Crabbing in the East River

We made some new friends. If you would like to become acquainted with them too, you just have to head to the pier on RI, and toss a chicken leg over the edge- with a string tied like so.
They live in the rocks at the waters edge. There are hundreds of them.

You toss your "line" over and wait for them to bite.
Sometimes you get crabs........

Sometimes you get eels. Yes that black snake looking thing is, indeed, Mr. Eel.

Instant friends.
If you have enough determination......

....you can catch 28, just like we did. What do you do with a bucket full of itsy bitsy crabs? First, you make jokes to your children about having crab cakes for dinner. Then you assure them you were just kidding, (well, at least until we find some bigger ones :) and then you toss them all back...one at a time.

Farewell friends.....well, at least until the next chicken leg reunites us.

Highline Park

There is a new park in Chelsea. It is called the "Highline" and it is built on a mile and a half of old elevated freight train rails. Yep, it is a park above Manhattan. You get to walk along its wildflower filled paths and then glance down and see the busy streets of NYC bustling below.



It is not a "playground park." It is definitely grown up. Lots of interesting pieces adorn the walkways.

Madeline didn't mind the lack of slides and swings one bit. She has informed me that she is too old for "baby parks" and only likes nature parks now. Oh my.

The Highline is dangerously close to Chelsea Market, one of our favorite foodie destinations. Just before we visited we had some Hale and Hearty Soup at the Market. Owen insisted that the bag was his hat, and was determined to wear it for the better part of the afternoon. He knows how to make a fashion statement.

The girls enjoyed checking out all of the unique fixtures. Have you ever encountered a drinking fountain like this?

This was my favorite part of the Highline. It is a glass viewing area with stadium seating. You can pop some popcorn, sit, and watch Manhattan move beneath you.

Owen wanted to touch the street light. He has actually wanted to do this for more than a year, and he thought his chance had come. Darn glass.

People watching in Manhattan. Much better than television.

Paper bag boy on top of the world.

The girls favorite part: the tunnel that was about 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the park which housed a yummy Gelato cart. Of course we couldn't help ourselves.

A shot of the street view taken by our resident photographer, Eva. She seriously always gets the best shots.

After eating our gelato, we rested in these wooden lounge chairs which line the walkway. Ahhhhh.....

Owen claimed his very own lounge chair, and even struck a pose.

Owen was quite fond of the benches throughout the park. They made lovely ramps for his internal train engine.

Brooklyn Bridge

We started off our Brooklyn Bridge adventure by fueling up at Grimaldi's. We had yet to visit this pizzeria, and we couldn't think of a better way to fuel up for our long walk across the bridge than Frank Sinatra's old stomping grounds. The pizza is good enough that you often have to wait more than an hour to be seated. We showed up at 4:45, thinking we had beat the dinner rush. Not the case, an hour later we were seated.....and then we waited at our table for another 30 minutes for the pizza to come. Eva's expression says it all.....

Luckily, we had Madeline along to help us all put on a happy face.

Owen was asleep for the entirety of our line wait. Phew. When the pizza did come, we were glad we had waited. Delicious. Get the pizza with fresh minced garlic added. Marc wasn't too excited about my menu request, but he is now a believer.

We decided that we were not sufficiently full to make it across the entire bridge, so afterward we headed over to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, which is housed in this cute house-looking thing. There were no complaints about the ice cream.


We could see the statue of Liberty from our vantage point on the pier, so we decided to pay our respects by providing her with our best torch holding poses.

We started our trek across the bridge, with full stomachs and happy hearts. Owen was now fully awake and screaming with excitement.

"I'm on the Brooklyn Bridge, Mommy!!"


Someone was unbelievably excited about this adventure.

Mommy-Daughter time.

The view under the suspension cables and Gothic arches is amazing.

We made it!

Definitely a repeatable NYC experience.

Transit Museum

So this post goes way back. I think we went to the transit museum in June. Oh well!

The transit museum is located in Brooklyn, and is actually contained within an old Subway station. It contains models, replicas and actual pieces of subway cars, buses and bridges.

Old Subway car. I think it was a car from the late thirties. It had "cushioned" seats, and ceiling fans. The girls made it very clear that they wish that subway cars these days were this fancy.

Don't let this picture give you any ideas as to what you should do during your next visit to the transit museum. The workers quickly nixed Eva's olympic ring routine.

But not before Owen got a turn to try it out. He makes it look so easy.....

The crew in the "money car." Supposedly this car was used to transport money. There were tables and lockers in it- but no money. Disappointing.

If only we could trade in some of the current racy advertisements in the subway for some wholesome Campbells soup ads from yesteryear......

Or Grapenuts would do. I love that it used to be Grape=Nuts. Absolutely peerless.

Eva was so pleased to find a blue train car. Blue! It even had cushy seats! Double score!

Owen took a bus for a spin. Madeline provided him with driving pointers.

Owen is driving this bus. It is hard to see him because his little head barely peers above the steering wheel. You can see his BYU hat and his hand. It is pushing the 3-year-old driving competition out of the way.

Eva pumping gas. I had two thoughts when I saw this: 1. It will be a strange day when she is actually doing this, and 2. I really haven't missed pumping gas over the past two years......

Watch out world.....in about 8 years you may find her on the road. Hopefully not driving this.

Summer Camp

Now that Fall is upon us, I thought I would explain a bit about what we did this Summer :).
We spent the entirety of July on the Upper West Side, so that Madeline could participate in a Music Dance Theatre Summer Camp. Madeline took part in this same camp last year, and had an absolute ball, so we went for take two.

Eva, unfortunately, was not able to "camp" this year because they have a strict 6 and up age requirement. But, truly, I think she needed one more summer just hanging out with mom.

We pretty much went to the Adventure Park on 67 street in Central Park every single day. All day. It is our favorite. It has sand, water, equipment, shade, forts, and (most importantly) it has a gate enclosure which allows me to read in peace while the kids happily play. I think I read 4 books in July- which may or may not have outnumbered the grand total I read in the entire year of 2008 :).

Here is an excerpt from one of our camp-induced park days:

We were at the park one afternoon, and suddenly it was invaded by strollers, nannies, children, sound equipment and women with pink boas. Luckily, I had plopped myself down somewhere unknowingly strategic when we arrived in the morning, so I had a pretty fantastic view of the.....performance/sing-along/cabaret. Eva is in the red shirt near the bars, clearly enjoying the show. Owen is sitting next to me wondering what he should do with the sparkly pom-pom thing they handed him before the show started.

Never a dull moment in this city.

Back to the Summer Camp. This year the theme was "Little Apple," so all of the performances revolved around NYC. (Last year's was "Voila" and all of the plays were French-themed.) Madeline and her castmates performed a quasi-historically accurate reenactment of the Central Park Chair Riot of 1901. It happened. The performance was very cute, and she even had a small stage solo- which occurred because the girl who was supposed to sing with her forgot her lines and didn't sing :).

She is already crossing her fingers that next year summer camp will be in the family budget. We shall see.

The Gang

I know. It has been a while. Get ready for some blog posts. We have been gone for a few weeks to UT. I am acclimating still. The kids LOVED the trip....and seeing their "Call" cousins (at least four are missing from the picture).

Owen's face cracks me up in this. He looks as if he is a food critic, trying to allow his palate to fully navigate the extremely artificial flavors of the banana popsicle.

Either that or he is in pain. Maybe brain freeze. It is a tough call.