::NYC day 2::

Puppet shows and hamburgers...
This was a great day. Max was wonderful.
Kris headed off to his work stuff early, so Max and I got up and left the hotel on our own.
The hotel has delicious bagels for breakfast. They are SO good. Traditional NY style bagels I guess.
Max and I headed out to a story time at a Barnes & Noble in downtown Brooklyn. It took us a while to find it. I knew which stop to get off on, but I didn't know which direction was which when we came up out of the subway, so I took a lot of wrong turns.
We finally got there, about 20 minutes late. We still got to hear a couple of stories and play a game or two. After that we were going to go to McDonald's to get some lunch.
Max was dying to go to McDonalds of course, so I stopped and asked some Brooklynite dads some directions. They told me where the McDs was, but said that there was a MUCH more delicious burger place very close. Anybody heard of 5 Guys Burgers??
Well if you haven't you should look them up. WOW was it ever delicious! My all time favorite burgers are the ones my dad cooks up on the bbq outside. Especially when he shapes the patties by hand. The burgers at this place reminded me of dad's. So so yummy.

Max was bummed we weren't at McDonalds, and so he tried to pretend he didn't like the burger.

However, he couldn't help himself. He ate the entire thing.
I hear there's one of these in Midvale, for those of you in UT. Definitely check it out. Oh, and for those of you in MO I hear there's one in Lees Summit! Not one in RI though, how unfair.


After lunch Max and I caught the train to go to a puppet show. It was Pinnochio with marionettes. There were very few people there. It felt like we had the place all to ourselves. Max was mesmerized by the show and told me afterwards that he wished he could have gotten in the little theater with the puppets. He told me "that was a crazy TV!" I had to explain the difference beteween a TV and a stage. I'm not sure he really caught it.

This whole time Max was really great. He had to walk a ton, and he was very brave. I didn't have to carry him at all which was really good for me, my legs and my back.
He did keep saying though, "oh, we need to find the cash cab. I'm tired!!" I wouldn't have minded a cash cab ride myself at a few points!

Kris got done with his stuff kind of early, so we came back from the puppet show in the late afternoon and met Kris in the hotel for dinner.

Oh--but I forgot to mention Max's absolute favorite thing about New York so far--besides that the subway trains have letters on them--There's a KB Toys right by the hotel's subway stop. At the door they've had a little thing with those super obnoxious moving noise making toys. You know, like walking dogs that yip and bark? They had a somersaulting dog, yipping dogs, barking dogs, and one walking snorting pig. We had to go and see them three times. It's making the whole trip for him.
Aren't kids funny?

The parts of Brooklyn we got to see were really cool, especially a part called Park Slope. It was nice. A view for you:

And could one of our favorite green and yucky grouches be hiding in these trash cans? Max and I thought so.

Good night!

::NYC day 1::

Oh what a day!
Kris had an appointment for a physical in Brooklyn this morning at 11AM, so we got up early and left the house with all our stuff by 7AM. By 10:30 AM we were driving into the big city on the freeway. It was a crazy view!
Check it out.

Do you see the little airplane flying along there? And all the smoggyness?
I think this was before the traffic really got nuts. As we got into the city the driving got more and more crazy. I was really glad Kris was the one driving and not me. He still got honked at a billion times. They would've been totally laying on the horn for me!

It's cool view, huh?

The physical went well, and we ran into one of the other residents who's starting in Kris's program. It was fun for me to get to meet her. We drove her around a little bit and got her to her hotel.
Max was good for me during all the hospital stuff. I got some treats from the vending machine and we played a little game where I had to quiz him on something (usually like spelling or addition) and when he got it right he'd get a treat. Luckily it helped the treats to strech a good long time.

After we rested up in our hotel a bit we ventured out to Manhattan to check out Times Square. Max was really good on the subway ride out there. I think the trains made him nervous. I'm sure that will wear off a lot sooner than I'd like it to.
I've never been to Times Square before. It was pretty incredible. It was a very intimidating feeling to walk up into all the huge buildings with all the huge billboards and stuff. There were several helicopters just hanging over the top of us. It was weird and I felt like a dumb tourist with my mouth hanging open.

Busy view, huh?

I think it was a little much for Max to take in, but he seemed to think it was interesting. His favorite thing was this person in a big duck suit. I'm not sure why it was there, but Max was delighted and hugged the guy for quite a while. I'm scared of people in suits like that.



Who know that Hershey's has a huge store that looks like something from Disneyland out here. Weird.

Max keeps seeing the cash cab everywhere. Every single van cab we saw out there he was like "OH!!!! The CASH CAB!!" And as you might imagine, there were a lot of those cabs.
Could this one have been the one? Who knows....


