Family Home Evening at the Pumpkin Patch

I had no real intentions of getting "Pumpkin Patch" pictures of my kids every year. It just so happens that Derek suggested one Monday that we go for Family Home Evening. So we did. I didn't make sure that everyone's hair was fixed and that they were dressed in their pre-planned Halloween outfits. We just went to have some fun.

I had to put some comparison pictures on from last year. Ryan doesn't look much different but I hardly recognized Katie.

Happy Halloween!

Costume Choices...

Hmm... what to be for Halloween?

A bat.

Spider

Monkey

Ladybug and Blue Power Ranger

Lion
Alligator (zipper is broken)

Lion fits Ryan slightly better.

Thomas the Tank Engine (we DO have a conductor hat, and yes, he'd wear a shirt.)

Spiderman

Umm... not sure what Katie was going for - it was just in the dress up pile.

Princess 1

Princess 2 (had to bribe her with chocolate by this point to keep putting on costumes).
We had about 8 other costumes that Katie could wear - but wasn't up for the fight.

Now we just have to choose which ones for the Trunk or Treat tomorrow.

New York City, Tuesday, 9/25/07

Tuesday we visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Ellis Island - really enjoyed it.

This is not the ACTUAL foot of Lady Liberty, but it is life-sized.

View of the NYC skyline from the Statue.

Empire State Building

After hanging out all day at Ellis Island and Liberty Island we headed back to Times Square area and saw Spamalot.
It was funny, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone. The songs weren't impressive in my opinion and it didn't seem super professional. Some of the humor went a bit too far which made it less than stellar for my taste.

Spider Day in Preschool

Today was spider day.

We read a book about spiders, sang some spider songs, I had caught a live spider last night so the kids got to inspect it and then we let it go outside. Then we let the kids make their own spider webs and pipe-cleaner spiders.
For snack we had web pizza and spider pizza.
The kids were actually pretty attentive for about 45 minutes - not bad for 3 year olds.

Wild Fires in California

No, I don't believe that we are in any danger. I seriously don't know much about the fires going on around here (except that it was arson). On Monday morning there was a fire about 5 miles from our place and there was talk about some evacuations in the stake. The fire is in the foothills and it would have to be REALLY out of control and plow through hundreds of homes before reaching us - so we are not worried. The sky was very dark on Monday (smoke) and when I left the house in the morning the sun was bright red. By the time I got back about 15 minues later - it looked completely different. These pictures were taken just after 9:00am.

It was interesting because when I was looking at the sky, the sun was orange but it doesn't show that way in my pictures.

The winds were really pushing the smoke in a southern direction so when I looked northeast - the sky was pretty clear, but southward it looked totally brown.

My back patio is COVERED in ash and the winds are blowing it all over the place. I'm just ignoring it at this point because it doesn't make sense to try and clean up when things are still going.
Anyway, business as usual unless we hear otherwise.

Best Feeling EVER

Today a six-year old was pretty angry at me and expressed it to his younger brother and Ryan.

Unexpectedly, Ryan said something to the effect of, "I don't want you to say that you don't like my Mom. If you're mad at my mom, I'm not going to play with you."
The boy replied with, "No, I LIKE your Mom, I just feel mad that she won't let us go to the park."

I was very surprised - my boy stood up for me. I didn't think he had any idea that I had feelings. Anyway, I don't want to encourage him to pull the "I'm not going to play with you anymore" card, but it did feel nice that he cared about me.

New York City 9/24

I feel another boring post coming along here. We had another bus tour to go on Monday morning. This one was into Brooklyn. It turned out to be pretty interesting but there weren't many pictures/sights that would've been recognized by the viewing audience here so I'm not including any pictures of Brooklyn. We got back on the Downtown tour bus in order to meet up with the bus to take us to Brooklyn so we got to repeat a little of the downtown sights.

Here's the Flatiron building. It's where Peter Parker works.
This was some amusing scaffolding in the fasion district - the entire block is geared for women so it was funny to see that they even tried to make the construction look pretty.

We took a walk to find a museum at Ground Zero. It was nothing like I had expected it to be. I thought that they had some sort of monument or memorial for the victims of 9-11. We walked around the entire area and found nothing for the victims. It was still all under construction.

We DID find a memorial for the firefighters which was nice.

I especially liked seeing the faces of all those who had sacrificed their lives in the performance of duty. It made the sacrifice seem a little more real for some reason.


Here are some shots of Trinity church which we loved.







This big tree root is on display outside of Trinity Church. It is from a tree that used to stand outside nearby St. Paul's Chapel. Apparently when the twin towers fell the Chapel was used as a place of refuge for the recovery workers. It is right there by the twin towers site but came through without even a broken window. Church history declares it was spared by a miracle sycamore on the northwest corner of the property that was hit by debris. The root of that tree was bronzed and is on display at Trinity church now.

Derek near Wall Street.

This one's for you Joe.

An illustration of the dangers of standing up while riding in the double decker tour buses. Check out how low those traffic lights are.

Posing in front of the Brooklyn Bridge.

There were a few boats at the South Street Seaport that we were able to tour.

Satelite dish on the side of this historic 100 year old boat. Maybe there would've been less mutiny back in the day if the sailors could kick back and watch some direct TV. Who's watching it now, I'd like to know?

Brooklyn Bridge tower with gothic arches.

Now, you've gotta love Chinatown. Frankly, I wasn't interested in buying any junk to clutter up my house with, though our tour guide gave us some helpful tips on bartering (act insane). When Derek and I went to scope out Chinatown and I got a wiff of the AWFUL smells, it became my #1 objective to get the heck outta there. If these next few pictures don't at least SORT OF gross you out, you served a mission in a foreign country. Either that or you've had food poisoning multiple times in your lifetime.

Little Italy is now basically one street. They were having a festival that week - the feast of San Gennaro. Little Italy wasn't much either, but we DID get a big kick out of these signs.

Here a cop was directing traffic and this trucker started arguing with her about how he should've been able to go. It was hilarious because she was just arguing back while traffic was going on around them.

We ended the day with a meal at Stromboli's pizza. This is a chicken and lettuce pizza. One of my favorite meals while in New York.

Derek and I were trying to figure out what in the world we did after dinner on Monday. It turns out, not much. We tried to stop back by FAO Schwartz just to find it closed for the second time, then tried to get an internet signal in Central Park with not much luck. We were trying to get tickets for either the Daily Show or Colbert Report or something. Unfortunately, you have to check their website and then they email you and you verify it and we didn't have internet connection long enough to make it work ever. Oh well!