.::Cliff Walk::.

Yesterday afternoon we got to the point where we just couldn't stand the heat anymore so we hopped in the car and drove out to Newport, RI.
Geography is very difficult for me to grasp out here, much less explain, but Newport is south of us--down on Narragansett bay. The very south end of it sticks right out into the ocean.
We thought maybe we could catch some ocean breezes down there.

We did catch the breezes, and it was a perfect opportunity for another on of my photo essays! I hope you enjoy the following.

Newport has a ton of old money mansions all along the ocean. They're beautiful. A lot of them are now museums or serve other purposes.
We stopped and took a walk on a path that led along the cliff above the ocean and behind some of the mansions. The views were really wonderful.






As usual we had to fight with Max over holding his hand, and then drag him along once we had him in our grip.
He tried to give Kris flat tires the whole way back. What a well behaved child, right?

We realized the other day that he thinks there's some sort of a difference between running away from us and walking away from us. And that walking away is ok. It was good to know so we could try to set him straight.





He looks a lot more contemplative in the above photo than he is in reality. Don't let him fool you.





Isn't the ocean beautiful?

The flora and fauna we saw were irresistible. I couldn't help but capture them for later use.









It was cooler down there, but the air was still just SO soupy. The humidity here is better than in was in Kansas City, but sometimes it's still really intense. After living in it for four years, I'm still not used to it!
But it's ok. At least the air was cooler. That's what we were looking for.



Well, that's what Kris and I were looking for. Max just wanted to swim.

That's all he ever wants to do. Soon enough I'm sure.

Thanks for coming on our walk. Does this make you want to come visit? (well except for the hot sweaty house part?)

::Rita's::

This post is dedicated to Carie and Ricky.

































































Yes, Ritas is just as delicious as you told us. Thanks for the excellent tip! Yum!

.::Bummed::.

Today Max and I were supposed to be going to the beach with our friends from church.
Kris started to feel sick with a cold last night, so of course when Max woke up this morning he was sick and floppy. It seems to always happen this way. I really wanted to go to the beach today because we're in the middle of a New England "heat wave" which means that temps are up above 90 degrees.

To all of you folks who live anywhere but here that sounds like normal summer weather, right? Well it is. But youguys probably all have some sort of air conditioning or cooling system.
We don't! And neither do a lot of places here in RI, including a few of the local libraries which closed yesterday and won't open up until things cool down.

So our house gets hot. We've invested in a lot of different kinds of fans. These fans help, but they can't really deal with 95 degree weather.
I was hoping to escape the hot house by hanging out at the beach all day. But it was not to be. Instead I had to stay home in the hot and sweaty cave of our house (we have to keep all the blinds closed so the sun doesn't get things even hotter.)

I was bummed. But I finally took out my little personal sized blender, which I've had for a couple of months but never have gotten a chance to use. I made myself a delicious smoothie in the style of my dad. That made me happy.
Pretend like I made you one too.

mmmmmmm

It was so cold and nice.

Max made himself into a car wash. I'm not sure how the play dough fits into the car wash situation, but it's what inspired him to do it in the first place.

At about 1PM I wished I was in a car wash. I'm not too good in the heat.




We ended up hanging out, holding still (mostly me) and watching movies for most of the day. I made Max take a cool bath which I think helped. He felt prettymuch fine by the end of the day.
Then when Kris was done with work we went and picked him up and drove straight to the movie theater so Kris could see WallE with us. Max and I saw it a few weeks ago. It was great to sit in the cool movie theater for a while.

Hopefully we'll make it back to the beach soon, but even more I hope this heat wave doesn't last very long! I might melt.

::NYC week 2 day 5 and final::

Max and I took it real easy on our last full day in Brooklyn. I was totally worn out from all of the museum excursions and the heat, so we just hung out in the room with the air conditioner for most of the day, reading books, watching movies and playing games. It was pretty nice.
When Kris got home we headed out towards the Brooklyn bridge to have dinner with some friends from dental school at UMKC.

Terra is doing a GPR (general practice residency) at a hospital in Brooklyn and her husband Eric is doing a masters thing at NYU. It was really fun to see some friends from Kansas City!

They had us go to this little pizza joint that was almost right under the Brooklyn bridge. It was called Grimaldi's.
There was a big line of people waiting outside to get in when we got there, but somehow we got in right away. It was packed with people--shoulder to shoulder. They have big long tables in there and just seat everybody next to each other.
The pizza was totally amazing. Suddenly we understood the big line outside!
There were photos of Frank Sinatra all over the walls. It was a really cool little place.

Afterwards we walked down towards the water to enjoy the view.

Here's Eric threatening to throw Max in the bay or river or whatever it was. It didn't scare Max, he was ready for it. He wanted to go in. Yikes.


Here's the underside of the Brooklyn bridge, and big waterfall thing (part of a series of six I think--an "art" installation) and you can see the Manhattan bridge not too far in the background.


Another view of the Manhattan bridge. It's so cool looking! I love the little tug boat in the foreground. Its so interesting to me to be around boats and the water, I'm just not used to it at all.

We walked a little further down and found this neat kind of parkish place. There were actually some patches of grass. And a huge huge sandbox. Max went crazy! He was so excited to just sit and play in the sand with all the toys people had left behind.
It was really pleasant.

We got to hang out and talk to Terra and Eric while he was very contented and occupied.

The temperature was nice with the air coming off of the water, and the view was amazing.


I'm so glad they had us come out there, we would've gone our whole trip without even knowing any of that neat stuff existed! And what a bummer that would be.

Ready for some awesome nighttime city views? Here we go.....





So pretty! You'd never think the city was so dirty if you just saw it at night like this.

It was fun to get to hang out with the Paulys, hopefully we can do it again soon since we're not really that far away from each other.

