Our Boston Trip

This was the second half of a very fun trip to the Northeast. After I stayed with my sister for a week I got a ride from Tom's Mom Sheryle out to Boston. When we arrived Sheryle took us out to eat at a restaurant named The Barking Crab.

This picture was taken at the restaurant by Sheryle. Here we are posing with Aunt Kaci and "Tio" Tom. ("Tio" is Spanish for "uncle." Tom has learned to speak Spanish and he decided he likes the sound of Tio Tom best.)

After our lunch Little Robby, Jenna, and I went to the New England Aquarium. After we spent a few hours in the aquarium we checked out one of the IMAX films playing in the Aquarium's theater with Aunt Kaci. It was a 3-D film. Jenna was only entertained for about half of the movie (probably because without 3-D glasses it was blurry to her). The other half I spent walking with her and trying to watch the movie from various angles which doesn't work to well with a 3-D film!

Little Robby is ready to go to school! While we were in Boston, we saw these painted cows all over the city. Each one is different. I realized on our second day there that everytime we saw a cow Jenna would say, "Mooo!"

Here is Little Robby riding the T (Boston's subway). Just like in New York, Jenna really liked "talking" to the people we saw on the T.

Poor Chap got sick the second day we were in Boston. When we arrived at Harvard for our tour given by Tom, we discovered he had a fever. In this picture he is taking some medicine that I bought at the CVS store across the street.

In the morning of the next day, Jenna had a grand time trying on Kaci's "Be You" shirt. I was surprised that she got her head in the head hole the first try.

The day that Little Robby was kind of sick he wanted to go to the little park down the street to play. Jenna really needed to get out of the apartment, so we went. She really liked the swing!

It's a good thing that Little Robby won't get his driver's license for a few years. Can you imagine seeing this crazy driver on the road? Fortunately this car was fixed to the ground at the Boston Children's Museum.

Jenna is ready to climb the rock wall at the Children's Museum! She says, "I put my hat on all by myself!"


In the evening of the last day we decided to splurge and go on a Boston Duck Tour with Aunt Kaci. It was really fun, and Robby said it was his favorite part of the whole trip. On these Duck Tours you ride in a WW II amphibious assault vehicle and the drivers give you a tour of Boston's historical landmarks and then drive you into the Charles River. It is kind of unique. Although, Kaci said some of his explanations of Boston's history were a little skewed.

Late in the evening of our last day in Boston, we had to make one more stop by the Public Gardens. Here we made a visit to the little statues commemorating the Caldecott Book Make Way for Ducklings. We had to stop because we bought this book in Boston as one of our souvenirs.

All in all we had a great time in both New York and Boston. I want Donnette, Josh, and Noah, and Kaci and Tom to all know that they made our trip wonderful! I must admit though, that I was glad to be home Friday night because the trip back was quite long and a little stressful too. I'll summarize it this way, a four hour drive from Boston to the New York airport, a 1 and 1/2 hour flight delay, 10 minutes to catch my connecting plane in another terminal in Atlanta (during which time I had to meet up with Robby who had the keys to our car!), a flight back to Arizona landing at 10:30pm, and a drive home after collecting our baggage. By that point it was midnight Arizona time, but it felt like 3am New York time to us! Phew! But I am sure glad I went!

Our New York Trip

Well, we've done a lot of traveling in the last month! The kids and I have been to New York and Boston, Dad has gone to Atlanta, Georgia, and all of us have gone to Utah and the Grand Canyon. Can you tell we like to travel?! We're into September now, and I figure I had better catch up with this blogging or else I will never catch up! So here we begin with our trip to New York. First I will say we had a blast!

Our trip began with an overnight flight to Atlanta, Georgia. The plane took off at 11pm Arizona time, and landed at 5:30am Georgia time (2:30am Arizona time). I thought Jenna would sleep on the plane, or at least I hoped she would sleep on the plane! Let's just say she got about one hour of sleep tossing and turning in my lap, and I got about 15 five-minute naps. Chap slept for about an hour too. We then had a 3 1/2 hour lay-over in Georgia, during which time Jenna was wide awake! She loved toddling through the terminal, and "talking" to everyone who would listen. Our next flight took off at 9am and landed in New York at 11:30am. Did she sleep you wonder? What do you think? No way! This whole adventure was just too exciting to miss! Fortunately, Little Robby was able to sleep most of the second flight. I must say though, that because I was so tired I was a little jealous watching Robby sleeping peacefully next to me. The one thing that saved me on the second flight was that three of the people seated near me loved Jenna and played with her just about the whole flight. Once in New York I had to get a 20 minute taxi ride to my sister's place. It wasn't until about 5 to 10 minutes in the ride that Jenna finally crashed. Once we arrived I managed to get her to lay down and sleep for several hours with me. We both felt a lot better after that. On the whole she was a very good traveler. We really only had about two moments where she cried, and both were very short. Thankfully.

Enough of my story, lets get on to some of the photos.

Here we have Little Robby clowning around with his cousin Noah. They really had fun being goofy together!

Two days after we got there my sister took us on a train into the city. We then stayed a night at the hotel in Manhattan where her husband, Josh, works. Here we have Jenna posing in the cubby in the TV stand.

