Leftovers

Craig just uploaded all his photos onto the computer, so I'm sharing some of my favorites. (It's possible there are a few repeats in there. If I'm boring you, sorry!) I don't think there's any order to them at all-- just enjoy!

At the pool with our friend Afton

Ryder is well protected from the dangers of UV-rays

This is the turtle that Craig found in our yard-- isn't he cute?
Bentley wanted to keep him as a pet...

Bentley konked out on the couch. Pretty sure he was sick this day...

Happy Ryder!

A friendly get-together/Sad farewell to the Browers

Ryder asleep on a pew at church

Apparently it was too sunny at the temple to smile...

Nothing as relaxing as crossing your feet and doing a little thumb-sucking...

Playing with cousin Samuel

Bentley gets a hug from "Uncle Slam" at a Potomac Nationals game (our local minor league team)

Lazy Summer Day

In my defense, I got very little sleep last night. Craig kept me up until midnight (I really shouldn't let him drink Coke any more. It always ends with me angry at how late we stay up) and Ryder was up at 5:00am. And I don't think I ever got enough sleep to recover from our New York trip. But even so, I'm not sure that justifies the 2-and-a-half hour nap I took after church today. But oh, it was delicious to sleep so long on a summer afternoon!

After napping the afternoon away, I got up and made creamy pesto for dinner. And homemade breadsticks. And I'm pretty proud of myself for that!

Have you ever had one of those meals where you are stuffed full but you just keep eating because it is so dang good? That was this meal. It's going to take me hours to clean up my kitchen. But it was so worth it.

I love summer time.

I love having the time to do stuff like this. I love knowing that we don't have to get up early tomorrow morning (although I will try to go running before it gets hot-- the point here is that I want to, but I don't have to!). I love having Craig around and de-stressed enough that he doesn't mind me napping for so long. I love that a summer storm is brewing outside and that we still have ice cream in the freezer (hmmm, maybe I do HAVE to go running?). I love that the kids have just played Angry Birds for the last hour and they actually took turns sharing the game.

It's amazing how much happier I am after some extra sleep and a really good meal!

Empire State

I feel like I have been uploading pictures all day today. But it's worth it, because now I can tell you about our trip to New York!

Now, before I begin, I should explain that the real purpose of this trip was simply to visit my sister. I've been to New York a few times and seen most of the major sites that I'm interested in. Obviously, there are still about 100 billion cool things left for me to see, so it's not like I think I've "done" New York. But with three kids in tow, we really only cared about having a nice time with Favorite Aunt Tracy. So you don't need to be horrified that we didn't catch a Broadway show/see ______ museum/eat at ______ restaurant/visit the Statue of Liberty/Empire State Building/Metropolitan Museum of Art, or any of the many many other super cool things there are to do in that crazy city.

Having said that, I think for only being there for a long weekend, we managed to pack in a lot! So here goes!

We drove up Thursday night. Tracy had found an adorable one-bedroom apartment for us to rent, so we went straight there and then realized that there is no good way to haul three kids, suitcases, pillows, strollers, and bags of food up to the 6th floor while parked in front of a fire hydrant. Oops. We got it all in eventually, but it was a hassle. Tracy was able to meet up with us shortly thereafter and took the kids to a park to play while Craig drove around looking for parking and I fed Ryder. After that, we ordered pizza and then put the kids to bed and stayed up way too late chatting and trying to figure out our game plan for the next day.

Tracy left and Craig and I were just about to go to bed when Ryder woke up absolutely enraged about his sleeping arrangements. It took a bath to calm him down, after which he proceeded to hum to himself for ten minutes before falling asleep. I listened to him and vowed that we would do something different the next night!

The next morning, tired but excited for our day, we met Tracy and walked with her to work. Bentley was a trooper and walked nearly the entire way there. It was sort of misty out, though, and when he slipped a bit on the sidewalk, he decided he was done. So he got to ride in a stroller and we carried Ryder in my sister Natalie's Ergo Carrier, which she had let us borrow just for the trip. That thing probably saved our lives (and our backs!).

