Dino Bones, Puddles, Pizza, and Toys

After our first exciting day in New York City, the boys are I were ready for more exploration.  Unfortunately, Seema and Tim had to go back to work for part of the day.  I was a little nervous about navigating the big city by myself with the boys, but we had a great morning planned.  Since it was the rainiest day of our visit, we decided to go to the Museum of Natural History.

We woke up, got detailed navigation instructions from Seema and Tim, and started off.  The boys were getting a little more used to the subways by this point.  Ben wasn't holding his ears quite as much and both of them knew how to walk under the little turnstiles and wait as I came through behind them.  We managed to get through our subway ride, change trains once, and get off the train right at the museum.

The boys and I had a great day exploring the museum.  It was far too big to explore the whole thing in one day.  In fact, I had trouble just reading the map and finding the places we wanted to explore.  We wandered through a few halls filled with big displays of stuffed creatures of all kinds.  We found the Hall of Ocean Life where we saw the huge blue whale hanging from the ceiling.  Then, we made it to the dinosaurs and got to see all kinds of dinosaur skeletons.  Evan and Ben were even lucky enough to hold some model Stegosaurus parts-a back plate and a tail spike!

Before we knew it I received a phone call from Tim to say that him and Seema were off of work and headed to meet us.  I couldn't believe that our morning had passed by so quickly.  We met Tim in an alcove on one side of the museum and waited for Seema.  This short wait illustrated one of my greatest problems the whole time we were in New York City.  It had been raining and there were puddles all over the alcove.  Now, these were not the puddles that we were used to.  You really don't want to go scrounging around in all of the NYC puddles.  Ewwww!  That didn't stop the boys.  As much as I told the boys to stay out of the puddles, they were a bit germy by the time Seema got there.  In fact, I feel like I spent much of the week telling the boys to not touch that or keep our mouths away from this.  I'm amazed they didn't catch anything!

After we had all been reunited we hopped back on the subway and headed down to one of Seema's favorite pizza places for lunch.  When a pregnant lady wants pizza, you don't disagree.  When we got off the subway the weather had taken a turn for the worse so we tried a combination of umbrellas and dressing the boys up in adult raincoats and made it down to where the restaurant should have been.  But it wasn't there.  Oh no!  Seema was so disappointed.  However, with a little phone research we realized that it was still there, it had just changed names.  So, we headed in and were able to have a delicious pizza lunch after all.

The weather was still crummy after lunch so we really didn't want to walk all the way back to the subway station.  It worked out perfectly because the boys got to try out another typical form of New York transportation-the taxi.  Seema hailed one, we hopped in, and arrived at our next destination-famous toy store-FAO Schwartz.  The boys were a little overwhelmed.  I told them they could pick out one item, and I was expecting to get all sorts of requests.  However, they found a favorite from my childhood, slap bracelets, at that was what they had to have.  With that and a candy necklace for both of them, I got out of that store with surprisingly cheap purchases.

After that we headed home for a nice relaxing evening and a little sleep.  Only one more day in NYC...what else could the city possibly have in store for us??

(The whale at the museum-photography in this place was hard!)

(T-Rex on Evan's shirt meet real T-Rex in the background.)

(Look-dino fossils!  In the picture before this, Ben had it in his mouth, oops!)

(The boys with the toy soldier guarding FAO Schwartz)

Subways, Trains, and Chickens?

When we last left off, our fearless adventurers had just arrived in New York City.  We were happy to be there and ready to explore.  Since it was already evening, we weren't up for much on the first night, but we still had to have a little fun.  So, Seema and Tim put their sweet puppy Butte on a leash and we all headed down to a nearby park.  Seems like everyone stays out at the parks later in New York, so there were tons of people having fun with us and the boys had a great time.

(Benny enjoys climbing through the park.)

(Evan cartwheels with joy!)

After a fun trip to the park we headed back to Seema and Tim's apartment for dinner.  They live on the 6th floor of their building, so the kids were amazed looking out the windows at all the cars and activities below.  They got to eat dinner in their own little window seat overlooking the street.  The boys slept in Seema and Tim's bedroom and we kept hearing them in there talking for several hours after bedtime.  When I went in to quiet them down, they were both still intently peering out the window-such cute little stinkers!

(the boys dining with a view)

The next day, we were all ready to explore the city.  Right off the bat the day started with an adventure.  We headed down into the subway a few blocks from their house.  Evan thought it was very cool, but Ben really wasn't a fan of the noises that the subways made when the approached.  He would cover his ears with his hands and bury himself against me.  Oddly enough, however, when the train finally became visible and breezed into the station he would always perk his head up and take his hands off his ears, so I guess it didn't bother him that much after all!  On the subways, Evan loved hanging on to the poles as we rode, and all of us engaged in many riveting games of "I-spy".

(Where are we going, Mr. Tim?)

(Yay, we're on a subway!)

Our destination for our first morning was Governors Island for a great art festival.  This meant that we had to take a ferry to get there.  The boys got a huge kick out of that.  They'd been looking forward to seeing the Statue of Liberty and they got their view as we sailed by on the way to the island.  Once we got there we all enjoyed a lovely festival.  We heard a storytime while we ate a picnic lunch, visited a castle on the island that was an old fort, saw some cars shaped like bugs, rolled down a huge hill, climbed a tree house, ate (and wore) some popsicles, jumped rope, hula-hooped, and more.

(boys on a ferry)

(Seema and Tim on a ferry)

(The boys watch the Statue of Liberty as they sail by.)

(Boys play in a fort.)

