The Awesome

We went to the Statue of Liberty for Memorial Day.  I have heard many people say that the SOL is not the most fun in the world for kids.  I think my kids would probably agree with that.  Of course they only wanted to stay home and play video games.  We tried to persuade Silas to go by telling him that we were going to see a giant robot lady.  He agreed as long as it was a giant zombie robot lady.

We parked too far away.  So we walked and walked.  We stood in a very long, slow moving line.  At the end of that line was the pier, where we waited even longer for a ferry.  With better preparation and timing, I could see it going better than it did.  Nevertheless, none of it was my kids’ cup of tea.

We wandered around the museum on Ellis island.  Because there’s nothing in it that is geared toward young children, we mostly had to chase after them and try to keep them with us.  We only skimmed over the exhibits and missed many of them entirely.  Jeremy and I both agreed that what we saw was very interesting and we would love to go again without the kids or perhaps with the kids when they are older.

There was quite a long wait for the ferry to Liberty Island.  We talked about staying on the ferry and going back to New Jersey so that we would not have to wait for another ferry if we got off.  But we figured after so much ado, we better see the statue.

The line for the ferry to get off the island went on and on.  We got in the back of the line and then got on very promptly.  Our timing was perfect that time.  Every other time we were always at the front of the line, waiting forever.  Lesson learned.

Yeah, so last weekend we were those parents that dragged their kids to see some boring thing when they would rather be playing video games.  Wa-ha-ha.  It was all part of our evil plan.

After working on it a couple hours here and there, I finally began working on the basement relentlessly for about two weeks in order to finally finish the stupid thing. The carpet was installed the day before my mom and grandma came on April 30^th. This way we were able to move quite a bit of furniture in order to move the tv room to the basement and the guest room from upstairs to the former tv room on the main level.

All of that was obviously a great deal of work and stress, which abruptly ended when my mom and grandma came. We had a restful day the next day after they arrived and on Saturday we drove into Manhattan to watch Mary Poppins on Broadway. It was our first time ever driving into the city and since it was late Saturday morning, the traffic was very light. I was very irrationally afraid of the Lincoln tunnel and the streets of NYC, as it turns out. Milo protested going to the theatre and threatened to behave poorly if he did not receive large sums of candy. He and Silas both behaved very well and enjoyed the show quite a bit. Large sums of candy were received, but would probably not be required to persuade them to come with us to another show in the future.

My mom and grandma went on their own on a tour of New York, so I was able to take Milo to school and keep our normal routine. On Tuesday I excused him from school and we all went to the American Museum of Natural History. We all enjoyed it and saw many things that I think none of us have seen before and learned some things we never knew before. The kids especially like it. Silas liked the dinosaurs the best, of course. I was very surprised that Milo said he liked the exhibits of the Native Americans the best. We were unable to see everything. It is probably too big of a museum to fully explore in one day.

My mom drove in New York that day. This time we drove 3 miles through the heart of New York and even merged into the Holland tunnel during the worst part of rush hour. Besides taking a very long time, it was not nearly as stressful as I thought it would be. I am mostly afraid of all the pedestrians, but I dunno, maybe I would give driving in New York a try, myself, someday. We even found reasonably priced parking at only $26 for the day, if we are willing to do a bit of walking. Only about $41 if we are unwilling to do much walking. It’s just the parking on the street that costs $40 per hour. We get better at maneuvering the city each time we go there.

I was pleased that my kids were as big of fans of my Grandma Miller as I was as a kid. She is very liberal with treats and toys and fun things for kids and she has a very good sense of humor.

My mom played board games and video games with Milo and Silas, which is an easy way to gain their favor. She also brought crafts to do with them. Milo can be occupied for hours with some paper and a glue stick. Silas less so, but he ate many of the popsicles that they made. They also painted some t-shirts that Milo showed off to his friends the next day and Silas had to wear his sunglasses all day with his new shirt to make himself look even cooler.

They were both very sad when their grandmas left. Emo was also very sad that Grandma Miller left. My grandma is fond of little dogs and was very nice to her. Emo cried and cut herself a little that night.