Anyway, we got to Tracy's office, which is inside Rockefeller Plaza. And since it was a Friday in the summer, that meant that Good Morning, America! had their concert going on outside. Which meant that we got to watch Bruno Mars from the 3rd floor conference room! It was a great way to start out the day, especially since it was just last week that Craig realized that there are a bunch of songs by Bruno Mars that he really likes! So we enjoyed the concert:

Bruno Mars himself!

All the crowds that we got to walk right through, thanks to Tracy's pass!

After the concert, Tracy needed to actually work, so we headed out in search of breakfast. Unfortunately, by this time, the mist had turned to actual rain, so we grabbed some doughnuts from a street vendor, looked around hopelessly for a covered place to eat, and finally headed down to the subway and ate on our way to the museum. I know-- can you think of a dirtier place to eat something sticky like doughnuts? Oh, well. I didn't lick my fingers clean, at least!

We got to the Museum of Natural History about 20 minutes before it opened, which gave me just enough time to feed Ryder. I was about to just sit on the ground in front of the museum to do this when a swarm of kids arrived and proceeded to stand all around, so I retreated to a nearby park bench. The rain had mostly stopped by now and there were trees sheltering me, so it wasn't too cold. Then we went to look at the dinosaurs, which are the best thing about this museum:

Ryder (and Kendra, below) admire the T-Rex

The next coolest thing is the blue whale! Holy cow those are amazing!

Bentley loved the lions:

We grabbed some lunch and headed to the Sony Wonder Technology Lab. It's fun and it's free. The kids ran around while I fed Ryder. Unfortunately, when I asked if there was anywhere private I could go to nurse, I got ushered into an employee break room, and had no way to tell Craig (whose phone had died) where I was. So he was worrying about where I had disappeared to. But we found each other eventually! Somehow we didn't manage to take any pictures there, though...

Our next stop was the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA for short). Tracy had a pass to get us in, and I hadn't been since I was in high school. Since then, being a humanities major, I had taken a modern art class and WOW that museum is so much more fun when you actually know what you're looking at! I ran all over squealing in delight with each piece that I recognized. I awarded myself double points if I could tell who the artist was before I saw the name plaque. And yes, I even took pictures of two of my favorites:

The Starry Night is so popular, it's hard to even get close enough to look at properly! It's one of those paintings that I hate to love because it's too popular. But I do love it. How could you not?


And Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon! How many times have I looked at that painting in classes? Lucky for you, I decided to not try and pose like the women. I was kind of tempted, though...

Another favorite, and much more obscure painting, that I came across was Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale. The title alone just cracks me up every time.

I was proud of myself for not getting distracted by Salvadore Dali's The Persistance of Memory, which hangs right next to it.

We didn't spend long at the museum. Everyone was exhausted by this point, and no one else was as thrilled by it as I was. So I ran around catching the highlights and then we met up, again, with Tracy who was done with work by now. We grabbed dinner at the Shake Shack and took it back to Tracy's apartment to eat.

While we were there, Bentley got brave and climbed the ladder to her loft:


Then we left Tracy to take all three kids back to our apartment by herself (really! And she DID it!) and Craig and I went on a date. Since he was 13, Craig has wanted to see Cirque du Soleil perform. And lucky for him, they're in New York at Radio City Music Hall right now. So we had to go:

(I swear I am not actually that fat.)

The show inspired me to sit, balanced, on the 2nd floor balcony rail.*

The show was AWESOME. If you've never seen them before, definitely go! I'm already wondering how we can see them again. And it was nice to walk around the streets of New York without pushing a stroller or carrying a baby. I felt so free!

And that was Friday.

As you can imagine, we were all pretty exhausted from it.

The next day we didn't do nearly as much. Tracy took the kids to the park again:


And we visited the Central Park Zoo, where the sea lions were a big hit:


We went out for Indian food, which was fabulous. Unfortunately, Ryder had a blow-out diaper there, so Craig and I had the fun experience of changing him on the floor of the smallest bathroom ever. Gross, huh? Ah, parenthood!