(jumping rope)

(riding a cannon)

However, I have to say the highlight for the boys was a demonstration yard on composting and farming.  There were a bunch of chickens roaming around.  They got to pet one of the chickens when a lady picked it up.  After that point Evan was determined to catch one.  I got distracted at one point trying to herd an escaped chicken and goat back into their pen and was surprised when I heard a little voice from behind me say, "Mom, I caught one!"  Eeeek, I turned around and sure enough, Evan had cornered a little gray chicken under one of the picnic tables and grabbed it.  He was holding it in his arms, and I was just relieved that he hadn't broken said chicken.  Evan was so pleased with himself.

(CHICKENS!)

Well, our day at the festival couldn't get any better from there, so we hopped back on the ferry and headed back to Seema and Tim's neighborhood for dinner.  On the subway poor little tired Benny fell asleep.  I managed to pick him up, carry him out of the subway, wait with him for about 10 minutes, pass him off to Tim who waited for another 10 minutes, and get him passed back to me all without him waking up.  It took his brother knocking over a sign outside the restaurant to finally rouse him.  It was just in time for us to all sit down to a delicious Italian meal.  It was a fabulous first day in the big city and we all headed home and crashed in preparation for another big day...to be continued...

(Tim holds a sleeping Benny while we wait for dinner.)

In the Big City

Everyone thought I was crazy.  Ian was going out of town for a conference in Seattle, and I was going to be by myself with the boys.  So, instead of hanging out at home the whole week, we decided to head up to New York City to visit my good friend Seema.  She had been wanting us to come visit for a long time, so I thought this was the perfect excuse to get up there.  But people were doubtful-how are you going to drive all the way up to New York City with the kiddos?  How are you going to explore NYC with the kiddos?? etc.  However, I'm always up for a good adventure, so we were up for it.

We started off from Durham at about 7:30 on Saturday morning, and we were ready.  We had the TV's on the back of the seats, I had checked out countless picture books and DVD's from the library, we had bought some travel games from Target, we had toys, we had snacks, and I even had a book on tape for me.  We couldn't have been even more prepared.

Honestly, much to everyone's surprise, the drive went very smoothly.  We had our first restroom stop at the Virginia Welcome center about an hour into the trip and then we settled in for the long haul.  My book on tape was actually pretty entertaining and it kept me awake.  The kids were entertained with their movies and snack and toys, so we moved along at a pretty good pace.  We didn't even get stuck in any traffic in DC or New York.  We did pay a ton of money on tolls, but I knew that was coming, and I even ended up in Pennsylvania which was a slight unexpected detour, but hey, I just told the kids that we got to add one more state to our list for the day which included North Carolina, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and finally New York City.

When we arrived in New York City, Ben had fallen asleep, but Evan was awake to take in the sights as we drove up past the Manhattan skyline and over the George Washington Bridge to New York City. Once we were there, we pulled up in front of Seema and Tim's apartment.  He took the bags, she took us to a parking garage where we would leave our car for the week, we grabbed the boys and all of their remaining stuffed animals out of the car, and stepped out into the wide, wide world of the big city.

It was going to be a great week, and quite an adventure...stay tuned!

(Two little boys arrive in the big city.)

How Handsome!

A few weeks ago while Grandma and Grandpa were visiting, we headed down to our favorite portrait studio-Portrait Innovations.  The pictures were great of course!  It's so nice to have the pictures of our whole family together, and the boys look so big and handsome!

Take a look at some of our favorites...

Double Boy Birthday

Birthday parties always stress me out.  I get worried about whether anyone else will come and then whether everyone including the birthday boys will have a good time.  So, in order to make my life and everyone around me's life a little less stressful, we decided to just do one big birthday party this year.

Since both boys have recently started to get really into drawing with chalk on the driveway and other artistic endeavors, we decided to have a big art party where everyone would get to do a bunch of art activities.  We had canvases to paint, a driveway to decorate with chalk, sock puppets to make, scratch off ornaments to make, and a big cardboard rocket ship to decorate with all manner of stickers and markers.  I even put glitter in the sandbox and worked with the boys to make a backdrop where people could dress up and take silly portraits.  We were ready to have some fun!

So, on Saturday June 1 about 30 people invaded our little house including both sets of grandparents.  The house was cleaned within an inch of its life and balloons had been hung in every little corner we could find.  They boys were excited and the celebrating was on!

It actually went very smoothly and a good time was had by all.  Evan immediately paired up with his friend Nathan, whizzed through every art activity (only half completing most), and then asked me what else there was to do.  Fortunately, they managed to find things to do for the rest of the party.  Benny found his buddy Izzy who will carry him around at any request, so she worked with him to have lots of art fun.  Of course, his favorite was the glitter sandbox.

We feasted on rainbow fruit skewers, rainbow goldfish, and hot dogs that could be topped with toppings in every color of the rainbow (of course).  Ian's beautiful cake creation for this year was a layered cake covered in chocolate ganache.  He was disappointed because he tried to make multicolored paint splashes on the top of the cake and they didn't turn out as he wanted.  However, he still got the gasps from the crowd when he cut into the cake and everyone could see the six layers of different colors that he had managed. The boys loved it and devoured it quickly.

Even though it's a lot of work to bring everyone together for these parties, it's so much fun to see all of Evan and Ben's favorite people together in one place.  The boys didn't mind sharing their big day at all, and I think this might turn in to a nice tradition.  However, I am very glad I don't have to worry about birthday celebrations until next year!

Happy birthday to Evan and Ben!  Here are a few of our favorite pictures from the big day!