After we found Max a bathroom somewhere (he only ever admits he has to go at the most inconvenient times) we went to get a jamba juice. He couldn't get it all drunk there because it kept giving him a brain freeze, so we headed back to the subway to go back to the hotel. Not the smartest idea to take a jamba juice and a four year old on the subway? Yeah...Um. There were no seats for us, so we had to stand the whole time. And yeah, when Kris picked up Max at one point he ended up kicking the cup of juice out of my hand onto an unhappy man's shoe. The man was nice enough, luckily, but definitely unhappy about having a fruity workboot. It was really embarrassing. But worse than that, we still had quite a few stops to go when that happened, and we were stuck standing right by that man, over the puddle of goo the whole time. And I had to hold the dripping cup. It would've been a little better if Max hadn't decided to skate in the mess as well.

We were glad to get off the train.

Hopefully that's our bad luck for the week and all will go better. We'll see how it goes tomorrow with just Max and I. Do wish me luck, ok?

.::We Made It::.

We survived the red-eye flight we had to take to get out here to Rhode Island. Max was incredibly good during the whole ordeal. Thank goodness.
We didn't bring the dog out yet though. He's staying with my parents for a few more weeks so that we can do a little more traveling. That way we don't have to worry about him being sad and lonely if we have to leave him with somebody he doesn't know.

It's nice here. The weather has been great and we do have our new fridge now so we're happy.
Tonight after we did a whole bunch of work and stuff we headed out to see how the beaches are out here. First we ate at a fish and chowder "shack" kind of place near the beach.
Have you ever heard of a "doughboy"? Yeah, neither had we. Turns out that they're kind of like a cross between doughnuts and scones, dusted with sugar. Yum. And chowder from the shack right next to the beach is delicious, just as could be expected.






















We weren't really using our brains when we left the house--we weren't sure whether we'd have time to go to the beach or not really. So not only did we not bring bathing suits or towels, but I forgot my camera! Ahhh! So these are all from Kris's phone. And of course, there were many lovely and silly photo ops that I missed.

















We didn't really think the water would be warm enough to swim in, since everybody keeps telling us how freezing the atlantic is, but really it was not that bad. No worse than the beaches in So. California that we've been to a lot.
Max was THRILLED to be at the beach and couldn't stay away from the water.







































And of course, he fell in. First he got really wet just by getting splashed, and then he fell right in.
We had to remove his pants completely. Well, actually they fell off because they were so wet and heavy.

We learned our lesson--we won't go to the beach again with Max without at least one towel!

We are about 40 minutes from this beach. You can bet we'll be back a LOT this summer. We are really excited about it.

















We're off to New York City tomorrow. Kris has training all week and Max and I are going to explore the city. We'll keep you posted.
Oh, and I still have several things I need to post concerning our Utah visit, so don't be confused when those posts still show up.

::Lava, we're gonna do it all day::

I'll explain the title of this post a little later.
While we were in St. George we decided to take a drive out to Flagstaff Arizona to see what it was like. We'd heard that it has four seasons, which we like and was high up in the mountains, and we like mountains. And since we're only a short two years away from actually deciding where we want to be, we are trying to check out some of the places in the west we might be interested in.

So anyway, we headed out for an overnight visit to Flagstaff. It was a very interesting drive. First we went through Zion's, which of course is incredible looking.

I love how even the road is red.

Then we drove out through the Navajo reservation and saw some more really amazing landscape. The desert red rocks and mesas and stuff are so striking. Its hard to take pictures of some of that stuff--it's almost too much for a camera to take in.

We got to our hotel in Flagstaff and then decided we'd like to go on a hike. There's a famous old volcano crater just outside the city, so we went over there.
I wore the wrong shoes.

But I was tough, so I survived. Don't look too close at my dorky toes please.
It wasn't a tough hike, but it was very cool looking out there.
There were piles of the old lava rock everywhere.

The crater itself was a very cool color--which is probably why they call it "sunset crater"

Max wore himself out running way ahead of us, and finally just had to be carried most of the way.

Little did we know that he had the stomach flu and would wake up the next morning and throw up all day. Good thing we didn't know.



We couldn't really figure out what his deal was. Oh well.

He made up a song while he was riding on Kris's shoulders that went "LaVA, we're gonna DO it ALL DAY" and sang it over and over and over, very loudly the whole way. It was funny.

After the hike. All that shoulder riding must've been very dehydrating.

