Our Residence Inn in Cherry Hill reminded me of Wymount apartments. The rooms were situated in clusters of buildings. It wasn't a layout with which I was familiar, but apparently that was the style in the 90's. We rather enjoyed it. Oh yeah, my kids are in the habit of taking a cup full of fruit loops with them from their hotel breakfasts. They snack on the cereal later in the car.
And in case you think I'm being overly modest when I mention that things aren't all smooth and happy, this is the result of asking Nellie to put on her shoes. "I cannnnn't put them on by myselllllllf," she wailed. Um, pretty sure you do it every other day, kid. Aubree wanted to help her, but, being the mean mom that I am, I made Nellie put them on all by herself.
Nellie may have some lessons to unlearn when we get home. We know that all this traveling is especially hard on her, so she gets more spoiled that she might otherwise. Since Mark has been with us, she gets carried pretty much all the time. I've been insisting that she get down and walk more often. "Nellie," I reminded her, "you know Dad will be leaving soon. There won't be anyone to carry you then." Without missing a beat, she replied, "Aubree will carry me!" I think she'll have a rude awakening when Mark's gone.
When planning this trip, I quickly realized that New York City required much more time and money than we could allot to it. It rather demands to be a destination all by itself. So, we did little more than wave at the Big Apple. Our only NYC specific outing involved riding the Staton Island ferry round trip past the Statue of Liberty.
Getting to the ferry was somewhat of an adventure. First of all, the streets on Staton Island are crazy narrow. Then, everyone and their delivery truck thinks double parking is totally legit, so we were constantly trying to navigate that obstacle course. Pedestrians seem to believe that cross walks are for dummies, so you never quite know when a person might pop out right in front of you. Finally, of course there was no parking right at the docks, so we got to explore a bit further and have ourselves a nice long (and hilly) walk. We arrived just as a boat was leaving (rats) and got to wait an extra half hour for the next ferry.
Still, we loved getting to see Lady Liberty. The kids weren't bothered at all that we only saw her from a distance. When we got to the far dock, we ran around and hopped right back on the return ship. On both trips, we shared the ship with a large group of Jewish school-boys. We're getting exposed to quite a variety of religions over here on the east coast!
Once we got back to our van, we drove to the far side of Long Island to visit Shae, one of my college roommates, and meet her family. I need to pause here and tell you a little about Shae, because she is one of my biggest inspirations. I haven't seen her for 13 years, but still, when I'm struggling with a situation, I ask myself, "What would Shae do?"
Shae has been through some incredibly hard life experiences, but she's handled them with grace, forgiveness, laughter, tears, and faith. I'm embarrassed when I think of some of the ways I didn't handle those same experiences well, and they weren't even happening to me! Shae's laugh is completely contagious. Hearing it again filled my heart with joy!
You know what else was a joy? Meeting her fabulous husband, energetic son, and adorable baby for the first time. Aubree and Nellie were completely enamored with baby Stella. Seeing Shae happy makes me happy.
And the boys? Well, moments after we arrived, Nathan invited them out to the backyard to dig in his hole. It is my firm belief that boys were meant to spend time regularly digging holes. It's one of the things I don't like about our tiny backyard - no place for hole digging. They spent hours outside digging in Nathan's enormous (no longer coffin-shaped) hole.
If you have boys, you already know how it ended, right? A hose was involved, and pretty soon everyone was a muddy mess.
Graham got in trouble for throwing a big rock into a puddle in the hole. Mud splattered on Thane and an argument ensued. By the time I arrived, Graham was in tears and Thane was indignant.
"Graham!" I scolded, "Do not throw rocks!"
"I didn't throw it," he responded, "I tossed it."
"No throwing, tossing, or even dropping rocks, okay?! It is not okay to throw rocks for any reason!"
"Well," he responded, a gleam in his eye and a smirk coming to his lips despite the tears coursing down his face, "Actually, what I meant to say is that I flung the rock."
I managed to hold my laugh in until I got back in the house, but just barely.
Shae and Dan treated us to New York pizza pie for dinner. Once we got the kids to bed (two of my boys slept in Nathan's closet because it's huuuuge), the adults talked and reminisced. It's nuts how much I've forgotten of college life; so many of the details are buried under layers of kid-dust in my brain.
Hopefully it won't be another 13 years before we get together again.
Our end-goal for Wednesday was reaching our hotel in Boston. On our way, we stopped for lunch to visit friends from our time in Florida. Unfortunately, we didn't time or plan our visit very well, so we missed seeing Eric and their three older kids, but we did have the pleasure of spending a few hours with Becky and Rosie.
When Becky opened the door and introduced us to her 3-year old daughter, Rosie, we all busted up laughing. You see, Nellie's two best friends at home are named Rosie, and on our trip, it seemed she ran into Rosie's everywhere - at church, at the parks, in museums... We started joking that Thane is collecting keychains, Bryce is collecting key cards, and Nellie is collecting Rosie's. The two girls had a blast together.
Becky made us grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch (my kids asked, "how did you know we love grilled cheese?"), filled us in on the adventures of her beautiful family, and gave us much appreciated advice for our time in Maine.
We left hoping to beat afternoon traffic and were successful in that endeavor. We were so successful, in fact, that we had plenty of time to swim in the hotel pool before enjoying the hotel dinner - beef empanadas (and actually, now that I think about it... we really had the empanadas in New Jersey and pizza in Massachusetts. See how quickly details get muddled in my brain?).
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