Am I There, Yet?

What’s my excuse for blog neglect?  Life.

We moved…again.  We’ve outgrown our cracker jack box.  Five of us + two bedrooms(one year) = some interesting challenges.  So, we found a three bedroom townhouse in a neighboring community that will fit us nicely.

You’d think that we’d be pros by now…with the whole moving thing.  It has gotten easier over the years.  I do look forward to a new move.  I look forward to the opportunity to go through all our stuff and purge our lives of excess.  Nobody can accuse me of being a packrat.  I look forward to new beginnings in new houses. 

I do, however, have a desire to settle down…dig in and put some roots down into a community.  Now that two-thirds of my kids are in school, I want them to be able to hang in there for awhile and make good friends and grow up with those friends.  I hate that they’re always saying goodbye to friends that they make.  But, somehow I manage to get them excited about new moves and new friends.  They do O.K. for themselves.

Titus had his 6^th birthday last Sunday.  (Ironically…we moved into his 6^th house on the same weekend.)  We had a great day with him.  He’s a fun kid.  Josh took him out for a special birthday breakfast in the morning.  We then let him plan his own special day…well…sort of.  He first told me he wanted to go to NYC and go to ESPN Zone for lunch, Build-A-Bear after lunch and Max Brenner’s for dinner.  I managed to get him to consider some other options.  We ended up compromising with Chuck E. Cheese’s (a place I loathe) for lunch.  We then went home and opened gifts and played with new toys for a bit.  Red Robin was the dinner choice…there’s nothing like a group of strangers singing happy birthday  in a public place to make a little boy feel important.  We also planned on taking him to Build-A-Bear here at a local mall.  I know it’s not as fabulous as the flagship store in
Manhattan…but it’s still fun, right?  Anyways…we got to the mall and discovered they had a power outage.  Build-A-Bear was closed, so we promised him a rain check.

Lilly’s birthday is this upcoming Monday.  She’ll be 8.  She’ll be starting in her new school on the same day.

Lydia is starting to move around…a lot.  She’s doing the backwards crawl thing.  Our new house is a split level with lots of stairs.  So, the timing couldn’t be better…YIKES!

Life always seems to keep me on my toes.  But, I wouldn’t trade mine for anybody else’s.

Titus:  Mom, do you know what my two favorite places in the whole world are?

Me:  No…what are your two favorite places?

Titus:  Disneyland and
New York City.

On Saturday, we decided to take the kids out and we spent the day in Manhattan. 

Typically we’ll drive to the train station, pay $4 for parking and $10 for train tickets…each way, per person.  The kids are free, but we still end up paying $44 for all of us to get to the city.  It’s expensive, but the most convenient way to get to the city.

Saturday we tried something new.  We spent $1.80 on the NJ Turnpike, $8 to cross the Goethals Bridge to Staten Island and $5.50 for parking.  We then took the Staten Island Ferry…which was FREE!!!  It only cost us a little over $15 for all of us to get to the city.

$44 or $15?  I’d say $15 is the better way to go.  We went on a Saturday where it was easy to find a parking spot.  I would imagine that weekdays would be a challenge. 

Anyways…we had a great day.  We spent the entire day in lower Manhattan.  We took the kids to the NYC Police Museum.  We watched the helicopters take off and land at the Manhattan Heliport.  We wandered around South Street Seaport.  From there you can see all four waterfalls. 

The highlight was the bungee jump.  Both kids got to jump for 5 minutes each, but the best part was Lilly’s grand finale.  We caught it on video.  If you listen closely you can here her say, “I do NOT want to do that again.” 

It was a fun day with the kids.  Here are some pictures and the video: