Grand New England Tour

Ever since we moved to NYC, Dan has REALLY wanted to do a tour of the fall colors in New England. The premise being that we don't really mean to stay in NYC on a permanent basis, so this may be our last chance to conveniently do a pretty classic road trip. It was a great idea, but never quite seemed to work out with vacation times, birthdays, etc. Finally, we had this wonderful scheduled vacation time right at the end of October, so we wanted to finally take that trip. Last major hangup - Dan planned to take his Step 3 exam in September, so would be totally engulfed in studying. Then a nasty rotation at work that would again keep him from home pretty much all day except for sleeping. So...one New England Tour planned exclusively by me, in between school starting, big garage sale where I try to offload all our stuff before we move, oh yeah, and a nasty invasion of mice right before we left. Nice, right?

With a little lack of sleep (not easy in the first trimester of pregnancy) and a few miscalculations in booking hotels, I managed to come up with a reasonable plan for our young audience. Logistical challenges: minimizing time off from school, short daily drives that still got us all the way to Maine and back in a week, peak season for visiting the area, so not many hotels left to book so close to travel time, sites that made sense for little people, hitting what Dan wanted to see without seeing Dan in advance to ask him what he wanted to see. It helped that I was just as psyched to visit the Northeast as Dan - this is a corner of the country I've never visited and would bring my remaining number of states to visit down to a number countable on one hand.

We started off on Saturday after Penny's morning CCD class, taking a whole day to drive up into the Adirondacks to Lake George. We arrived around dinner, so it was the drive up where we enjoyed the lovely colors of our surroundings. We had enough time to enjoy the pool at the hotel before heading to bed. We rose bright and early the next morning because it was another two hours to our morning rendezvous for trick-or-treating at an historic village near Burlington, VT. On the way, we stopped briefly to visit the founding house for Dan's fraternity, Kappa Delta Rho. Apparently, they're not the alpha chapter because they were forced to go co-ed (darned equal opportunity), but it is still an important place in the history of the group, so we stopped to get a few photos.

The historic park was really fun. As you can see from the packed "parking area," this was the place to be for trick-or-treating the Sunday before Halloween. Despite a cool drizzle, there were hundreds of kids dressed in all kinds of great costumes going from covered bridge to lighthouse to circus barn collecting candy along the way. The museum staff were all decked out - each location had a different theme - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Captain Nemo and a Kracken, Harry Potter, you name it. Though we brought costumes for the kids, Penny's coat covered her mermaid outfit (it was cold), Paul decided he didn't want to wear his antennae to be a bee, and Zoe just started to look cold after a point in her ballerina mouse outfit. Should I be concerned she still fit that 6-9mos costume? After all the folks handing out candy disappeared, we had some lunch, then really took some time to explore the park. Paul had an amazing time in the engine room of an old paddle boat, insisting on returning again and again, and even asking to buy a postcard of it. By the time we left, we were the only car in that expansive field and we had some worn out little walkers. Thankfully, our hotel was just 20 minutes away in Burlington. I think Penny may have found enough energy to go swimming again, somehow, though.

Our next day was the dairy tour day. After breakfast, we headed over to the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory in Waterbury, VT. Nothing like a little ice cream for morning snack. The 30 minute tour was a bit of a challenge with the little guys, but as long as Zoe was on someone's shoulder's or in the backpack, she seemed reasonably happy. It was tough getting all four kids out of the gift shop at the end. A little lunch, in the capital of Montpilier, VT and then afternoon snack at the Cabot Cheese Factory in Cabot, VT. The little cheese bar where you could sample all kinds of artisan cheeses was perhaps the toughest to get Dan away from. This tour was a bit more dry than the ice cream one, but Penny at least seemed genuinely interested in how milk could got through all these steps and magically become cheese. We got some souvenir cows here, as well as some nicely aged cheese. We got to our next hotel in the White Mountains of New Hampshire a little late and certainly done for the day.


You may have noticed in our pictures so far that our vacation had sort of a gray overtone to much of it. Though not brutally cold, the on and off drizzle did make it seem a little chilly. On the plus side, the dreary overcast meant we had whatever attraction practically to ourselves. Cabot was blessedly empty since Zoe and Paul had zero tolerance for the informative video and tour. There were hardly any people in the White Mountains National Forest main visitor center. That meant we had the life sized stuffed moose all to ourselves - yet no photos?! 

Sadly, we had totally missed the fall colors and with them, every single attraction in the White Mountains. The caves, trains, trams, mountain roads, pretty much everything was closed for the season. Some might reopen when ski season started, but there was absolute zero for us. Naked trees greeted us on all sides. The folks at the visitor center kindly directed us to some short, very easy hiking trails the kids would be able to enjoy. With Zoe in our trusty hiking pack, we set off along a wide rocky stream. The kids crunched along pretty happily checking out every large stone in the path and admiring the speed of the torrent on our left. After half an hour, Zoe was getting restless, so we headed back to the car. Zoe walked for a bit of the return, which brought her immense satisfaction. It began to drizzle again right as we returned to the trailhead, so we snapped a couple of quick pictures and packed it in for lunch. 

After lunch, we took a scenic drive in the mountains to facilitate naps. Zoe took the bait, but Paul was still wired, so we got out for another short walk at Beaver Pond. I took the kids a teensy bit off trail to check out the water's edge. There were lots of stumps that showed evidence of chewing, so I figured something exciting should be nearby. Penny did a nice instructional video where she misidentified a log jamb as a beaver house, but it was a cute attempt. All the evidence of activity had moss or lichen growing on it, so my guess was the beavers had moved on a while ago. The kids had a serious blast looking, though.

The School Year Begins

Sometimes it fells like we are racing forward, though nothing significant is really happening. Penny has started first grade, where she has realized that school is work. Alas, it did have to happen. School can't be one birthday party or national food holiday after another forever. It's sad to hear her dreading it already. I wish there was a way to make it a little more fun. However, schools and teachers are pretty worried about the Common Core, so I'm betting they're cutting any fluff they can from class time. From the notes I've gotten in her homework notebook, the teacher is a stickler for formatting. Not a bad thing, but I'd prefer we get shown how to format before it's counted as wrong. I hate when teachers do that. I don't read minds. I'm also not sure what to put in "Explain your thinking" for math problems. I'm glad I missed that philosophy change in education. Show your work seems sufficient to me. 

Zoe is enjoying all the additional trips to the park. She loves climbing. More importantly, she loves the chance to walk to and from school. It wouldn't be too bad, but she has her own idea of which direction we should be going and how many stops we should make. She's able to walk about half way between school and home and that's after only a week of practice! When she is tired, she's pretty emphatic about being done walking. I like the drama of watching her sit, then slowly lower herself into a lying down position.Where does she come up with this stuff?

Paul is asking to do homework and to go to school. It is worth contemplating, but I feel like my day would just become endless chauffeur work. He seems pretty smart - has his numbers, shapes, construction equipment, etc. all memorized. He needs serious work on following instructions, which is something school could really help with. When we looked at pre-k for Penny, there weren't any options within walking distance, so this would become a driving exercise for me. Ugh! Her school hours just made driving more onerous by starting at the same time as the Catholic school next door on Mondays and Tuesdays. But maybe if I stick him in for a limited number of days, I could just choose in the Wednesday-Friday range. We'll see what options emerge. 

As for me, I obviously miss work too much. After attending some council-level programs for Daisies over the summer with other girls from her troop, I figured "Hey, I can do this." I told Penny's troop leader that I'd help her do a journey with the girls. After reviewing two, I'm not impressed. Makes me sad because I really love Girl Scouting and I hate seeing things that turn people away unnecessarily. I figure I can achieve the same educational goals in a more direct manner. Can we complete two this school year, plus some bonus recognitions and cookies? We'll see! It will feel nice designing programs for girls again. It has been too long.