We sat in front of the Hudson River, eating $4 cookies that were enormous and worth every penny, and watching the sunset:

And the next day we went to church with Tracy and then hung out at her place with a friend of hers and her kids. On the walk home, Ryder (who hadn't napped all day) slept in the Ergo-carrier:


We were sad to say good-bye to Tracy, but relieved to return home to our 3-bedroom house (so much space to spread out and close doors and let babies nap!) and our driving-places-instead-of-walking-to-them lifestyle!

Thanks for a great vacation, Tracy!!!


*Can you tell that those are fake legs that I'm standing next to? When the Cirque du Soleil guy did it, it was much more convincing!

You Gotta Love These Guys!

A few months ago, my sister's father-in-law suggested she and I go to a baseball game together. The Mariners were coming to DC to play the Nationals, and he thought we would enjoy going. It wasn't until we were about to buy the tickets that we understood that he wanted to buy the tickets for us and that he wanted to get us really good seats! This meant a huge change in plans for me-- I'd been planning on buying my own ticket as well as tickets for my kids and Craig, which meant we were going to be getting the cheapest thing we could find. Suddenly, instead of looking for cheap tickets, I needed to arrange babysitting!

After only a little bit of begging, Craig agreed to watch all five kids on the condition that his parents come and help him out a bit (understandable, since Bentley is the oldest kid there, and the group included two babies! That's a lot for any one person!). And Natalie and I were off!

We did, indeed, have fabulous seats, and I had to take a whole bunch of pictures to document this fact. This was easily the closest I have ever sat at a ball game, and it was great being able to see everything so well!

And I'll admit it: it was really awesome having a break from the kids. I enjoyed being able to ride the metro without having to navigate with strollers, without having to hold someone's hand or have them sit on my lap, without having a lug a diaper bag around or worry about who needed to go potty. In fact, Natalie and I just sat and enjoyed the ENTIRE game without having to get up for ANY of those reasons! Crazy, right?

The sad part was that the Mariners were ahead the entire game, and then in the bottom of the ninth, the Nationals rallied to win it. That was kind of heart-breaking, I have to admit. But I finally decided that, other than those last ten minutes, we'd had a fabulous time and I wasn't going to let one lousy loss ruin my wonderful evening.

It was a great night.

Thanks, Mark, for such a great evening! And thanks Craig, Tom, and Donna for watching the kids for us and making it all possible!!!

Arriving at the ball park. The metro directions made us nervous because it said our stop was half a mile away from the stadium, but that was totally wrong-- it was more like one block away! Phew!

Relishing our awesome seats

Ichiro runs by as batting practice ends-- too bad we weren't quick enough to ask for an autograph!
(We also hadn't thought to bring a pen, so maybe it was just as well...)

So excited!

And so hungry!

Capturing Ichiro's bizarre-- but effective!-- batting stance

I was proud of this action shot that I captured. I love my camera!

One of the most bizarre entertainment things I've ever seen. In Seattle they have an animated boat race up on the diamond vision (the hydra race). Here, they had this "Presidential Race"! Weird, huh? But pretty funny!

Happy campers. This was before the 9th inning.

And another good action shot.

I sure love the Mariners! Next we'll win for sure, boys!

Bear With Me

I have every intention of telling you all about the Mariner's game and New York City. But things keep popping up to keep me from getting around to it. Stuff like working out, going to the pool, catching up with friends, more ball games, sales people presenting very long pitches (we said no), watching friend's kids, trying to figure out preschool for Kendra (ended up saying no to that one, too, come to think of it), visiting teaching... The list goes on and on. It's been hard for me to get my grocery shopping and my laundry done, or even make it to book club, and those things usually get higher priority than the blog.

But I will get around to it as soon as I can. I promise.

In the meantime, please read this blog post. Those of you who aren't stay-at-home moms like me will understand why I have such a hard time getting stuff done. Those of you who are SAHMs will be laugh to see that someone has explained it so well!

Cheers!