New York City - Day Two!

 Wednesday morning we woke up and headed into the city on a much more crowded bus.  We all had to sit separately.  The guy right behind Calissa had to go to the bathroom and created quite the stir on the bus that morning!  Once into the city, we headed to Central Park.  

We rented some bikes and headed on our way exploring.

It was a gorgeous day!

A beautiful view of the lake in Central Park.

 The rode most of the way around the 6 1/2 mile loop before stopping at the Museum of Natural History.

 But first, we needed a stop at this food cart, Wafels and Dinges.  Oh my goodness ... so very yummy!

 After finally finding a place to chain up our bikes (harder than you'd think with only one lock),

 we headed into the museum.

 Teddy Roosevelt

 The kids were a little disappointed with Rexy ... they thought he should have been bigger.

 It's a beautiful building!

 After paying and seeing a film about the universe, we started exploring the maze of a museum!  This is the museum in the "Night of the Museum" movie, but it didn't look much like the movie.

Here is Calissa with a life-size blue whale!

 We found something from the movie!

 Travis with a meteorite!

It truly was a maze and we didn't even see all of it!

 Everywhere in New York has these rotating doors!

 After leaving the museum and finishing our ride in Central Park, we returned our bikes and took off on foot.  We walked to St. Patricks Cathedral. 

 It was so beautiful and so big!

 The stained glass windows were absolutely gorgeous!

 Here is the Rockefeller Building.  So tall!

 Grand Central Station

 Lots of people in Grand Central Station.  We happened to be there around 5:00 at night, but it's such a cool building!

 After a dinner of pizza we visited the New York Public Library.

 It's huge!  Calissa wanted to know where all the book were!  We found out it was a research library, so they have no fiction books there!

 After stopping for an ice cream, we made it to our show "The Play That Goes Wrong."

Even the playbill was a bit of a mess.  It was a hysterical play that had us laughing so hard we were crying!  The write up said ... "If you like a ramshackle set, a leading lady with a concussion, and a corpse that can't play dead, then this is the play for you." 

After the play was over we headed back over to the Rockefeller Building to go to the "Top of the Rock." Unfortunately, because of the great weather the line was out the door and they had no more tickets available for that night. It was supposed to rain on Thursday, but was supposed to stop around 7:00 pm.  We decided to book our tickets for the next night around 10:15 pm and hope for the best!

After walking 11 miles today (and riding over 7 miles on bikes) we headed back to the hotel.

New York City - Day One!

 Calissa's choir was supposed to go to New York over Spring Break to compete and Trav and I were going along as chaperones.  At the beginning of February, her choir teacher ended up cancelling her choir because not enough of the girls were planning on going.  Once that decision was made, we decided to get our money back and go on a trip as a family.  We talked about going to Yosemite, a church history trip, a trip to Disneyland and the Dodgers, a trip to New York, or a trip to Las Vegas (Grand Canyon, southern Utah, etc.).  We were going to vote on Family Night, but that afternoon I had the thought that maybe we could combine some of those trips.  We called it the "New York hybrid."  We decided that we'd spend a couple days in NYC and then rent a car and drive to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, then travel to Palmyra and Fayette for some church history sites, and then on to Niagara Falls. That was the top choice and we booked an awesome trip.  We left Tuesday morning, bright and early and took BART into the San Francisco Airport.

 We had a direct flight into Newark, NJ and took Uber to our hotel. It was our first experience with Uber and it worked great! Once we checked into our hotel, we had dinner and then headed into the city after a short bus ride.  We arrived to the hustle and bustle of NY!

 Times Square!

 NBC Studios and 

 Radio City Music Hall!  We tried to go to the "Top of the Rock" that night but when we arrived we found out that the top was fogged in, so we decided to go back the next night. 

 After we left Top of the Rock, we saw this bakery that Marci had recommended.  They were known for their banana pudding.  Trav said it was yummy.  We had a good brownie and blondie as well.

After getting a snack we headed back into the heart of Times Square and visited M&M World and the Hershey Store.

 All four of us squished into the photo booth at M&M World.  Our last picture was supposed to be a "mad face" but we couldn't stop laughing!

 More of Times Square!  It's crazy there with so many people and so many lights.  This was at 10:00 pm!

