Day trippin'

It's Spring Break - minus two days that we needed to make up for snow days... Not enough time to "go" anywhere knowing we also need to run an office (!), but we did sneak into the city today for some fun. Normally I would drive - non-rush hour it takes about an hour, but with traffic - you just never know. The kids have been BEGGING me to take the train into the city. We are the LAST stop and it's a LOCAL train taking two hours so I have avoided it until today. Here we are at 9am!

We were about 2 and a half seconds into the trip and they wanted their snacks! Ut-oh, it's going to be a long day! They looked out the window for a bit, then played on their kindles. About 1/2 way there Emma admitted driving was SO MUCH better because they could watch a dvd in the car. HAHA! Ben LOVED the train - surprise surprise. A) trains B) he played on his kindle the entire time.

We made it to the big island on the railroad and now had to stare at this map for ten minutes and decide how to get to the Central Park Zoo. Funny thing is, before kiddos, I backpacked the world! Europe! Asia! No English anywhere and yet I always figured out how to get to where I needed to go!

Let's just say, my magical GPS touch is a bit rusty but...

...we made it to Central Park!!! The children immediately wanted to be local city folk and Emma had a hot dog from a dirty water dog vendor and Ben chose a giant Pretzel. (Look closely at Em's shirt - she dripped mustard on her sweatshirt with her first bite!)

Within 15 minutes of walking, Emma's "legs hurt" and Ben was "tired" - no children, we are not horse and carriage riding to the zoo. Suck it up and WALK! They did and we made it. As Madagascar is our favorite TRILOGY, we were excited to visit the place where Alex, Marty, Melmin & Gloria all met. Woohoo - the CENTRAL PARK ZOO!

It's actually a really tiny zoo, but they do a great job on the displays and the children's zoo is very interactive. This SEAL was happy to pose. I'm not sure what Ben is doing... Breakdancing?

The peacock put on a good show, thank you very much.

And the 4D "Ice Age" movie was FUN - look at these gangsters...

I'm a cute little bunny!

There are hundreds of giant glacial rock formations in the park just waiting to be climbed - I've got about 10 different pics of the kids climbing, but I'll only tease you with ONE:

We made our obligatory stop to visit BALTO, our favorite Sled Dog EVER (please see the animated movie)...

Ben purposely brought his BALTO book so he could "read Balto on Balto!"

We rode the carousel for the first time... I waited on the side and Ben blew me kisses with each revolution - such a good son. :)

We were getting tired so we made our way back to the railroad station on the subway - always a treat for the suburban kiddos... A great way to spend the day, trippin' in the city so nice they named it twice - New York, New York.

April showers and baths

The PTA science fair was last week. This was the 1st year the kids didn't do a project. I think mommy is still burned out from the Talent Show! We walked into the gym and Ben spotted a "dig". He spent the entire night here and didn't look at any of the projects. Emma, on the other hand, ditched me immediately and wandered the tables with her pals. It was a fun night but when it was done Ben was sad, "But I didn't even get a chance to see the projects!!" (We were there for 90 minutes!!!!) 

It was cold and rainy and windy on Sunday so Em's 1st lacrosse game was canceled. We did a lot of snuggling and reading and movie watching...

When we reminded the kids it was bath night, they asked for the first time in forever to bathe together. I was all, "Ummm, NO."  This was the compromise: bathing suits! Hahaha. 

We love the game 5 second rule but we made up our own "kid edition" to keep it easier. Questions like, "Name three kinds of dinosaurs" or "name three things you can buy at Walmart" or "name three things you may find in the ocean." We were laughing so hard! We love our Sundays, indeed.