Dan is inching closer to the end of the educational portion of his career and toward the part where he's really a doctor. This month he had an in-service exam at the hospital that he seemed pretty stressed about. The end of the month will also bring us to the Step 3 exam, final step in his standardized doctor testing. He's way stressed about this two-full-days paper and pretend patients style exam. He's been studying by doing sample questions pretty much non-stop for several weeks. He isn't feeling great about it, but he's doing all he can to prepare. The kids miss him a bit, but he's on a clinic rotation right now, which allows them to see him in the mornings if they get up in time for school. It may explain why Zoe wakes up just before dawn. She just lights up and does a little happy dance whenever she sees Daddy. It wouldn't surprise me if she's waking up a bit early just to ensure she sees him each day. She's such a cheerful little person!

Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour, Part 2

Moving out of our little cabin in the woods took longer than anticipated. I was up until midnight the night before squaring away the secret compartments in the car, packing all food and clothes we wouldn't need the day of our departure. At 10am I told Dan to take the kids to the playground next door because constantly providing them service was keeping me from finishing our packing. Someone from the staff checked on us for 11am checkout, nice and prompt, and I insisted I was just packing up the cooler. I finished the dishes, packed the cooler, loaded the car, texted Daddy to get them back for final potty breaks and I think we were on the road by 11:30 - terrible because we'd have to stop for lunch before we made any good distance. Thankfully, Zoe napped through to the far side of Akron, a good hour or so. Thank goodness for GoogleMaps and being able to see every Wendy's at key driving intervals!

The rest of the trip was pretty in eventful, though I think Dan declared a moritorium on visiting Wendy's. We got to our swanky hotel and checked into what seemed like the equivalent of their presidential suite - we had a whirlpool! More importantly, we had a door that closed for bedtime. Penny and I enjoyed a lovely evening swim in the pool where she tried out a life vest I can't even remember purchasing. It was so freeing to go swimming and not have to hold onto someone. We played a little Marco Polo, chased a ball, I got to go underwater, lots of fun all around.

On Saturday, we went to Triangle Park, right across the street from the museum where I grew up (Dayton Museum of Natural History at that time, Boonschoft Museum of Discovery now). It was like walking into Roman ruins. Everything was overgrown, with grass up to our knees. The swings each had a spiderweb filled with holes and old dead bugs, evidence that no one had swung in them for days at least. The structures weren't excessively rusty or overtly dangerous looking, but their style belied their age (likely similar to mine). There were a series of nice looking pavilions and a family was setting up a birthday party in one. Other than that, we had acres of parkland and play structures all to ourselves. The kids were thrilled by the unusual lack of competition and explored each structure in turn.

Not a garden, just a tall weed in the grass

It was such a stark difference from NYC parks. Here we were in a giant open space, no fences in sight. No need to open and close a gate each time we went from one structure to the next. Big, fat, old trees with no low branches lent their cool shade everywhere, from pavilion to play structure. I didn't have to hide on the sidelines so I didn't sunburn while they played. No need to constantly shout, "Take turns, you have to share the slide!" Of course, I did wonder if ticks hid in that tall grass. Both parks seemed to have similar amounts of trash lying about, but Dayton's seemed to be ancient, bleached by exposure to the elements and cleaned out by critters and teams of ants. The kids insisted on collecting bottles like we do at home, though I told them Ohio doesn't give us money for bottles like New York does.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the parks around here. They're cleaned daily, there are plenty and they have some variety in the kinds of structures. It's just that they're crowded and I feel like a caged animal in them. Sometimes a good feature when you've got someone who likes to run away. It made me a little sad to see the parks around home so abandoned, though. Each one we visited seemed to be SOOO empty, so filled with exciting animals and plants taking over.

Going to church on Sunday was a bit of a challenge. The population of Dayton has shrunk so much that most Catholic churches share their priest with one or two other parishes. So finding a Mass in the vicinity with a time that worked for the kids and had a cry room for us to escape to if they decided to be a bit more unruly involved some memory and web searching. St. Rita fit the bill, but we were a little too embarrassed to walk all the way to the front to the cry room. Of course, we were the only family with kids in the entire service, so even their quiet chatter was a bit of an intrusion. So many grey heads. Aunt Helen mentioned that my old grade school, which had become the grade school for three parishes, still might not have enough enrollment to continue. As I drove through my old neighborhood, noticing all the now-empty lots where homes, schools and businesses used to be, I could see why. According to Aunt Helen, as many as 25% of homes in Dayton are unoccupied and even enticements like property tax forgiveness can't keep people in them. So sad.

