Catching You Up: The Good, The Bad and The Dramatic of Our Family Holiday

I strongly feel that, knowing how I over-post photos on social media (hey, at least I am self-aware!), our holiday card photo must be something off-beat. So when Rockets of Awesome sent us these sparkly jackets, I was like- DONE. If you don't currently do the Rockets of Awesome thing, you should- click HERE for $20 off your first order!

Even writing Happy New Year at this point in January feels silly, so, I won’t (even though I just did, I know, I know…). While 2019 is already in full speed over here, I would be remiss not to do a little recap of our holiday antics, since, well, there was never a dull moment and I am sure many of you can relate to bits and pieces of high highs and low lows which is basically what any sort of “time off” with kids is all about.

My Major Christmas Eve Oops Moment

As I mentioned, we don’t technically celebrate Christmas, but, while our kids are young enough to love the magic of the holiday (and I am hokey enough to take advantage of any excuse possible to hang copious amounts of multi-color string lights around our home), we are on the Santa train. All went smoothly for the most part, until, around 9pm on Christmas Eve, when I was in my office doing last minute gift wrapping after the girls went to sleep. But they weren’t fully asleep yet. And then strolled on into my office only to discover me wrapping away. Alexa exclaimed “MOMMY! Santa doesn’t give us the presents, you buy them for us?! WHAT???” I thought on my toes and simply replied “Lex, Santa gives toys to kids, but not grown ups and I don’t want daddy to be sad if he doesn’t have a present to unwrap tomorrow so I am gonna sneak these under the tree for him. Don’t tell!” I think (hope) she bought it- if she didn’t, she would never say, because I know she does NOT want to lose the holiday just yet.

Annual Overnight to New York City

When Alexa was about to turn 4 (the exact same age Goldie happens to be now), just days before she became a big sis, we decided to book a room at The Plaza and take Lex to see The Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. At the time, it was a HUGE deal because Lex was really afraid of dark theaters and loud noises, so we were on pins and needles to see how it all played out (it wasn’t easy, but when the show was over, she was so proud of herself, it was a turning point of sorts looking back…). The best part of the overnight was definitely running around The Plaza- which, unlike the Christmas Spectacular, never gets old. So we have been keeping the sleepover tradition ever since- just switching out the show- last year, it was “The Gazillion Bubble Show” (loved it!), and this year, we went to The Color Factory (very cute for the kids- perfectly executed, whoever dreamed up the made-for-Instagram concept). In the spirit of transparency, I will tell you this- it was NOT a picture perfect family getaway. Perhaps l will do another post with the gory details (and by gory, I mean stressful for a none-too-patient mom like myself), but let’s just say that, after a 40 minute Uber ride from the hotel downtown in hopes of going to the Museum of Illusions (which had a 2 hour wait, so, NOPE), we were walking to our dinner reservation in the West Village when Alexa decided her dress was itchy and the only acceptable next move was to Uber all the way back up to the hotel so she could change. We missed dinner (and my half-brother Teddy was supposed to meet us which is a big deal since we rarely get to see him and he hasn’t been well, so the fact he was trekking all the way down from his place on the Upper West Side to meet us was huge- this added to my fury at the entire debacle)- and walking in to any decent restaurant with a party of 4 at 7:30pm on a Thursday night during Christmas week meant a wait that made the line for the Museum of Illusions look like a VIP fast lane. I was on edge, Alexa felt bad, Goldie was hungry, and Brian was basically annoyed at me for being annoyed. We ended up at Rue 57 where I quickly drained a dirty gin martini, the kids actually rallied and were great, and we all lived to tell the tale.

Our First Ever Falik Family Ski Trip

This whole adventure deserves its own post (I have some ideas/tips based on our experience that may be interesting to anyone with young kids thinking of doing a big ski vacation), so details to come- but in summary, it was a success!! We stayed with our cousins at their family’s home in Beaver Creek- it was so cozy, and there was a REAL LIVE BABY for Goldie to stalk incessantly. The only glitch was our arrival into Vail airport- a last minute diversion landed us in Denver with a minimum 6 hour layover until the Vail airport would potentially reopen. So, we left the airport (and left our luggage on the plane), and hopped in an Uber for 2.5 hours, arriving at our cousin’s home at 5pm on New Year’s Eve. Our plan was to go to the Vail airport when our flight eventually landed to get our luggage, but alas, the flight was cancelled. So our luggage was in Denver, and we weren’t. In a moment of desperation (no luggage meant no ski gear, no contact lenses, no sanity), we secured a driver to go to the airport, get our luggage off the carousel, and drive it out to the house… on New Year’s Eve. It was not cheap, but it was surely worth every penny to start our trip off smoothly-ish.

Lots of other things happened in the 2-week “what day is it?” abyss that is December 21st through January 4th… We saw “Mary Poppins Returns” (and all agree the original is SO MUCH BETTER), Brian cooked a Chinese feast (Peking Duck, soup dumplings and so much more) on Christmas Day and we had friends over to binge eat, I did a Today Show segment on the best after-Christmas sales- which included many of the items seen HERE, we hung around the house in pajamas A LOT, I read THIS amazing book, planned 2 birthday celebrations for my girls, attended an epic “Night Before New Year’s Eve” party wearing THE DRESS (all caps because it is that damn amazing) that Brian got me for our anniversary (it is majorly on sale now- ARGH!!!) at our friend Anne & Jason’s house which made the trip to the airport early the next morning brutal…

High highs, low lows and a sh#t ton of memories, just as the holidays should be, right?

Hope you had a wonderful send off to 2018 and start to 2019- I am super excited to blog my way through another year, and am eternally grateful to you all for indulging my rants, shopping my picks, sharing your tips, and just letting me know that you are in it with me- for the good, the bad and yes, the dramatic. XOXO