NYC Trip

So a week later I thought I should finally get around to blogging about NY. I took a trip to NYC with some girl friends of mine and we had a ton of fun and ate a ton of food! Tim took great care of the kids of course and I think they barely even missed me. Tim was probably pretty happy that I came back though. After 5 days of non-stop walking, seeing, eating, and subway navigating I was pooped. Here are some re-caps:

After landing and checking in we promptly made our way to times square which ended up being about 10 short blocks away from our hotel in midtown. This was not my favorite place, too touristy. But I liked it much better on a Wednesday night than when we went back again on Saturday. That was utter ridiculousness! However, it's Times Square...ya gotta go!

Michelle, Audrey, Gena, and Becky

The first night we were there we took a night bus tour so we could get an idea of the entire city. This was a lot of fun and gave us some good ideas of things to do that we hadn't thought of.

Magnolia Bakery. Red Velvet Cheesecake. Yum.

Also, I want that apron that the mannequin is wearing.

Me, Gena, Christi, Becky, and Michelle on Ellis Island.

This place was amazing! I could have stayed here all day.

The new buildings progress at the WTC monument sight:

The Broadway show that we went to. I was not initially excited about it but it turned out to be great and very funny. Besides we were 8 rows away from Brooke Shields who was starring in it and as corny as it is, you gotta admit it's always cool to see someone famous perform so closeup.

At 30 Rock filming the TODAY show on Friday morning.

My best friend Ann Curry who told me I was cute and that my hat looked great on me. We're very close now that she's shaken my hand.

Funny story. This picture is part of a series of pictures that we were taking while being retarded on an otherwise empty subway car. (We had to get our subway pics in while we could so that no other real New Yorkers would laugh at us.) We got so carried away we missed our stop, ended up traveling 20 minutes to the next stop across the river into the Bronx where we had to wait 30 minutes for a return train to pick us up. We paid closer attention after that.

Best pizza of my life at Joe's Pizza in Greenwich Village. I would consider moving here just so I could eat this pizza everyday.

I was very girlishly happy to be in Central Park

At Serendipity 3. This is definitely the largest menu I've ever had to navigate.

I took this picture just for Tim and Harry. Although I'm pretty sure you can't buy ride on lawn mowers or lumber or anything larger than a faucet here.

Chinatown! Not as cheap as I thought it would be!

Ferrara's. Best gelato, followed by the best cannoli, followed by a trip to Scali in Greenwhich where we enjoyed the best italian cheesecake. When I ordered the cheesecake I was still eating the cannoli. I know, I'm gross. I really can't believe that Tim married me with the food habits that I have.

This was such a fun trip and I'm glad that I got to go! Now Tim is reminding me that it's his turn to go somewhere awesome with the boys.

Toobabalooza

I ran my first race today with friends, Celeste Knight, Robyn Jenks, Michelle Easton, and Lori Hardman. It was called Toobabalooza and our team was "The Mudders". It was an adventure race consisting of an inflatable obstacle course, a trip up and down the river, running, toob obstacle course, mud obstacle course, more running, swimming in the lake, and finally more running. The catch was that each team member had a toob which you had to hold on to the entire time and all the toobs had to be tied together. Like I said, it was my first race so I didn't know what to expect. I learned one very important lesson: it turns out that I might be mildly, ever-so-slightly, competitive. We had a great time together and luckily Celeste's husband showed up to take pics during the race. The only unfortunate part was that he couldn't get pics where we went through all the fun mud obstacles. Those were our favorite and where our team really shined.

Check out those guns. Oh yeah!

We finished at 1:18:53 and were 4th in our division

I had a great day getting wet and muddy with my fellow "mudders"! Thanks guys!

Mother/ Daughter Camp Out: Take 3

Lillie and I went to our stake's Mother/ Daughter camp out for the 3rd time and had a great time as always. The weather was fabulous and the company was even better. I love you Lillie!

Here is Lillie with a minnow that she caught

At the river going down the "rapids"

With all the girls from our ward that we camped with

Lillie also caught a butterfly. It seemed pretty happy in it's cookie box cage.

First Day of School 2011

Here is Samuel on his first day of Kinder and Lillie on her first day of 2nd grade. They were both really excited for school to start and having been loving it so far. They both have friends in their class that they knew previously so that was really nice for them. I'm so proud of them and I cannot believe that Samuel is already in Kinder!

We're so proud of you baby girl! We know you'll have an awesome year in 2nd grade!
I did a really good job (emotion wise) getting Samuel ready for Kinder and didn't think I'd have a hard time leaving him. There were no tears in me (or so I thought). When I hugged him goodbye an embarrassing amount of emotion welled up and I had to keep hugging him so people wouldn't see me crying. Luckily he didn't notice and he finally pushed me away so he could go play with play-doh. Have a great first year buddy!

The Last 2 Weeks of Summer

Get ready for a very.... long.... post.

So our last 2 weeks of summer were fun fill and jam packed. We started off with British soccer camp for Samuel. They have coaches from Great Britain come and teach the kids some new skills. Samuel loves soccer and had a blast. Here he is in his challenger uniform:

The kids with Coach Damian. It was really funny to watch them in the beginning because the kids couldn't understand what he was saying. He had a pretty thick accent. He would get all excited and give the kids directions and then say "alright, let's go!" Then the kids would just blankly stare at him with "what?!?" expressions on their faces. So funny! After the first day they started understanding him much better though. Samuel had a great time and ended up learning a lot.

