Friday, January 29, 2010

New York Adventures!

We're back from New York! Did you miss us?! Brian and I had a great time and jammed a lot of activities into five days. The real reason we went there was for work, I had two dinners to attend but we extended the trip out so we could play and enjoy the city. Our hotel was in Times Square so we were close to all of the action and just a subway ride away from everywhere we wanted to go.

On Saturday, Eric and Melissa took the train up from Philadelphia to hang out with us. Brian and I stood in line at the TKTS booth to get 1/2 price tickets to go see Rock of Ages. The show was fantastic! It was so much fun and full of 80's rock and roll music. We had private box seats to enjoy the show from. After the show we walked around the city and ended the night with some fantastic New York style pizza. Yumm!

Melissa and I after the show

Rockefeller Center

Mel and I in Times Square

On Sunday we took the subway over to the Natural History Museum. We saw a show at the Planetarium and walked around for a bit. We also went to the butterfly exhibit.

Brian in front of a meteorite

Hello butterflies

Look, one landed on me!!
After the museum we went to see our friend Anita who lives in New York. It was fun to see the size of a New York apartment and I really enjoyed hanging out on her roof. I told Brian we need to flatten out our roof so we can have dun here too! (He thought our view wouldn't be as great so it isn't worth the expense!) It was a nice relaxing evening and it felt good to be in a home and not a hotel room, restaurant or cafe.
Our Pinot Noir winemaker, Michelle, came into town on Sunday night. We couldn't resist taking her out on the town for a quick stroll and dinner before calling it a night. Hey, we were in the city that never sleeps, we had to do the motto justice!
Michelle and Michelle

Brian and I in Times Square
On Sunday it was raining so we headed over to another museum the MOMA (Metropolitan Museum of Art). I'm so glad we did. It was amazing to see the works of art in person and look at the different exhibits.
Brian in front of Starry Night

Me in front of Water Lilies (by Monet)

Brian and I going into the Tim Burton exhibit. He is the artist that did Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and is coming out with Alice in Wonderland!

Brian decided that he needed some extra shirts so we stopped at Gap on 5th Ave!!
On Monday, we were headed to the Wine Enthusiasts Awards Gala dinner. It was Black Tie and $1,000 per person. Michelle and I decided that to go with our formal dresses, we needed to get our hair done. After 2 hours at the salon, this is what we came out looking like:
(It was drizzling outside and we didn't want to ruin our new do!)

Dressed up without the caps:

The final result:

We do Black Tie pretty well!!

At the New York Public Library reception hall

Michelle, Brian and I

It's official, we're supposed to be here!

We had one of the twelve award winners sitting at our table. These guys won the award for best Wine Growing Region from Italy.
After dinner on Sunday, we went to the Empire State Building. Someone at the dinner suggested we go see it at night so we went in style!


This is why we went at midnight. During the day, we would have had to stand in this line:

This is the second reason we went at night. The view was fantastic! 86 floors up!

Everyone kept asking us if we were coming from a wedding!

Kisses!

The next day we were off to Liberty Island. By this point, we were pretty comfortable with the subway system.


New York from the ferry


You know what they say about big feet....

Looking up Liberty's dress!



I had to get a hot dog from the corner stand!

This is the real reason we were in New York. The winery was hosting a winemakers dinner at Yankee Stadium. The dinner was fantastic but the best part was the private tour after dinner was over. The team historian took our group down to the field after all of the dinner guests had left. It was so cool to be down there!
Yeah for Sonoma-Cutrer!

Brian so nicely volunteered to help Michelle make sure all of the bottles were ok and not corked!


The Brown-Forman crew on the field

Michelle, Maggie and I in the dugout. When you picked up the phones, they really started ringing and calling the bullpen!


The team historian let me try on his World Series ring. It was a little too big so I gave it back ;)


On the last day we were hanging out in Times Square when a CNN reporter asked if he could interview Brian. Now I'm married to a famous TV analyst!
Overall, we had a fantastic time but we're glad to be back home. Thank you to my mom and Oma for watching Andrew while we were gone. He had a great time.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Kentucky Adventures

Hello from Kenutcky! I've been having so much fun here meeting everyone that I work with, checking out the sites in Kentucky and trying lots of new foods. Most of the days have been spent at the office going to meetings but it is so nice to sit around the table with everyone instead of just being a voice on the phone. We've gotten a lot accomplished and I'm excited to see the results of all of our hard work.

This morning I had a little bit of free time and went to the Louisville Slugger Museum. I didn't have time for the whole tour but they gave me a quick overview and of course I took a cruise through the gift shop. They do not allow pictures inside the building so this is all I could get:

This afternoon we went the the Woodford Reserve Homeplace. It was a chance for me to see how another Brown-Forman product runs their homeplace and to observe their best practices and see how we can encorporate those into our business plan. I won't bore you with all of those details but I did take some pictures on the tour:



John, Me and Meghan
(not a good picture but this is what you get when you ask someone else to help!)
Lots of bourbon!

That's one way to get the bourbon out of the barrel!






Sunday, January 17, 2010

Happy Birthday to Me!

Goodbye 20's, hello 30's. When I was in college we started telling age based on how much longer you had until you were 30. For example: if you were 25, there were 5 more years until you were 30 so your age would be 5-30. If you went past the 30 year mark (32) you were now
-2- 30 because you were two years past 30. (You get the idea). When we came up with this system, I was 8-30. That magic 30 number was so far out of reach, I couldn't even imagine what today would be like. I had no idea then what my 20's had in store for me. I graduated college, got married, started my career, bought a house and had a baby. Wow, that's a lot to accomplish in such a short amount of time! I've had so much fun this last decade, I can hardly wait to see what the next 10 years brings. Happy 0-30 to me!

I had a great weekend of celebrating my birthday. We went to a comedy show, fancy dinner, hung around at home, did a little shopping and had a great birthday dinner at the Wing's. Grevin even made a special appearance on Sunday for a few hours. We were honored to be his first babysitters that weren't family!



Birthday dinner at the Wings

My favorite boys!

Bestest Friends
Andrew and Grevin

Fun at the comedy club!



The girls waiting for the show to start
Me, Alana, Karla and Jen