 Look who we met up with in NYC? Tyler and Teri were there visiting Tyler's mission and happened to be there the same night that we were.  We met up with them and headed over to Dave and Busters to play some games.

 We played for about an hour or so together. Calissa and Trav trying to win some tickets.

 Conner and Tyler racing each other. 

 Teri and I racing each other. The boys were better than we were.

We parted ways around midnight and headed back to our hotel.

Track and Volleyball!

 Track has started.  Calissa is running the 1600 and the 800 meter races.  

 She's doing great and we're proud of her! 

 Volleyball has started as well.  Conner has a pretty good team this year!

 Setting the ball like a pro!

A new pet?

 I got home from work yesterday and was looking at my email on the computer when I noticed something moving in the backyard.  I didn't think much of it, because we have cats wander through our yard all of the time! However, when I got a closer look, I realized it was a chicken (it ended up being a rooster)! 

 I went out to get a picture of it to send to Trav and it followed me back towards the house.

It paced back and forth in front of the sliding glass door and pecked at it.  A few minutes there was a knock at the door and the neighbor was there asking me if I knew I had a chicken in my backyard.  I told her I had just realized it was there and that it had been crowing all day.  It had come into their yard under their broken fence and when her husband had chased it, it flew over the fence into our yard.  I went outside and tried to chase it out the back gate, back into the canal space where she thought it came from.  That was comical and embarrassing, but I quickly realized that it was unlikely that I would be successful until my kids came home. In the meantime, part of the Oleole family came to my rescue.  However, they cornered the rooster in a corner, but it flew over the fence into the front yard.  Now, six of us were chasing the rooster all over our yard and the neighbor's yard.  I had my laundry basket and was trying to trap it under that.  Needless to say, we were not successful and after about 45 minutes, we gave up.  I had to take Calissa to a pasta feed for track and when we got back, the rooster was nowhere to be found.  The next morning, however, it was crowing away as soon as the sun started to come up.  After a few days it made its way down the street and is now not living in my front yard!

Dance Festival

The kids had Dance Festival last weekend.  They had been practicing for about 2 months to learn all the songs for the performance.  Both Conner and Calissa participated in the "Specialty Dances" as well as the regular group numbers.  They went to practice on Saturday nights to learn the extra dances.  They learned swing, latin, waltz, disco, country, hip hop, and contemporary.  They had a great time.

 The swing number.  Calissa is in the pink skirt on the far left with her dance partner Levi.  Conner is in the front, middle. They did such a wonderful job!

Conner and his dance partner, Lillle.

Auntie Jen

I got to be Auntie Jen full time for 6 days last week.  My brother and Tina went to Hawaii to celebrate Kevin's 40th birthday. I spent the first three days at their house, and then the final three days at my house.  On Friday, Emily and I were able to head out for a walk. (There are 3 deer down there behind the fence).

Because of all the rain, the creek is pretty full!

Saturday, we went out to lunch at In N Out Burger and then I took the kids to the park. They had fun playing  for a couple of hours.  Christopher and Lindsay got pretty muddy!  Emily had fun scaling this rock wall over and over again.She was so fast on this 10 foot wall!

Friday night we watched "Finding Dory," Saturday night we watched "Home," and on Sunday night we watched "Pete's Dragon."

Monday, the kids didn't have school so I took them to the Oakland Zoo.  They had a fun time and we spent most of the day there.

The Petting Zoo

Silly kids!

We had a fun time.  The kids missed their parents, but not as much as I thought they would. Glad I was able to help them out, but I'm also glad I don't have little kids myself anymore!  :)

Flooded Again!

 Trav and I like to go on walks or hikes on Saturday mornings, but with ALL the rain we've been having, it's been hard to get out ... especially into the hills.  We decided on Saturday to go to the Lafayette Reservoir for a walk around.  We ended up going twice (5.6 miles) and managed to not get rained on!

 We woke up the following Tuesday morning to heavy rain and you guessed it ... we flooded AGAIN! The rain this time poured into the family room.  I could see it coming up through the carpet.  It also came up the sidewalk into the side door. Luckily, we still had Chris' things.  We left a key under the mat for him so he could suck up as much water as he could.  He set us back up with the fans and dehumidifier for another 6 days!

 That night we went out an got sandbags too.  We're willing to try anything to see if we can stop the water from coming in!

This is becoming an unwanted, but familiar sight!