In the midst of soccer camp Dianne came to visit/watch the kiddos while Tim and I went camping to celebrate our 8th anniversary. We went away to this place called Inks Lake. It was great to spend time together without having our conversations constantly interrupted!

So here are pics of our camp site:

This was our private entrance to the lake

And this our view from our tent. It was great to sit down by the water at night. There was lots of wildlife: frogs, ducks, blue herons, and something we couldn't identify that would make their calls just after the sun set as they settled down in the marsh. And all day you could see little turtle heads poking up out of the water.

In the mornings when it was cooler we took advantage of the park's great hiking trails. They were pretty rocky which is our favorite kind of hike. There was lots of great scenery, particularly cactus which was just getting ready to bloom. I was fascinated by this stuff and plucked a couple of fruits to dissect back at camp. I've heard you can eat them cooked but had no idea how to prepare them so I tried it raw... I wouldn't recommend it. I'll have to try it prepared correctly one day though.

The other great thing about the hikes was that we never saw anyone else. Love the seclusion.

We spent an afternoon swimming at Devil's Waterhole and jumping from the cliff you see in the background. The picture does not do it justice. The jump is 38 feet down and then into maybe 20 feet of water.

Here is our friend Lucy the Squirrel. We came back after a hike and found that we had mistakenly left a box of muffin bars on the table. Her and her friends helped themselves to 3 of them.

This park has the most friendly squirrels I have ever witnessed. Lucy, and others, would walk right up to our table and wait like a dog. So, we fed her. She would take her loot a foot farther away then sprawl out and nibble it up. After she was full of grapes and cheetos she started burying everything and that was fun to watch too so we threw her a lot of stuff. Then on the way out of the park that day we noticed the DO NOT FEED WILDLIFE - FINE $500 sign. Sorry Lucy. I hope that you do not die from Cheeto preservatives.

On the road between the park and a little town that we frequented there was a fish hatchery. Neither Tim or I have ever visited one so we thought we'd give it a try.

Here's Tim:

"So, what happens at a fish hatchery? Who works here? Where's a guide? A pamphlet? A Sign?"

So we helped ourselves to a self-guided tour. Here is what we found. Half filled ponds, empty holding tanks, and a display with one catfish. Now, I'm sure that this fish hatchery enjoys much hatching, growing, and distributing. But still, I like to enjoy my theory that this is a wonderful government conspiracy to funnel our tax dollars into something else.

On to more sights. One mile down the road from the hatchery is Longhorn Cavern State Park. It was built by the CCC that Pres. Roosevelt started. They built some cool buildings, blazed some awesome trails, and cleared out a pretty great cave. We know, we took the tour. And our guide, Will, or Phil, or maybe it was Bill gave us the low down: deepest cave in TX, formed by an underground river (which is a more rare type of cave), haunted, and movie stars like to party here. Some of his information was questionable. But still, lots of fun and the cave really was a cool place to spend 2 hours on a hot TX afternoon.

One night we took a moonlight paddling canoe tour which was very peaceful. Our guide was nice, but very close to nature. Tim found her a little hard to take and had a hard time keeping a straight face. Good thing it got dark!

On our way home we came across Lakefest 2011... which were speedboat races. They were white trashy and fun. I think ESPN 8 "The Ocho" might even have been there.

And here's Grandma with the kids. They all had a really great time and Tim and I very much appreciate her willingness to come out and take care of them.

We love you Grandma!

Grant pooped after a long day at the pool. This sort of defines our summer. We were pool goers and nappers.

I had a fun girls nite a couple of days ago. We went to this little club and listened to great music from an Austin Blue's band called the Lisa Marshall band. My friend Julie (on the far Left) and her husband are really into the San Antonio swing dancing scene. She introduced us to some of her swing buddies who taught us some steps so we had a lot of fun dancing and listening to great music.

Inks lake was so fun that we decided to take the kids up there yesterday for a last blast of the summer. The same as the beginning of summer we went up there with a bunch of friends from our ward and had a great time.

Lillie and Samuel have always wanted to fish and on this day they got their chance. One of the rangers gave them some lessons then we rented poles for the day. Lillie was pretty good but Samuel turned out to be an expert caster and the ranger was quite impressed. He didn't like the waiting around part so he spend most of his fishing time just casting and reeling in. He was happy!

Lillie kayaked for the first time and was amazing! She paddled all around with no problem.

Almost the entire group

Cliff jumping:

So we're back at Devil's Waterhole. The kids wanted to jump so Tim made them try the little ledge first. This is where Samuel stayed the entire time. I was so proud of him as he has been terrified of water his whole life. Each summer he gets more and more brave but this was just a crazy huge step! Good job buddy!

After the little jump Lillie insisted that she still wanted to jump from the high spot. So Tim hiked her up there, counted to 3.... and she jumped! No problem. She went back and forth between the low and high jump all afternoon with no problems. There were a lot of people on the cove and they were all clapping and yelling for her and for Samuel too. They were the youngest people jumping by far and no one could believe that a 7 and a 5 year old would jump from it. I was a little surprised myself. I spent the time paddling around with Grant, and switching my emotions from terrified to totally proud. I was fine with them jumping I was just scared out of my mind that they would slip off the rock and hit their head, then fall into the water. Thankfully everyone is safe and whole!

We have had such a fun TX summer. We've survived about 3/4's of the heat so far. Now we just have to get through September and October and we can enjoy some really nice weather for a few months! We had a great time with all who came to visit us and with those we went and visited. School starts tomorrow so I'm going to go to bed now and do something that I've been dreading for the past 10 weeks... set my alarm clock.