Kris's cousins Lisa, Phil and Annie were coming into the city and we were hoping to meet up with them, but we had some scheduling problems and never got together. We were sad to miss them, sorry guys! But it was a good thing we left first thing in the morning because it still took us all day to get home. The 3.5 hour drive took about 6.5. On fridays the whole state of Connecticut appears to be like some sort of parking lot for New Yorkers running away from the city.

But we made it home, and we're glad to be done with the traveling for a while. It's time to actually live in our own house.

::NYC week 2 day 4::

Kris got a surprise day off on wednesday. This is really the reason why we came out to Brooklyn again. I figured Kris might end up with some random play time, and I wanted to spend it with him.
Anyway, we had a lot of ideas for what we wanted to do, but top of the list was to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We thought it would be perfect if we could bring Max in the jogging stroller--then he'd be stuck and he couldn't run all over. And since we were both going on the train there'd be one of us to carry the stroller and one of us to corral the boy.

Anyway, we were researching the museum and found out they allow all strollers except jogging strollers. Arrgh! Not only that, but Kris pulled out the stroller to take Max on a run, and it had two flat tires.
So anyway, we thought we could still try to take him to the museum, but it was a little daunting--considering that the word museum to him is currently associated with driving cars, running around and splashing in water....

We stopped downtown to have lunch. We almost decided that we'd just go to a movie instead, but on the way to a movie theater we ran across a BabysRUs. So we went in and bought a $20 umbrella stroller.
Sounds like the solution to the problem right? Well, only halfway. He's way way way too big for the umbrella strollers, and he has been for years.
Check out this picture.

Can you see that even with his feet on the floor his knees are almost touching his chin? He can basically stand up and walk while still strapped into the stroller, and he can definitely stop it just by putting his feet down. It's a frustrating experience.
We pushed on to the museum, which was a long hot sweaty exhausting train ride away.
We got there at about 3PM and started rushing through some exhibits because the place closed up at 5.

Here are the boys in the huge room with parts of a pyramid in it. The Egyptian stuff was really cool.
We got to look at some of the decorative arts. Check out this fabulous art deco grandfather clock, and the beautiful tiffany lamp.

They had a lot of tiffany glass--some lamps, some windows. It was beautiful.
Here's some inlay detail from a gorgeous table that I would like to have.

We got to spend a good amount of time in the modern art area. Of course they had some really cool and really famous stuff.
Kris likes this one.




This piece took up the whole wall. It was so cool! Just looking at the colors really made me feel good.



It was getting really close to 5, so we ran over to the musical instruments exhibit. It was really cool, but things were shutting down. We tried to go to the gift shop, or "store" I guess as they like to call it, but they kicked us out of there too! IT was very unceremonious.
Here's Max and I at the bottom of the huge stairs after getting kicked out. The line at the coat check area was huge! I'm looking a little peeved because I hate getting kicked out of stuff before I'm ready to leave.

Anyway, it was a great day, but I was already totally worn out from the day before with the children's museum. So I was wasted by the end of the day. We all were. Max wasn't great in the museum but he was ok enough that we got to see some stuff, and that's all we wanted.

.::Wow::.

Check out what Kris just sent me. He's at his first day of work at his own hospital today. (I'm obviously a little behind on the NY posts, there are a couple more to come.)








Looks like he's for real now. Crazy, huh?

::NYC week 2 day 3::

I finally decided I would take Max to the childrens museum of Manhattan. It's way up by central park which is a pretty long ways away on the subway, with about 3 train changes along the way. But I had looked at the website and it looked like he would love it, so we got up and went for it.

There were a lot of moms and kids there, in fact we had to wait outside in a line for about 10 minutes just to get in. But once we got in it was fine and really not too crowded.

Max was super excited because they had a special Dora the Explorer exhibit. For some reason he's kind of obsessed with Dora right now, so we went to see her first. The exhibit wasn't that exciting really. I think he was a little bummed. But we did get a picture of him "with" Dora and Boots, which is fun.

Here he is playing some drums at Dora's "fiesta"--which was really just a room with a whole bunch of figures on the wall. Kind of blah. But the drums were fun at least.


After that we went to the like play and learn area, which turned out to be his absolute favorite. They had a lot of different things to do in the room, lots of things to climb on and draw on and twist and turn. His favorite thing though was this big bus that had four different steering wheels so that everybody that sat on the bus got to be a driver.

I have to admit that the bus was pretty cool. It had a rotating destination sign on the side that could say different things--central park, etc. He could've stayed in the bus all day. And probably would've if it wasn't for the fire engine! They had a fire engine that was similar to the bus. It had all sorts of switches and things inside for the kids to play with. They also had a few small fireman outfits in there that the kids could put on. Max really liked to drive it (of course).

Somehow there were no fights about driving these things. I don't know how it happened, but everybody seemed to get along well.
Here he is driving some other crazy vehicle somewhere. It's really all he wants to do.

He's very serious about it.

I finally tore him away from that room and we went to look at the other stuff. The only other exhibit that held our interest was an outdoor water one.
It was out on a balcony off the building (because of course the museum is in kind of an apartment building). They had the kids put on smocks and then they got to play with all sorts of water toys and race rubber ducky. There was a water wheel thing there that Max really liked.



It was hot outside though, so soon we went back in--back to the bus and the fire engine. I let him play there until I was about to die with hunger and/or boredom, whichever came first and then I dragged him away.

All in all we liked the museum but I actually think that the one at the Gateway in SLC is better. It had more cool exhibits that were actually fun. The one here had a lot of exhibits, but several of them were pretty boring.

After that we took it easy and then went to get a burger with Kris when he finally got done with work. Sounds like a kind of easy day, but with all the train travel and the heat I was totally exhausted by the end of it. In a good way.