Driving tips from Great-Grandpa Saluke

On the up side, though, the important people are still around town! My Dad joined us for Mass and then we went over to Amanda's to celebrate her birthday. We enjoyed some lovely cheesecake and just hanging out for a while.  On Monday, we ditched the hotel to head over to Aunt Rose's house. They'd been making some serious preparations for welcoming us. For Memorial Day, we broke in their brand new patio, complete with huge inflatable pool. Penny was the only one brave enough to dive into the cold water. Paul tried, but requested to be removed immediately. Zoe loved kicking the water while seated on the edge. I'm not sure what the kids did for the day. All the Salukes came over to say hello and Zoe was a little clingy and shy. While I took care of her, the other kids played badminton, splashed, drove in the house and generally entertained themselves and those around them, I'm sure. Dan eventually figured out that he was in charge of ensuring they ate and what not.

I had never visited Uncle Joe's new farm and meet his bees, so I was excited to incorporate that into our trip. Uncle Joe just retired a couple of weeks before our visit, so he was settling into retired life. He introduced us to his six chickens and we went into the coop to watch him collect some eggs. He also showed us how he helps them hunt for food in the yard. They're about as free range as one can get - coop is just there for shade and protection from predators. Penny was thrilled to help collect a bountiful harvest of strawberries. The asparagus was also ready to go, but she left that to Uncle Joe to handle. We then ate an entire hatful of strawberries in the cool AC of the house. Though he doesn't have grandkids, Uncle Joe did have some nice farm-themed toys at the ready for the kids. What does Uncle Joe farm? Bees! He's had to restart his hives recently, but I get the impression the new ladies are working hard. The rest of his land he rents to someone else, who does all the farming action. Sounds like the best farmer gig there is.

We went back to Aunt Rose's for a lovely spaghetti dinner with my grandparents, Aunt Helen and a few other folks we had missed the day before. Then goodnights, a whole lot of packing and a bit of sleep before heading back to NYC. We passed through Northern Ohio again, this time staying with Aunt Cindy. Apparently, our travel schedules coincided just enough so we could catch her after her return from Florida. My cousin Andrea stopped by with one of her daughters and Penny latched onto her for a whole lot of fun. Penny loves playing with iPads, so was happy to have an opportunity to play a few games at Aunt Cindy's with an experienced friend. Aunt Jayne and Aunt Pam came over in the morning to hang out, play a few online games with us (a little weird when you're sitting across the table from someone) and enjoy another yummy feast. Then we were off again to Pennsylvania. After our last successful layover, we headed home and were more than happy to arrive at our little abode in time for dinner. It was an awesome trip. I, for one, was glad to be finished with packing up and moving every few days. Penny misses the pools and play dates. Paul has asked to go back to some of the playgrounds. Miss Zoe had some kind of revolution on the road, switching from massive quantities of spoon food to insisting upon self-feeding finger foods. She also seems to be pointing with meaning quite a bit more. Who knows what adventures our summer will bring?!

Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour

 For the second year in a row, Dan managed to have vacation in May. He hasn't managed a visit to Ohio since 2009, so we figured this would be a nice time to try. I don't know that I'd recommend traveling with three kids five and younger to anyone because it involves so much gear. Stowed in the back here, you can see a portable crib, a booster seat and a bed rail, among other things. Unseen, 50 containers of baby food, 50 diapers each for two kids, two packs of wipes, enough snacks for an army, 3 nanna blankies, stuffed friends a-plenty, Paul's roller suitcase of cars, and tons of car activities.  Thank goodness it was summer and not winter! If we had poofy winter clothes to pack, we wouldn't have managed to fit into a MERE two giant suitcases. With the car packed and some cranky kids in tow, we set off at afternoon nap time for our two-week excursion to Ohio.

