Last week in CT

Well, tomorrow we finally head back home to Ithaca. We have had a fun summer, but we are so ready to get home. Living in a condo with someone else's furnishing was convienient, but I have definately missed our stuff. Here are some pictures of our last hurrah's here this week. I will apologize now for the many pictures. I just wanted to get them all on before moving again.:)


We went to midtown Manhattan one more time last Saturday. We hadn't spent much time in the Times Square area, so we decieded to do that. It's nice that NYC is only about an hour away. We drove in and ended up actually driving right through the middle of Times Square! It wasn't too crowded yet, but I am still glad Dave was driving. Here is a picture inside the Toys R Us right off Times Square. It was HUGE. They had a ferris wheel running in the center of the store, which was like four stories high. On the top floor they had this huge T-Rex that moved and made dinosaur sounds. It was incredibly realistic!

Next to T-Rex they had the Optimus Prime Transformer. Scott of course had to get his picture with it.

After Toys R US, I wanted to walk over to the United Nations building to see the flags of all the Nations circled in front. It was a little bit of a walk, but doable. Here is the Chrysler building, we passed it walking. To my HUGE disappointment, when we got the UN building, none of the flags were flying. I was really bummed. I don't know if they don't fly them on the weekends or why they weren't up, but I missed out.

After walking to the UN for nothing, we were all starving. We headed back toward Times Square to see if we could find somewhere to eat. Much to our delight we found Baja Fresh! I love this place. We were so excited to eat here. We haven't eaten here in like two years.

Dave's highlight of the day. We went into a NBA store and they had handprints of some of the NBA players. Dave found his favorite SUNS player, Steve Nash.

We heard this before we saw it. A couple got married in the St. Patrick's Cathedral, we think, and then the wedding party paraded down 5th Ave in back of bagpipe players. I love listening to bagpipes.

The kids were excited to see Elmo, especially Dylan. Although, when Dylan got up close to him, he was not so sure about it.

Last Monday, we drove over to Rhode Island for a quick trip (it is only about 2 1/2 hrs away). We toured The Breakers. This is a HUGE mansion built by the Vanderbilt family in Newport, RI. We were able to take a tour of the mansion, but could only take pictures of the grounds. The house was amazing. And this is a view from the main balcony. I could get used to that everyday.

Back of the house.

Side view.

We were also able to go to the beach while we were there. This was actually the main reason for coming. The beaches in CT are all protected by the Long Island Sound, so we don't get any waves. Over in RI, there are plenty of waves for kids to play in.

They loved digging in the sand, and getting water in their buckets.

Dylan loved being out in the water, but luckily always waited for daddy or mommy to take him in. Alright, it was mostly daddy taking him in.:):)

Scott even found some friends to build stuff with. Over all, the kids were really good at the beach. Scott and Madeline are old enough to know their limits of where they can go in the water, and Dylan was content to go with us holding him.

This past Tuesday, after RI, we had our last houseguests. Our friends/ family from Ithaca, The Robertson's, came out to go to the Bronx Zoo with us the next day. Wednesdays are free zoo days, and so we got there right when it opened expecting big crowds. When we got there, our plan was to do the best things first, so we wouldn't miss out on those. For the first few hours it was blissfully empty at the zoo attractions, but about 12:30, the masses came. The first thing we saw were the gorillas, and we had them all to ourselves almost.

Then we went on a little train ride/ monrail to see some animals from Asia, I think. This is the best shot we could get of the peacock. She kept turning away from us.

Dylan LOVED the animals. His entire face would light up when he saw one.

Rhinos taking a mud bath

These were by far the cutest animals at the zoo, in my opinion. Here is a red panda, and doesn't he/ she look cuddily?

Here is a lion, of course. The funny thing about the lions, they were feeling a bit frisky that day. We actually got separated from the Robetson's right before eating lunch, so they saw the lions first without us. While they were observing them, the male lion mounted the female for all to see. After lunch, our family headed over to see them, and they did the exact same thing. It was quite a crowd pleaser. Everyone started cat calling and cheering for them! Luckily, our kids were too little to understand what was really going on. Must have been something in the air that day.:)

We have really enjoyed our summer here in CT, and have fit in as much as we possibly could, thanks to all our visiors we could go have fun with! I must admit, I am looking forward to getting to Ithaca and not traveling anywhere until Christmas. We are a little exhausted and want to get back to our day to day routine. I am sure my posts will soon become quite mundane. We'll be getting back to the quieter life of Dave being a student again.:)