am grateful for the people in my life who made me realize that I needed a change and wouldn’t be content until I made it.

4. Teaching English has taught me a lot about what a “real problem” actually is. I don’t have any of these real problems. I am truly appreciative of how grounding this experience has been for me. It has also stretched my days and showed me what it is like to truly work to exhaustion.

5. PEOPLE. I have the best people ever in my life. I watched some Golden Girls episodes over the past few days and the theme song has been in my head, “Thank you for being a friend!”

I have been lucky in life and I am thankful for it.

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I am what I eat.

Last summer, JMO and I went to see Food, Inc. It was thought provoking and a conversation starter. We stopped eating meat for a few months (JMO lasted longer than I did) and we started eating a lot more fruits and vegetables. I think about what I put in my grocery cart more than I did before and I read the ingredients more. I can choose the option with half as many ingredients and I just feel better about it. For me, it is a psychological fix, I feel like I’m doing something to better myself and protect my body.

Lately, I have started to slack again. Working and and teaching a night class has made packing lunch and waiting to eat dinner at home difficult. The movie Food Matters came up on my Wowbrary list and I wanted to see if they had a different take. This film was geared a lot more toward the health aspect, it was about how vitamins can heal and we truly are what we eat.

I would highly recommend either or both of these movies. They make you think about what you put in your mouth. I struggle with eating right. I like cheeseburgers and pizza and giant burritos. I also like fruit and vegetables and the more I eat, the more I like. I don’t get that same feeling with cheeseburgers/pizza/burritos- the more I consume, the less I like.

Watching Food Matters has reminded me of my excitement to eat well when I first saw Food Inc. Please wish my luck on my journey to choose the right foods to put in my body!

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