We made our first stop just outside of State College, PA. Penny and Dan enjoyed the hotel pool while I tried to get the stir crazy young ones ready for bed. We had booked too late to get the suite with a separate bedroom that we aim for, so bedtime was a bit of a nightmare, but we got there eventually. The next day, we made our way to the state line. We danced the line for the next few days at Pymatuning State Park - an awesome fishing spot based on the residents of the adjacent cabins where we stayed. The kids enjoyed that our cabin was right next to a playground. I enjoyed that our cabin with linens and a full kitchen was essentially the same floor plan as our NYC apartment, only uncluttered by all our junk we usually live with.

Our first excursion after settling in was to see Uncle Dave and Aunt Pam (Mom's sister). Uncle Dave kindly took Penny and Dan on an off-road golf carting expedition to explore the farm. Having read up on the various states we'd be visiting, Penny was excited to see Pennsylvania and Ohio's state mammal up close and personal. When spooked, the white-tailed deer were kind enough to demonstrate how they got their name. Paul didn't want to go on the golf cart, but he was pretty excited that Uncle Dave had his very own bulldozer and a spiffy collection of Hot Wheels. All the kids thoroughly enjoyed the patio, with it's slide for a quick escape down to a swing set and open area for kicking around a ball. Zoe played hard to get, though, resisting multiple attempts for cuddles from her grand-aunt and uncle.


That night, Penny stayed up a little later to see the stars. It was a lovely night - no milky way visible, but she did spot a shooting star. A clap of thunder made her nervous and when we glanced in the direction from whence it came a great blackness was creeping across the sky like the Nothing in the Neverending Story. "Maybe we should go in now?" "No, no...count between the flash and the thunder. One, two, three...fifteen" BOOM!! "See, it's still three miles away." "Maybe we should go in now, Mommy." "All right."

The kids went to bed and we stayed up a bit watching the snowy TV signal. Suddenly, one of us muted the TV.
Dan: Is that an air raid siren?
Me: Yep. Probably a tornado warning.
Dan: Oh.
Me: Let's find the weather somewhere so we can see where the tornado is.
Dan: That means there's a tornado? I thought a "watch" meant you had to watch for a tornado. Is there someplace we're supposed to go or do?
Me: No. You do not go outside and drive in a tornado. John went out for a run in a tornado when we were kids. That's not good. We are in a cabin in the woods someplace we don't know. The whole place is swampy to start and there's a flood warning as well.
Dan: What should we do, then?
Sandy: If the tornado comes, we close all the doors in the hallway and hide in the hallway. That's pretty much the best we can do. Let's see if the news says where the tornado is so we know if we should wake the kids.

None of the channels was local, so no news was covering the tornado. The weather-ish channel we can found seems way more concerned with the flash flood warning, going so far as to interrupt the tornado warning as it described where it was. With our intermittent cell signal, we were able to get a doppler map of the area and it seemed that the worst of the storm was to our South and East, so we just stayed awake until the warning expired. Uncle Dave told us later that he was pretty worried about us because he knew where we were and where the warning was. Thankfully, we escaped unscathed. The only major results seemed to be a bounty of new kindling available for our planned s'more roast the next day.

The next morning, we headed over to the fishery to see some of the Pymatuning Lake residents more closely. They had some nice big specimens of a variety of fish on display in trophy mountings and swimming around in tanks. Penny enjoyed a series of matching games to identify species of local turtles and fish. Sometimes even the low-tech museum exhibits can be fun. We had the place to ourselves thanks to a steady lingering drizzle. The drizzle also meant we were alone at the spillway when we went to feed the fish. The fishery end of the lake prohibits fishing, but has a spillway that feeds into the part of the lake where fishing is ok. It seems that for generations, people have gone to the spillway to fatten up the fish before they get sucked over the small waterfall into the area where they can become someone's dinner. Uncle Glenn had clued us in to this wonderful spot. The giant carp churned the water as they fought for our bits of graham cracker (the kids had already eaten our Goldfish and I hadn't packed our precious sandwich bread for the occasion). The ducks vying for a bit of the bounty didn't like how crunchy our snacks were. It seemed the carp might accidentally inhale a duckling in their eagerness for the crumbs, though. The parent ducks planted a few good pecks, but eventually herded their progeny away from the feeding frenzy. I got a lot of scolding from the kids for not bringing more things to feed the fish, but we had to head over to our next stop anyway.

