Our Fabulous Weekend in New York

We had been planning this fun weekend to visit our family in New York for a good week,  but nearly didn't go when it came time due to sickness. After a very persuasive visit on the phone with my sister-in-law Kamber, I decided that to heck with any and all sickness, we were going to go have a fun weekend whether we all got sick or not. Plus we tried to keep up hand washing and coughing into elbows. :)
 We arrived after a 2 1/2 hour drive from Massachusetts, through Connecticut and into New York. One thing I never expected was how quick it is to drive through the states here in the east. We drove through Connecticut in an hour and a half! You could never do that out west. Ever. Unless you were driving at VERY high and dangerous speeds. I think. Or flying.

We got there in the evening so after a few hours of chatting and the kids trying their hardest NOT to go to sleep, we went to bed. In the morning it was so nice not to feel like we had to rush off. We just had a whole day to enjoy each others company in whatever ways we wanted.

We started off at Costco for lunch! :) That was both delicious and fun. People kept stopping and staring at the cartload of kids we had, what with the 2 cute babies sitting in the front of the cart and the 3 older kids sitting in the basket of the cart.  They kept asking if they were all siblings, since there was such a strong family resemblance. Kamber and I kept pointing at each other, saying that there were 2 moms to all these kids. Seeing as how it was Sample Central there in Costco at lunchtime, far too often Reed was not there to claim his girls so I'm pretty sure Brian was getting all the credit for all of the kids. It was pretty funny how many people kept staring at the kids.
After that we went to Stew Leonards. That was an experience! Between all the singing puppets and animals and the rush of ALL the people there, it was indeed memorable. It was fun to get to stop amidst all the groceries to listen to the puppets and to get to try a few of their samples as well. We're still eating our Blue blueberry bagels. Well, mostly Reed since he is the bagel man. Oh and they had the cheapest strawberries I have found here and they were delicious!

 After all the shopping, we trekked over to New Jersey to see the Statue of Liberty. (Remember, the states are so much quicker to drive through. It was a quick drive.)  It was so neat to see so many buildings I had only heard of or seen in pictures. Aftyn was not quite as dazzled. So here is the picture portion of this post:

Ready to go to New York Mom!

Isn't she so sweet to oblige her mom a picture?

Driving to New York. Portable dvd player was the best investment for Aftyn!

Riding in the back of the van for all of our Saturday fun!

See that tall building in the middle of the picture. That is the Empire State Building!

New York skyline

Blurry, but it is the Statue of Liberty!

Sitting on the boardwalk while the rest of us look at the Statue of Liberty

If you close one eye and ignore the blur, that's us with the Statue of Liberty! (As you can clearly see, our camera does not take great dark/night pictures. I'm thinking we could use a new camera since ours is only 5 years old. : / )

Times Square

Look at all the cabs! Know how they talk about all the crazy driving in New York City? From what I saw, it's completely true. Crazy cab drivers.

I think this is right before Times Square. You can't even see the tops of the skyscrapers.

The adults got home and put the kids to bed and then decided to stay up and chat for a few minutes. 4 hours later when we realized it was 2 am, we hurried off to bed. In the morning, Reed and I packed up and got ready for church and said our good-byes.

All in all such a fun weekend.
We got to spend some time with  family and got our first glimpse of New York City!