7.09.2010

Independence Day Weekend

We enjoyed the long weekend very much. We went to New York City on Saturday and Philadelphia on Monday. I was supposed to take a cake decorating class that started on Friday but I was the only person to sign up so the class got canceled. We decided to go to a drive-in movie instead of just sitting around. We went to a different theater this time and they had funnel cakes! I think Sam got two bites; I was so excited that I practically inhaled it (which is a bad idea with powdered sugar).


Some highlights of the day in NYC:
-I asked Libby the elevation of NYC.
-The awesome feeling in Yankee Stadium.
-The Yankees fans were not annoying! I guess they didn't have to be defensive since it was their house.
-We had perfect seats to the Yankees game and we were in the shade the whole game.
-Yankee Stadium was nice but the grass was the worst I've seen on an MLB field and it made me happy.
-I drove on the way there and I am very proud of myself for not dying in the city.

 
Some highlights of Independence Day:
-The National Anthem recording was having some problems and it kept repeating.
-A lady said, "Oooh, it looks like a star!"
-Kids were chanting, "Hit the plane" for each firework.
-Alex was more interested in playing with the empty baby food containers than watching the fireworks but would squint/flinch at the fireworks sometimes, too.
-The gold weeping willow fireworks with sparkles at the end were my favorite.
-I love the smell of fireworks.


Some highlights of the day in Philadelphia:
-At the zoo, a man lifted his son up to an exhibit and said, "This is a cactus." Had the child never seen cactus before?!
-The giant elephant shrew was my favorite. It could move its nose like a finger! It was so cute!
-We practically had the zoo to ourselves because it was about 100 degrees and 50% humidity (or something ridiculous like that). It was not a highlight that I had to sit down on the dirty sidewalk because I thought I was going to faint.


9 comments:

The Monsons said...

ok i'm still in awe of you. How do you come up with all these ideas? Where do you see/hear about them? You are the best family activity planner I know of! I think I'll just start adapting all your activities to Portland. We don't have MLB near, but maybe a minors game...and drive in I can probably find. How do you stay in budget with all of it?

The Monsons said...

p.s. sorry for all the questions...!! Just consider me your west coast stalker. haha :)

Jake said...

Looks like so much fun. I haven't been to a drive in movie in who knows how long, and one with funnel cakes? Amazing. We'll have to get your tips on NYC. We haven't made it in yet.
Also loved the Snooze button post. Reminds me of my hubby. Except the alarm is now the cell phone which also has a snooze option! B

Brea said...

you guys are seriously ALWAYS having so much fun! Alex is so dang cute!

The Harker's said...

Would love to go to a drive in movie! I should check if we have any around here.

Camille Elise said...

You gotta tell me your thoughts on Eclipse. I saw it 3 days after it came out...

Merkley Jiating said...

It is easy to come up with things for us to do because we are in a new area and so EVERYTHING in Allentown is new to us. Also, we are an hour away from Philadelphia and an hour and a half from NYC. So there is a lot to do. When we moved here, I talked to other women in the ward and asked them what there was to do around here with a baby and then read their old blog posts from when they first moved here. The budget is definitely an issue. We canceled our cable so we could do more activities. It just wasn't important enough to us. Anything we want to watch we just find on hulu. Sam gets discount tickets through work to a lot of the places. We bought a membership to the zoo and to the science center. Because Alex is under 2, he gets in free to everything (I can think of). So we purchased a year-long membership for one adult. Then that adult (me) is allowed to bring one guest (Sam) and then Alex gets in free. So we saved about $40 at each place. At the drive-in, we bring our own food. The only thing we bought were our tickets and the funnel cake. But both drive-ins here do a double feature for one price ($8). Which is much better than going to a regular theater. If we go out to eat, we only buy one meal and share it. Lots of places are doing deals where there is an appetizer, entree, and dessert for cheap ($13 at TGI Fridays). We shared that and even Alex ate a lot of it! NYC was expensive. We spent over $200 there. We messed up parking and had to pay to park twice, we bought all day passes for the subway that we only used twice because of the parking fiasco (the lot closed at 7pm so we had to move our car). Also, we forgot to bring any food so we had to eat out for every meal. Yankees tickets are expensive. We were planning on getting them from a scalper but ended up getting them on stubhub. That was probably way more information than you wanted. Sorry!

Paxton said...

ok, rule number one, you HAVE to go to the Macy's in New York during Christmas time. AMAZING and Santa (the REAL Santa) hangs out there and is AWESOME! No, really AWESOME! :-)
That being said,
WOW!
There was SO much going on in this post! You guys look like you have been having a BLAST! I just love how well you put everything together! You amaze me!
You son is super cute (still, and always) and I am so jealous of you being so close to so many cool things! i LOVED living on the East coast! You HAVE to go to Hershey Pennsylvania too! Mr Hershey... VERY VERY cool guy! He did A LOT of things beyond chocolate!

Paxton said...

ok, rule number one, you HAVE to go to the Macy's in New York during Christmas time. AMAZING and Santa (the REAL Santa) hangs out there and is AWESOME! No, really AWESOME! :-)
That being said,
WOW!
There was SO much going on in this post! You guys look like you have been having a BLAST! I just love how well you put everything together! You amaze me!
You son is super cute (still, and always) and I am so jealous of you being so close to so many cool things! i LOVED living on the East coast! You HAVE to go to Hershey Pennsylvania too! Mr Hershey... VERY VERY cool guy! He did A LOT of things beyond chocolate!

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