::NYC day 4::

Coney Island and the Aquarium.....
Max and I started out monday morning thinking we were going to go and visit a zoo, by way of a library storytime. But the sky was looking really cloudy to me. It wasn't a good sign.
We headed out towards the library, but when we got off the subway stop I realized I wasn't in the part of Brooklyn I was used to. It wasn't a bad part of town, but just someplace where we didn't exactly, fit in. I got several funny looks while trying to find the right road and I finally decided that maybe this wasn't the library story time for us!! So we hopped back in the train and I had to think fast to decide what to do--since it was getting more and more gloomy by the second.
I looked up at the train and saw that it said "Coney Island". So Coney Island it was! I was planning on taking him down there during the week to go to the NY aquarium. I figured that would be a good rainy day activity because aquariums are usually inside--at least in my experience!

We came out of the train onto a high walkway over the street that led to the aquarium. Turns out it spit us out right onto the boardwalk! We were just feet away from the beach. I had to scramble to grab Max before he took off running for the water.

Turns out not all aquariums are indoors!! This one had some indoor features, but a lot of it was outside. Luckily the rain only lasted for a really short time so we were ok.
We started out by checking out some penguins. Max has a thing for penguins evidently.

He thinks they're good swimmers. He's told us that before.

We got to watch a zookeeper feed them a little bit. Some of them were really picky and didn't want to eat any of the fish. It was pretty funny.


After the penguins we got to look at otters, seals and walruses. The walruses were so cool. There was a mom and baby. It's just amazing watching those huge animals swim so gracefully through the water. I could watch it all day.

Max thought the baby walrus was pretty interesting. It was one of the only things that held his attention enough for him to stop for a bit. Otherwise he just wanted to run from place to place and grab glances of whatever was there.


We took in some more sights and then ate a very overpriced lunch at the aquarium cafeteria. Max really appreciated the decor, so maybe it was all worth it.

Look Mom, Fishies!!!!


Their beach exhibit was cool. This tank was just exploding with fishies. I couldn't get Max to stop long enough to be in the picture. That's ok though. These fishies can hold their own.


On the way out of course I had to stop at the gift shop. I'm a gift shop sucker, just like my mom.
Somehow my son talked me into buying this huge penguin puppet for him. Along with a baby penguin that was supposedly for me. Yeah, right.

They're very cute. I didn't really get a picture of the mommy that's flattering (how appropriate!)

So far the penguins have offered hours of wholesome entertainment.
However, I wasn't too excited on the subway after the aquarium. I've been working with Max a bit on prices of things. So like if he asks for something that's too expensive (which is almost anything) I'll have him look at the price tag and tell me how much it is. It's usually good and he's like. "Oh....Thirty five dollars...." and I can explain that it's just too expensive. Anyway on the subway he's saying to himself "I got them anyway". I couldn't figure out what he was talking about so I asked him. He said "They were very expensive but I got them anyway." I was like OH GREAT! So I explained to him that they were expensive but that they were a special present for him because he's been so good on this trip and he's been holding my hand so much (which he usually hates to do). I don't know if it helped or not...blah.

After the aquarium we grabbed ice cream cones on the boardwalk. In view of the beach in front of us, and a roller coaster behind. Quite entertaining. But not as entertaining as watching Max eat his ice cream!!





and my personal favorite:

Have you noticed there have been a lot of eating and food pictures this trip? I noticed. I'm thinking it's because eating time is one of the only times I'm either not running after Max or hanging onto him for dear life. And he sits still for at least a moment. So that's why keep getting to join in on our meals and treats I guess.

Since it was kind of cloudy and cool nobody was really at the beach. Can you believe how many trash cans are out there? Do you think anybody actually uses them?


This was a long day because we had to check out of our hotel in the morning and couldn't check into our little apartment place until after 6. So after Coney Island Max and I went to a movie (Kung Fu Panda). It was nice to sit down and rest for a while. Penguins came along of course.

We ended the day at our new little place, which is small but nice. Max fell asleep with his hand in mommy penguin. It was hilarious.

(phone picture)

::NYC day 3::

church and central park....
I really wanted to go to the ward that meets in Manhattan where the temple is. But of course that meeting place is closed for renovation this summer. So I found another ward and Max and I made our way to it sunday morning. It was in a nice area of Brooklyn and was a nice friendly good sized ward. We were pretty late because of slow subway trains. I think we would've been fine if our first train hadn't taken 20 minutes to show up. Max and I are getting good at finding places here. Well to be honest, we're getting really good at asking directions. We got ourselves to the building with no trouble at all.
Somehow I talked Max into going to primary, which has been hard the last few weeks because we've been traveling so much. It was nice to get to go to class and to relief society for the first time in forever. Having a break from primary has been a little refreshing. Everyone was very friendly to us and they were all bummed we weren't moving in of course.

After church we met up with Kris. He unfortunately was stuck doing training all morning and half of the afternoon. Luckily he got done a little early, so we got together with a bunch of the other new residents and headed up to central park.
Max was really excited to get out after being stuck holding our hands or being carried for the past several days.
Here he goes.

We hadn't been smart enough to change him out of his church clothes, so he was wearing his long pants and niceish shoes. We found out that a bunch of the play stuff at the park has "water features" so he had to go around with wet feet the rest of the afternoon. I think he thought it was worth it though.

The park was beautiful and the views were really cool.

Did you know there are big rocks in the park where people hang out?

I didn't. But now I do!

Kris almost fell down the rock after this picture chasing Max. Not the first max-chasing related injury that's happened!

Max had a great time at the playground. It was very "New York" to me, all concrete and iron bars.

We could hardly keep up with him.




We finally dragged him away from the playground when he found a huge pool of water to dunk his feet in.
He was bummed so we took him over for a ride on the carousel.
It was really fun and old looking, and it had the old calliope playing music. You don't hear those very often. We had a good ride.




After the carousel we wanted to walk over and find the zoo, but it started to rain. And it kept raining, and kept raining! Luckily Kris had bought a $2 umbrella somewhere, so it kept me dry. Max was riding on Kris's shoulders, so Max kept him dry until we realized what was happening. We waited under the trees for a while until we realized that the rain wasn't going to stop anytime soon. We ran for the subway stop and only got a little bit soaked.

It was a fun day. Max still didn't go to sleep until like 10, but we're working on that!





My silly boys.

::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!!!!"