After a quick lunch, we headed to Uncle Glenn and Aunt Barbara's (mom's eldest sister). She had been under the weather when we last visited Northern Ohio, so we were glad to see her this time around. Here the kids enjoyed some fun tracks for cars and chalk drawing out in the driveway. I enjoyed seeing some of Aunt Barbara's paintings of family members. She's been doing quite a bit more since she did the portrait of my mom. Uncle Glenn showed off their awesome tiered patio, leading down to a creek. Apparently, Paul thought it infinitely fun to throw the ball all the way down the hill when playing "catch" with people. Uncle Glenn assured us he wasn't the only one to pull such a move.

Zoe spent the day of her birthday at Aunt Barbara's as well. Aunt Jayne got some awesome Minnie Mouse-themed gear, right down to some ears for Zoe to wear. She joined Aunt Pam and came over to visit for a bit. She was kind enough to also bring some lovely chocolate chip cookies (with coconut oil instead of butter - yum!). Paul was thrilled about that contribution. Paul helped me make some rainbow sprinkle cupcakes, which Penny then iced with strawberry cream cheese icing. Zoe actually ate some of the cupcake and icing, so everyone must have done good jobs.

After a wonderful party, we had to drag the kids away from Aunt Barbara's. They were pretty sacked out and went to sleep easily. Thank goodness, because there was plenty of packing up to do before heading to our next big destination on Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour: Dayton.

Sick and Back Again

Wow! No one in the house seemed to notice, but I was sick as a dog for nearly three weeks there. The turning point was when Penny's school called me to pick her up because she was sick. My first thought was, "Oh no. I can't take care of all three of them all day when I'm feeling like this!" Eventually, I dragged my butt over to the school, where Penny felt absolutely peachy, just had a bit of red splotchy action on her face. Apparently, strep had been making the rounds of the school and they wanted to send her home just to be on the safe side. So now I had all three perfectly healthy and energetic little buddies and I felt like death warmed over. Serious sinus headaches, lowest energy possible, nose so runny that I had worn off the outer edges a few days ago. But the lightbulb went on - strep can be treated with anitbiotics! I made an appointment with my doctor for later in the afternoon and was psyched to be diagnosed with a sinus infection. The pharmacy was out of antibiotics, so I found another pharmacy. Within 24 hours, the headaches were gone and I was seriously optimistic, which was half the battle.

I was pretty on edge with everyone toward the end of my cold. It was hurtful that no one seemed to notice that I was feeling absolutely awful. I went to bed early for nearly a week so that I could focus on getting better. I got the random comments about not having enough socks, "I need new [s]poon!!" or where I was on the taxes. Maybe over the course of three weeks I got two "How are you feeling today"s from Dan. Nothing from the kids. Going on a tirade when they bugged me didn't seem effective in generating sympathy, though.

Of course, now the tables are turned. Everyone else in the house has runny noses, coughs and feels a bit crappy. Paul here has a new-found appreciation for napping. He finally is starting to nap at the time in the afternoon that makes sense for picking up Penny from school. Of course, if we manage to miss nap time, we end up with situations like this where he falls asleep in the middle of a meal. I'm enjoying that nap time finally works around here, but it would be nice for everyone to feel better soon. We've gone through an entire case of tissues and feeling awful leads to some aggressive behavior around the house. We'll get well soon, with any luck. I can't wait for summer and lower exposure to germs at long last.

My Little Girl Scout

Penny joined a Girl Scout troop at her school just before they went out on Christmas break and I've spent the past few months trying to convince her that she should get a Daisy uniform. It's been tough going. She REALLY doesn't want to cover up her clothes with a big blue smock. We finally had a break through a couple of weeks ago - I think I said something about needing a place to put all her badges. She had been earning badges with the NY Public Library's summer reading program, so she was familiar with collecting things with cute little pictures on them. She's also quite fond of collecting stickers. So perhaps it was the key to finally getting her seriously excited about getting her uniform. The way I figure it, if we live close to the National Headquarters for the organization, it's just a waste to go and order the stuff online, so we took the opportunity of mid-winter recess to board the bus and head to Manhattan for an amazing Girl Scout adventure.

