Long Time No Post

Life really catches up with you sometimes...
As a family, we've been really busy lately. There have been birthdays, anniversaries, conferences, a lot of working, and preparing for the big move (more on that at a later time). Mix that in with trying to get some quality time as a family really leaves you with no time for the little things. So, I haven't posted in a really long time. I've got a bunch of things to catch up on, but first I'll talk about yesterday.
We finally had a weekend day off together, so we packed up the kid and headed downtown to the Lower East Side (Alphabet City to be exact) to have some beers and sausages at Zum Schneider Restaurant & Biergarten. We sat outside, enjoyed the weather and ate some damn good food and enjoyed some beers. I had a couple 0.5L mugs of Hacker Pschorr, while my wife had a 0.3L glass of Aventinus, which is a double bock wheat beer. They were out of our favorite, the Spaten Optimator, but what can you do? This is a terrific place to go hang out with your friends and just relax with some beers. It's also a lot of fun for Oktoberfest. Food-wise, we shared some potato pancakes (Reiberdatschi) and then split the homemade spätzle with cheese, caramelized onions & bacon (Käsespätzle), which, incidentally, is listed as a vegetarian dish on the menu, and the sausage platter, which comes with 3 Bavarian sausages, sauerkraut & potato salad.
After lunch, we walked off the beer by going over to the Laboratorio del Gelato. We never seemed to find ourselves down there when it was a good time for some gelato. But today worked out well, and I was finally able to try this place. I got 2 flavors - Mexican cinnamon and dark chocolate. My wife got milk chocolate malt and dulche de leche. All were terrific.

NP: Eternal Life, Jeff Buckley