Seen on the road from Bridgeport, CT to Manchester, NH. You gotta love a trucking company with a sense of humor. See the "round" message above the red lights on the bottom, back of the truck. (Click on the picture to see a larger version of the photo.)
Sorry for the bad photo. We drove past this sign several times and this was the only chance I had to take a photo of it. it's just indicative of what a great neighborhood my Godfamily lives in. The sign says, "Duck toy found" and there's a little sketch of it and a phone number. You know some child is sad to have lost it and this person(s) recognized that fact and took the time and trouble to try to locate the rightful owner. Gotta love it. (Well, I guess you don't have to love it, but I do!)
Well, if you can't go camping, at least make some s'mores. This is the second visit to the Godfamily when we had an evening of s'mores. I like that plan! Look, the grocery store even had a special display just for s'mores. There was even a t-shirt offer but it wasn't really a free t-shirt 'cuz you had to pay $2.99 for shipping and handling.
Fletcher had a baseball scrimmage Wednesday night. Here he is pitching.
Here's Fletcher in the dugout talking to Grammar Queen and True to Blue outside of the dugout. I wonder if they're giving advice.
Fletcher at bat. Oh wait! He got a hit! Here's Fletcher running to first base.
We had gorgeous Spring Break weather during spring break. Here's Grammar Queen studying for her AP European History Exam. She's actually been going to study sessions during Spring Break! I'm impressed. :-)
Here they are! Our Carnegie Hall performers!
And here we are back at The Carnegie Deli!
And here's more big food. Here's True to Blue with his strawberry cheesecake.
Fire Shot ordered deep dish apple pie and it is really deep!
Uncle Steve ordered a black and white cookie. According to friends of mine "in the know" this is THE bakery item in NYC.
Here's Aunt Kathy with a piece of "5th Avenue pie" which is supposedly made with 5th Avenue candy bars . . . must be a lot of candy bars in there!
Grammar Girl ordered strawberry short cake.
Here we are inside. It was general admission so we scurried and got a box! If you're going to go to Carnegie Hall, you might as well go all the way, eh? :-) We're looking for you-know-who in the audience below. The choirs sat in the audience during the other performances. Not too longer after I took these photos, they announced that there was no photography of any kind, so I didn't take any more photos, but these were already taken.
Can you spot Fire Shot, Grammar Queen, and True to Blue in this crowd? We found all three of them.
Fortunately, after that giant meal, we still had time before Fire Shot had to be at The Hall so we took a stroll through Central Park. It was everything you expect it to be. The first bridge we saw we thought was the one from the movie "Enchanted" but when we got up close, there was no road under it and in the movie, all the bicyclists are under that bridge. So now we're not sure. Here we are in front of a different bridge (with a very different look from the Enchanted bridge) that does have a road under it. Guess we have to watch the movie again. ;-)
Here we are at Carnegie Deli enjoying a meal before the big concert. Grammar Queen and True to Blue had to meet at the high school at 2:00, rehearse, and ride a bus to the concert. Fire Shot got to ride in the car with us and doesn't have to be at Carnegie Hall until 7. We met Uncle Cathy and Aunt Steve right outside Carnegie Hall and headed to this deli for dinner. Fire Shot LOVES pickles so it seemed appropriate that we picked a place famous for its pickles.
We'd heard they had big sandwiches here, but this is ridiculous. Check out the size of this BLT! Aunt Kathy sure was surprised (as were we all) when her sandwich arrived only a few minutes after placing the order. We found out later from our waitress that each sandwich has a pound of meat on it. If you order their double meat sandwich, you get 2 pounds of meat and the triple has--you guessed it--3 pounds of meat.
The egg salad sandwich is no slouch, either:
Uncle Steve ordered a hamburger. It's giant, too. And it's cooked fresh. So fresh that it took 20 minutes and the rest of our sandwiches only took 3-4 minutes. We all ate without him and then yacked and yacked and yacked while he enjoyed his hamburger. Aunt Kathy had enough B, L, and T left over that Uncle Steve was able to add a lot of nice "fixins" to his burger.
We attempted a trip to Target last night but got there right at closing time. So first thing this morning we went. There were a lot of "essentials" to buy, but Fletcher had two gift cards that were birthday gifts. He used some of his money to buy Laser Battle, a cool game of strategy that involves moving mirrored pieces around the board that when strategically placed, bounce a laser light beam hopefully into your opponent's tower. There are sound effects involved, too. It's a pretty fun game. And the board can be reshaped into several different configurations giving you more versatility in the game. Here, Fire Shot and True to Blue are engaged in a battle of the minds.
Geek Squad took Grammar Queen, Fire Shot, Laser Boy and me to the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site which is only 20 minutes away from the house.
(Note, Grammar Queen is holding up the "W" which was loose and crooked, which of course bothered her so much. It wasn't a grammar issue, but it needed editing.)
Here we are outside the birthplace next to the well.
We're inside the interpretive center watching a short film about the life of Walt Whitman. Geek Squad and I found the narrator's voice particularly soothing and we both took short little naps during the video. Fortunately, the video was short. In the interpretive center they had a wonderful hands-on display of children's games from the era. We played tic-tac-toe, they had a Jacob's ladder, we tried our hands at the "cup in ball" where the ball is on a short string and you try to catch it in the cup. My favorite was Jacks. Neither Fire Short nor Laser Boy had ever played Jacks before! We had a lot of fun trying it out. Geek Squad even bought two sets of Jacks in the gift shop so we could play some more when we got back home.
While True to Blue and Grammar Queen were at Octet rehearsal (in preparation for their Carnegie Hall Concert), the rest of us went to Crab Meadow Beach to check out the new playground.
The 4 towers in the background are part of the power plant in Huntington. It may not be the most attractive thing, but it keeps town taxes down and that's usually a good thing. The building to the left is La Casa, a really nice restaurant that we ate at on another trip when I was here.
Hyper Boy loves to climb. This new equipment gets a high rating from him.
In the camper, we played a rousing game of the card game, Spoons:
Then we played the Dr. Mari version of Spoons:
We seriously toyed with the idea of going on a short camping trip while I was in town, but practicality set in and we compromised by setting up "Old Forgotten" (the family pop-up camper) in the backyard. We played in it off and on during the day and some of the boys slept in it Sunday night. In the camper was "The Panda Bag" which is the bag of toys, games, and "things to do" that I put together for our giant "Trek from Texas to NY" in summer 2004. It's been so long since everyone has seen or played any of those games that they were all "like new".
Laser Boy takes his turn at turning the crank while Hyper Boy learns how it all works.
Hyper Boy is able to get into the camper first before the door is officially open. Note The Panda Bag to his right.
All family members contribute to setting up Old Forgotten (except for True to Blue who wasn't present) but certain jobs are restricted to tall family members.
