NYC Girls Weekend

 Last weekend Jessica was in NYC for a work meeting so I took the train down to spend the weekend with her.

 

 We stayed at a hotel that was directly across from the World Trade Center, this is the view from our room looking down at the WTC memorial.

I met up with Jess and one of her coworkers on Thursday night and we went out for a nice Italian dinner before turning in for the night. In the morning we sight-seed by walking almost the whole tip of Manhattan.

 We saw the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

 We saw Wall Street.

 We saw the Brooklyn Bridge, and walked about a 1/4 of it before I got tired. I totally could have walked the whole thing if Jess hadn't already marched us around town. :-)

 At Noon Jess had to go to her work meeting so I went to the Manhattan Temple to do a session.

That evening Jodi came up from NJ to have a fancy dinner with us. We went to an awesome rotating restaurant at the top of a hotel in the middle of Times Square called The View. Jess wanted to avoid Times Square like the plague, but she made the sacrifice for me.

 These next two were taken with my cell phone, so not very good, but it's the only ones of Jodi that I got. You can see the Empire State Building in the background. I thought that was pretty cool.

Jodi had to head home Saturday morning so after getting pedicures Jess and I set out on the town to do some shopping. We found the big Toys R Us store to get something for my kiddos.

 We found Rockefeller Center.

 We found Times Square, again.

 We had a lot of fun shopping and didn't get in too much trouble with our credit cards. That evening we decided to go to a comedy club. It was fun even though the opening comedians were funnier than the headliner.

Sunday was our last day. We were tired and we needed to stay close to the hotel in order to get to our bags when we needed to catch trains/planes, so we decided to tour the WTC memorial. Although it was still under construction, and also surrounded by construction, it was pretty impressive. The fountains are HUGE.

 The next few pictures are interesting because I was in NYC in 1998 and I actually stayed at the hotel that was in one of the WTC buildings. You can see my scrapbook page from that trip and the view from my hotel window vs. the buildings now.

I didn't get any pictures of it, but we also made it to China Town and Little Italy before heading out. It was a great weekend, and of course a blast to see my girls. I sure was happy to get back to my kiddos and my quiet cul-de-sac though.

Saturday Parade and Fondue

We had a really fun Saturday!! We started by going to the Flag Day Parade in downtown Saragota.

I was explaining to the kids before it started that people were going to throw candy and that they could run out into the street to get it. They weren't so sure about that. But they figured it out pretty quickly ...

Look who we saw in the parade!! "GrandMary!"

I really wish I had video of C conducting the music with her flag. She got really serious about it.

Sunday was our 9 year wedding anniversary and our yearly tradition is to go to the Melting Pot (where Matt proposed). We found a Melting Pot here!! So we went and we brought the kids for their first fondue experience. They enjoyed it enough, it was a little long, but the chocolate fondue at the end made it all worth while!

Picking Strawberries

Our friends invited us to go strawberry picking with them. It was a lot of fun, and it was hard not to eat them all before we got home.

K was a professional.

This is N, who we went with. I also watch him once a week while his mom works.

Afterwards they showed us a great new park.

I seriously have the cutest kids in the world. :-)

4 kids

A few weekends ago we had 4 kiddos for a night. Our friends from church had their 3rd baby and so we had their two kids for 2 days and a night. They are just about the same ages as K & C so we all had a lot of fun. We even went for a mile bike ride/walk/scooter/stroller/drag ... Here we are at the end. It was a hot day.

Although all of the kids were well behaved and slept well enough during the night, we (the parents) were exhausted. Four is tiring!

Making Friends

K has started playing with the big kids in the neighborhood. He will ride bikes around the island with them and play with Nerf guns and even have his buddy over to play Star Wars Lego's on the XBox. The other day they even came over to ask if K could play. Melt my heart. K thinks it's the greatest thing in the world to be able to play with a 9 year old. We love our neighborhood!

Helping Daddy

CC loves riding along when Dad mows the law. He says that she sings to him the whole time.

 

She has also started helping me unload the silverware from the clean dishwasher and she will sing when she does that too. SO cute!

Singing in Church

Finally Riding Bikes!

K got the urge today and took off!!

What have we been up to?

What have we been up to lately? Lets see ... 

We went to a production of "Peter and the Wolf."

CC found a good spot to read.

We had a guy come over to cut down a big branch that was hanging over our bedroom.

Down it goes!

KP has become quite the artist. I asked him to draw our family and I actually had no idea that he could draw people at all, but this is what he came up with!

KP started soccer. This is he and his buddy J on the first day. The coach asked who had played soccer before. They were the only two who hadn't.

You'd think by these action shots that he is a pro and is loving every minute of it ...

... but he's actually having a really hard time. The first day he was doing 'okay,' a little overwhelmed by the 40:1 kids to coach ratio, till they started playing a game where you tried to protect your own ball while kicking other kids balls out of a circle. He was inadvertently 'out' and he had to sit out with all the other kids who had gotten 'out.' He started getting teary and from then on it has been hard. He cries at practice and doesn't want to participate, and doesn't even want to go.

It's hard as a parent to find the line between letting him bow-out vs. honoring your commitments. We got him a soccer ball and he and Matt practice their kicks at home and as of now, we are still going every week, and hopefully he will get comfortable again.

This weekend the boys went camping for the father-son camp-out. This trip was a lot more successful than his first camp-out when he was 18 months old.

They had a great time! Matt says that all evening he ran around in a small pack with his little church buddies.

and I guess there were a lot of sweets consumed.

K slept through the night with no problems and they got a great pancake breakfast at the lodge.

The morning was full of more running around ... does this look a little dangerous to you? Well it was. A few minutes after this picture was taken K got a stick in the eye.

The "offender" drew K this picture which is so innocently hilarious and also very nice of him to do.

Yesterday we went to the park (the one where K bonked his head) and had a picnic dinner, played with the soccer ball and watched the dozens of baby ducks.

We finally got to ride the carousel in the park.

Then we finished our evening with ice cream! YUM!

For Mothers Day the kids (and Matt) spoiled me rotten. Yesterday, they got me some flowers, a new purse that I wanted, and got my wedding rings cleaned and re-pronged. Then this morning K and Matt made french toast for me and this evening they let me blog! It was a great day!

I also leaned to make jam! YUM! It's freezer jam and I LOVE it! It is so much fresher tasting than cooked jams. I'll definitely be making it again.

Finally, no pictures for this one, but CC has been potty training herself. Since December she has been asking to go to the potty. At first she would just sit, and then quickly she started telling me when she actually needed to 'go.' Since she was so young, and since the asking was still pretty sporadic I didn't do too much to encourage the process. I promised myself that after the CO trip I would be more diligent with taking her to the restroom even if we were out and about. Finally this weekend we let her wear underoos, not to bed, but even to church! She stayed completely dry and let us know whenever she needed to 'go.' I guess I will have to keep it up! Way to go CC!