Our adventure began on the Express Bus to Manhattan - a ninety minute drive in Greyhound-style comfort. Paul spent the day being plied with cookies over at Nanna's, so it was just me, Penny and Zoe for the day. It was Zoe's nap time, but she couldn't hide the exhilaration she felt being on the road and not in a car seat. Penny enjoyed watching the sites and the basic tour of the sites all the way there. Since we started our trip at 9am or so, there weren't too many commuters to pester with our boisterous bunch. We arrived at the National Headquarters right on schedule and I called an old friend who works on environmental programming. It was cool getting to catch up a bit with her, even though she had a pretty hectic schedule that day. Then we headed down to the shop, where we picked up all the uniform parts, our Girl Scout Daisy Handbook and a couple of mementos to commemorate the occasion (100th anniversary pin for me, HQ pin for Penny)

Next, we managed to sneak in a mini-guided tour of the Girl Scout Museum, where Penny got to pose with Juliette Gordon Lowe, our founder. By now, we were edging into lunch time, though, so Zoe cut our touring a bit short. We did have enough time for me to point out my old uniform and a couple of recognitions. We even got to see a bit of the Girl Scout Archive as well. Penny wasn't impressed, but I thought it was pretty cool. She got WAY more impressed when she was presented with a couple of patches that you ONLY get when you come to visit the Museum and/or see the CEO. Her first day with a uniform and she already had special things to tag onto it!

After an emergency lunch there in the GSUSA cafeteria, we headed off for a special dessert - a visit to Dylan's Candy Bar. It was two floors of crazy candy excitement. My mom was not a glutton for punishment, so I have no recollection of being brought to a candy store as a kid. I can see why she avoided it. We perused the scene for about an hour trying to decide which of the candies Penny would choose as her one allotted choice. It gave Zoe a good napping opportunity, I suppose. However, it was a school holiday and the place was packed wall to wall, making the navigation with a stroller more than a little challenging. We finally settled on a gummy bear piggy bank that could be filled with any number of delightful confections. There were some old stand-bys and I interjected some items that were new to her as well. They have all been warmly received so far. You can see her new friend, Rosie the Panda, helping her select appropriate candies. Rosie was someone we picked up at HQ for "free" as a thank you for blowing an obscene amount of money.

Then we boarded the subway to head downtown and catch the express bus back home (it's easier to catch the bus right before it head off to Staten Island). This gave us a chance to point out Trinity Church and Alexander Hamilton's grave site, among other exciting historic sites. It was also fun to show her the timeline on Broadway there since her homework for the break was to make a timeline of her life. Our 3:30pm bus just had enough room for our little band, enabling us to get home just in time for a brief breather and some dinner. Whew! I asked Penny about the best parts and the worst parts of the trip and she said there were no worst parts, so I was pretty pleased with the day. Zoe seems to have survived her first trip to Manhattan pretty well as well. Having discovered the ease of getting to midtown, I might consider this route again for spring break. We'll see.

Whoa! Snow!

 Ok! Enough with the snow already! We've been getting decent blocks of snow every few days. The city has refused to close the schools, regardless of how unsafe the road conditions have become. Now, I wouldn't mind having the schools open with the snowfall, except we weren't getting plows or salt at those times. So...snow started at 9am, pretty manageable to get Penny to school, but then now plow until 9pm and six inches of snow sticking to the roads in the interim. How was I to get Penny from school? By making a dog sled out of an underbed storage container and hooking myself up in front of it so that Paul could ride in comfort to go pick up his sister. Thankfully, someone was nice enough to give us all a ride home because I was pretty darned exhausted after lugging Paul for about 0.75 miles.

Penny and I did take the wintry opportunity to go learn about maple syrup. Penny was way more interested in tromping about in the deep snow than in poking a bunch of trees with pointy tubes. She did provide the very important stick for cleaning out the tube to allow the sap to flow out. She was absolutely soaked through when we got back in the car and pretty thoroughly pleased with her snow hijynx.

