welcome spring!

Well, winter is over and spring is here.  Although, I don't remember seeing much winter this year.  Hope we don't see much summer either.  I'd be happy for spring or fall weather all year round.

Anyway, March was somewhat uneventful.  But we did have a couple of celebrity sightings this month, but no one too exciting.  So not exciting that I didn't even notice till someone pointed them out.  

We did have our cub scout pinewood derby.  It was a stake event although a lot of the cub scouts in our stake are just members of our community and not members of the church.  Here are some of the cars that competed.  There were a a few more that came later but these are the majority of them.  We had 2 boys in our pack win trophies for design.  That one with the pac man characters on a skateboard won 3rd place design in the Bears.  And the one on the right with the lights around it won best design over all the cub scout cars.  You can't see, but it also has a small compartment with water that you drop dry ice in to make it smoke.  Pretty high tech stuff.  Anyway, we were really happy he won best design because every other year he's competed, he's won 2nd place design and he was determined to have the best design since this is his last year to compete.

  One of our leaders and his son, pictured here, made this cool ghostbusters car.  The car did fairly well placing 3rd among the Wolves.  Unfortunately, this kid is only 5 and not a cub scout, which our leader  fessed up in the end because he felt bad.  They were racing for fun and it just ended up being one of the faster cars... oops.

They gave all the kids those rubber bracelet things and this is what some of the kids (from different packs) were doing with them during the race...  I was laughing so hard.

 Oh, what?  You want to see a close up?

We also visited the Natural History museum again and was able to see some other exhibits we didn't get to last time.  I think this display was in the hall of Pacific Peoples.  I can't remember what's going on here or what the figures mean but I thought they were humorous.

We also visited the Highline park one day.  It's not really a normal park you'd picture. It follows an old elevated railroad track that transformed.  It's about 15 or 20 blocks long.  So most of it is like a pathway with some wider areas to stop and sit or stand, or sometimes just benches along the sides.  And they had vegetation growing all along the path.  It was pretty cool.

Here you can see some of the old tracks.

And here you can see that they just built around the tracks.

We were there long enough to see the sunset behind New Jersey over the Hudson.

 We also did something cultural by going to see this play called Galileo.  F. Murray Abraham played Galileo.  I know you don't think you know who that is, but you do.  He played Salieri in the movie Amadeus and won an Oscar for it.  The stage was really small and round and the audience was wrapped around three sides of it so there were really no bad seats and we had a clear view.  It was about Galileo's life and condemnation by the Catholic church for his scientific beliefs.  It was really enlightening.  Worth a watch if you get a chance.  Well, if you like that kind of stuff.

And that wraps up the month of March.

it's leap day!

Leap day is upon us. Are you wearing your blue and yellow today?  Did you cry for candy?  Did you see the episode of 30 Rock last week and maybe you know what i'm talking about?  Well, whatever, it's not that important.  What's important is what is going on with us.  That's why you're here right?  To read about us (it's not that exciting). 

Let's see.  We got haircuts!  Yay!

We walked down 5th Ave one day and came upon this....

Whoops.  Not sure how this happened but I know it happened a few minutes before we walked by because we could hear the sirens on their way to the scene shortly after we passed.  

We were actually on our way to our first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  However, that museum is SO big that we only saw most of one section in a couple of hours.

While searching for the washroom, we were in the Egyptian section so we went and took a looksy at this tomb.

But most of our time was spent in the Roman/Greek art.  

After a couple of hours we were pooped.  So we left and walked through Central Park and saw this tree with a built in seat pretty much.  It doesn't really look it, but it was kinda high off the ground.

On the 16th, we went to a taping of the daily show with jon stewart.  It was really fun to go to a live taping.  They were so good at it that they did the whole show without having to retake anything.

We were #107 and #108 in line.  This was the ticket we waited for.  A badly cut piece of yellow paper.  I know, super official looking.  Then we had to come back an hour and half later to get seated.  We didn't get to choose our seats, but when we finally got into the studio, they sat us in the second row!  Sorry, no pics allowed inside.