After our hike we went and had dinner (good yummy mexican food) and went to bed, planning to take a good look at the city in the morning. Then as you already know, Max decided to throw up. All morning. When he finally stopped throwing up for more than about 15 minutes we quickly threw him in the car and hurried away. We drove through the city a little bit, but after he threw up in the car we decided it was time to head back. So I don't even have any good pictures of Flagstaff. We liked it though. It was small and kind of interesting with lots of pretty trees. I do have a tree picture.

Just imagine a city where most of the buildings are hidden behind trees like this. That's the jist of Flagstaff. Or at least that's our impression after spending about 12 hours there.

We had to skip the grand canyon on the way back, but we made it to St. George without any more big problems, luckily.

Doesn't it seem like little kids always get sick on trips? And always at such inconvenient times? Remember what happened to me at Disney World?!?......Blah

.::How often can we change our minds??::.

Kris drove our white land rover out to UT before the big move. He took Sultan and the car out there so they could wait for us while we got everything else to RI. The plan was for him to drive the car and the dog back for his training in New York (he has to be in Brooklyn for about three weeks) and I would hang out in UT so I wouldn't have to stay at home alone in a new place for an entire month with a four year old.

Then we found out that his first training day is just one day. Then there's close to a week of nothing between that day and the next week of training. So we changed our plans and decided to fly him out to NYC for that one day. Then the plan was for all of us to drive back east together. I realized that I could visit Kris in NYC and I have friends I'm excited to hang out with in Providence. We would've had about 5 days to do the drive. It wouldn't have been too fun and exciting, but it would've worked. THEN we found out he actually has to be in NYC 24 hrs earlier than we thought for some sort of appointment. Not cool. He was flying back to UT sunday night late, then we would only have from monday morning to friday morning to get all of us to Providence and then him back to NYC. By 9AM friday morning of course. Is this making you tired yet?

So we figured we could do that. Until we really thought about it. When we really thought about it we decided that the drive would be horrible, and there was no way we could make it there in time. We also thought about it and decided that we could live as a one car family in Providence. We live in such a walkable area of town that hopefully it will work.

So we made up our minds, left the white car out on Kris's Grandparents' farm in Delta UT under a tarp and bought ourselves one way tickets.

But what about the dog? Well he's flying too. I guess Continental has some sort of special pet travel program, so he should do great. He'd better, it's expensive enough! But really overall we're saving money flying rather than driving. With gas as expensive as it is and the white car getting such great (ie awful) mileage we're much better off without it for a while.
Sultan had to practice in the carrier the other day.

I think he's going to do ok. He's not scared of the carrier right now. He may be after a 7 hr flight with a connection in New Jersey, but hopefully he'll be ok. He's such a great traveler in the car, hopefully that'll carry over.

I'm just glad we get to bring him home with us. I would've been bummed to have to leave him. Although I know my parents wouldn't mind!

This plan will be much better for us overall I think. Kris and I ran an errand with Max yesterday. When we got home we looked at each other and said "boy aren't we glad we don't have to do that for four solid days next week!!!!"

::Fun in St. George Pt. 2::

Wow! This post has been a long time coming, hasn't it? Well hopefully it lives up to the suspense that I've created.
We had a great time in St. George as I said before, even though by now it was forever ago.
One morning Kris and Max went on a pretend bike ride and then read some stories. Here they are dressed in their biking finery. This picture is so cute!!

"Put me in the Zoo" is Max's current favorite book. We've all read it to him about a zillion times on this trip and he knows it absolutely by heart.
Later that morning they went and played some baseball. Max has a ways to go with both pitching and hitting.

He thinks he knows how to do it because of the Wii.



Maxes pitches are what you could call a "little" low.

Except for this one!

It's cute to see them play together. Kris is very patient.
The baseball game got interrupted when Max spotted a snail. He'd never seen a snail before so it was really exciting. They caught it and put it into a jar.

It made him a little nervous at first.

He was very interested in the snail's "backpack" and what it was for. It was fun to talk about snails a little bit. He's so interested in everything right now.



They found a few more and added them to the jar. Later that night the snails slimed out and went back to their snaily business.

Last but certainly not least Max got to go on a "slow" ride around the block with grandpa Ken on his motorcycle. This is a rare and exciting treat.
Here he is looking very concerned because the bike wouldn't start.

It needed a push. Lucky Kris got to push it.

They somehow avoided running over the little old lady that was walking down the street. It was a close one though.

It started up so Max got placed back into his seat.

He held on tight.

Grandpa did keep his eyes open for most of the ride.
This is my favorite picture. He looks worried, but I don't really think he was. He's a pretty trusting little guy. And he loves things that drive. I love the motion here.

Well, we will definitely be back to St. George, and nobody will have to twist our arms.