I'm glad she at least got that opportunity this winter. It has been a sad one for me because just about every storm we've gotten has been perfect packing snow. But there's just no way I'm making a snow man with a baby pasted to my chest. All the good storms have been on weekdays so far, so Dan can't take the kids out either. It's been eating at me. Poor Dan has been shoveling us out day after day, sometimes piling his work to form makeshift snowmen. I'm looking forward to a few more days of temperatures in the 40s and 50s so we can finally clear away these teaser piles of snow that we can't enjoy. Of course, these piles are becoming increasingly ugly as the salt and debris are left behind in the melt. There were some parked cars on a street littered with potholes yesterday completely encased on the street side with a solid inch of gray ice. I felt sorry for the cars and owners - how will they ever get clean?!

Whoa! Christmas Blew By!

The entire month of December seems to have come and gone without mention...perhaps because it was such a busy month. Here's a quick recap: We started the month with Penny as a flower girl in the wedding of Dan's cousin, Tim. She was pretty nervous and Dan was wondering whether we should pull her out, but she's such a ham, I didn't believe for a minute that she wouldn't live it up out there with her basket of petals. I was pretty darned proud of finding a dress that tied in the color of the bridesmaids' dresses (plum) and the flowers (lavender). It was Penny's first time wearing tights and, like me, she was plenty excited to not have to do that again. I am sad that all my pictures of the event are horrible.

 All December, we did an Advent calendar with activities for each day. Penny would pull an activity from a jar at night and that would be what we tackled the next day. We decorated wrapping paper, the tree, the house, cookies; we sang songs, watched movies, told stories about our favorite Christmas memories; we wrote letters to family, Santa, and friends; we bought presents for kids in need - it was a nice mix of things. Here you can see Paul writing his letter to Santa. He delivered everyone's to the mailbox at Macy's (Macy's makes a donation to charity when you do that). He was a little sad to be at the mall and not shopping.

 We heard about a spectacularly lit house and went on an evening expedition to see it. With 16,000 visitors last year, we decided to go on a school night before school was out to keep things manageable and that totally worked in our favor. It wasn't quite as exciting as the house we used to visit in Ohio when I was growing up, but properties in NYC are smaller, so I suppose it's understandable. It was still pretty impressive with its animatronic scenes and incredibly lit house. Plus, money collected from visitors gets donated to the pediatric wing at Dan's hospital, so it's a nice way to help kids and entertain kids at the same time.

 Christmas Eve was perhaps the most fun. We had our second annual cousin sleepover. All Dan's cousins came over for some cookie decorating fun. We put the kids to bed at a more reasonable hour this year (10pm) after reading the Christmas story from the Bible and Twas the Night Before Christmas. Then the grownups got to play a card game. The game was a rare treat.

 At the whole family Christmas dinner the next day, we got to enjoy the fruits of our labor - eating our gingerbread cookies. No one dared desecrate the gingerbread carousel we had constructed. The kids did the animals, while Dan's cousins in their twenties got creative with the other decorations. They never had cookie baking when they were growing up, but now they're getting brave with it. They made their own chocolate chip cookies in the shapes of superheroes to share at the Christmas Eve party. Maybe we need to get them a cookie sheet, though, because they did bring them in the roasting pan they used to bake them.

All in all, it was an amazing month and I think we built some great memories. Now it's just a matter of recovering from the rapid fire activity and getting back into the swing of school. We had started walking to school again (two month hiatus because of endless colds and insufficient cold weather gear), but arctic vortices have curtailed our efforts. Does the weather not understand how many cookies I have to work off? Sheesh! The kids were asking to walk, thankfully, so we will get back into it before long, I'm sure. I need to get a picture of us with my little makeshift sled we had to use when the car wouldn't make it to pick up Penny for school. Apparently, passers-by were snapping photos as they crawled along in their SUVs. I'm excited that I didn't pass out from the effort of dragging Paul and the backpack 3/4mi uphill to school. I do wish I had a pic of Zoe eating snowflakes while strapped to my chest. I couldn't really see what she was doing and she is such a cutie.