Anyway, those were the highlights of February.  Sorry we aren't very interesting people.  Maybe  March will be different.  Meh, probs not.  haha.

there's no title for this post

Oh my.  It's the last day of January.  I best be getting on with a post...

One day I was wearing these socks and when i took them off, the shape stayed.  Looked so weird I thought I'd take a picture.  Weird, right?

Does someone need a haircut?  Um yes... it's just that we've not known where to go in this city to get an affordable and good cut.  No worries, we've got appointments later this week.

 My hair is getting way too long too... And my arms got chopped off.

 Over Christmas, dad was here and we went to the Natural History Museum one day.  It was so cool.  And SO big that we didn't even get to see everything.  This was the dinosaur exhibit.

 This one too.  Look at the size of that mouth!

My, what an iddy biddy head for all that neck...

Here's dad taking a picture in the African animals section.

 Giant squid, probably straight from the 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea movie.

 Here's a real slice of a tree.  Maybe it's not as cool in a picture but I was blown away!

 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.  A place that is WAY too overcrowded.  And cold.

 This is about as close to the tree as we got because of the hoards of people all over.  There wasn't much else to see anyway.  Except the rich ice skaters.  Who paid $75 per person to skate.

 World Trade Center Memorial.

 Really cool monument.  But this place made me really sad after a while.

 The Brooklyn Bridge.  We're so hip.  Haha.

 This was carved into a wall in Central Park.  We just thought it was neat.

 Here's an Egyptian Obelisk.  A real one.  Imported from Egypt.  In 18something.  A long time ago.

 Here's dad taking a picture of...

 ...this great skyline by the Belvedere Castle in Central Park!

This the sleeping arrangements you can look forward to when you come to visit.  Dad was a real trooper.

 Ok, here are the apt pics I keep promising.  There's not much to look at.  I am standing in our bedroom door.

 And this is standing by the front door.  Sometimes we use that ball as a chair.

 Here's our room.  Yes, our curtain is a black trash bag.  It came with the apartment!  And it keeps the cold out (kind of).

 Here's our bathroom.  It is like a hallway... That sink on the right side is about where the other wall goes to.  Eww, the tub looks dirty, I think we need to go clean it... pronto!!!

Holiday Festivities

Well Thanksgiving came and went and before Christmas does the same... well, here's November.

This has nothing to do with November but there are black squirrels everywhere in our neighbourhood and I am so fascinated by them because i've never seen a black one!

 Since we live in NYC, we decided to go to the Macy's parade.  It was a pretty day, we weren't too cold, we were surround by a billion people, and people brought ladders to see the parade.  When the parade started, suddenly all these kids in front of us were hoisted onto their parent's shoulders causing a lot of blockage.  Most of the parents got tired after a while and the kids slowly came down.

It's funny how you just start taking pictures of every single balloon and float... don't worry, I'll spare you the entire parade and show a few of my favorites.

Snoopy's balloon looked extremely overused and old.  He had patches all over him and he was fraying.

 Neil Diamond!

 Tim Burton's creation.  This was a new balloon.

Cute elves signaling that Santa's float was coming next!

 Santa!

Thanksgiving dinner on the Sunday after.  What was left anyway. We forgot to take a picture before cutting everything up.  But this is what we ate.  It was missing a lot of color but we're poor so we didn't have any greens.  And we don't like stuffing. Or yams. We did have a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving day but it was eaten by Sunday so we had pumpkin cookies for dessert.

We finally got a second bookshelf to get ourselves more organized and make some space for our Christmas visitor.

Our living room/dining room/kitchen room disaster area.  

Adam organizing the books (maximizing space)

It was a big production to empty those 15 boxes.

The finished product!  Yay us!

So I never took a picture of the spacious room we now have.  So stay tuned for the next post.  Which probably won't happen for another month.