One of Josh's friends brought some balloons for the kids while we were at the hotel. Jenna was really amazed by the floating orange ball.

Right next to the hotel is a really cute old-fashioned soda shop that we stopped in for ice cream. Yum!

That night we went over to Times Square to take the kids to Toys 'R Us. Here we are standing just outside the store.

One of the highlights of the trip for Little Robby was getting to go to the top of the Empire State Building! Here we are standing on the 86th floor. We also went to the 102nd floor. I hope he will always have fond memories of doing this with me. I know I sure will!

Later on that same day we walked through Central Park. Along the way both of the boys picked flowers for Donnette and me. Here Robby is working on his bouquet.

Here I am with his bouquet. What a sweet little gentleman I have!

During our trip Jenna was very clingy to me, but she also discovered that she really likes to hug on brother too. Sometimes she would get a little over zealous, and refuse to release him from her grasp. What a little sweetie!

Over the weekend my parents flew up to visit too. They just couldn't resist the opportunity to see all of their grandbabies in one place. That Saturday we traveled back into the city and saw the Statue of Liberty. Here Little Robby took our picture at the base of the statue.

One of the things that happened several times on the trip that I really enjoyed was watching and listening to Jenna "talk" to the people on the subway. Oftentimes if someone just looked at her she would smile, wave, and say, "Hi!" But other times she would go out of her way to get someone's attention by leaning over as far as she could and babbling to them till they looked her way. It was fun seeing other people smile just because she was looking at them. I think she is going to have no problems making friends throughout her life!

Bath Time Fun!

I guess this is really bath time fun for Mom! As you can see Jenna is really getting a lot of hair. I just couldn't resist playing with it! I think she's cute with whatever hairdo she has!

A trip to the museum with cousins

Last month, Robby, Jenna, and I took a trip to the Science Museum with Aunt Andra, and cousins Matthew and James! It was Andra, Matthew, and James' first time to this museum. They really had fun playing with the different exhibits.

Here Matthew pulls himself up using a double pulley.

The boys really liked the gravity well. There is something so facinating about watching a marble roll around and around and around and ....

Jenna just kicked back in her stroller and watched all the people.

James had fun with these toys and made a very colorful tower!

A Hot Hike!

Well, I have been hoping that Dad would get a chance to write about this, but he has been very busy lately. So I will tell you what I know, and maybe he can add his comments later. A few weeks back in the middle of our scorching July, Robby decided to go on a hike in the mountains near our home. He planned on getting a very early start to miss the heat of the day (but in an Arizona July all day is the heat of the day!) At first, we were going to all go as a family, but when I thought about how hot it was going to be I decided that Jenna and I should stay home and wait for another day!

This was a cool "rainbow" lizaard that they saw on the way.

They called this one the "fork" in the road.

Our little hiker with his very important bottle of water.

This was a view of the area they hiked through.

As you can tell, Little Robby got VERY hot! In fact, the one of the sites on the internet recorded a temperature of 105! I'm sure glad I didn't go! The real treat for them was the ride home. A half-hour drive in Robby's car which has NO AIR CONDITIONING right now! But, you know what, they still had a lot of fun!

San Diego: Day 3 - The Zoo

On Day 3 of our San Diego vacation we visited the San Diego Zoo. I was really glad because the skies cleared up and we had a warm, sunny day. My personal favorite animals were the polar bears and the pandas. I would post pictures of them, but Little Robby already has on his blog.

It was really fun taking Jenna to the zoo this time because she actually saw most of the animals we were pointing at.

Now here's an image we saw a lot of. Matthew and Robby taking off running.

Look at the duck, Mom!

Robby standing in front of the hippo tank. In the background you can see the hind-end of one hippo in the water and another hippo in the distance facing us.

Big Robby really liked this guy. Apparently this orangutan needed a little privacy for his nap.

And here's another picture that we saw a lot of... David and Sharon waiting for everyone else to catch up. Most of the time though it was David waiting on everyone.

This picture of Jenna is one of our favorites. Something about the look on her face. We took it because she had a flamingo on her shirt and we were looking at the flamingo enclosure.

While at the sea lion show, Jenna was more interested in climbing the stairs than sitting to wait for the show.

Hello, are you there?!

I really enjoyed riding the sky tram with Little Robby.

Coming into the station.

And here's the whole group of us. We really did have a lot of fun visiting San Diego with Andra, David, Matthew, and James. I hope we have other opportunities in the future to take joint vacations.

The last picture is of one of the windmills that you pass on I-8 in California. You can see these windmills standing just on the horizon from a long way off, and as you approach them you begin to realize how incredibly massive they are. I wish I had a way to show you their relative size, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

San Diego: Day 2 - Legoland

Day #2 was the day that Chap was waiting for... Legoland! We had quite a nice time. The sky was overcast, the day was cool, and the park wasn't very crowded. Most all of the rides had less than a fifteen minute wait.

Here we got our first view of some of the awesome Legoland creations. Jenna was looking at a lego elephant that was standing in the water and spraying water from it's trunk.

Robby has zeroed in on his dream... a lego star ship cruiser! Everybody "Ooooo" and "Aaaahh!"

Aren't the Dads and babies cute?!

Matthew is taking aim.

Daddy takes Jenna on a train ride!

Jenna says, "This place is fun!"

The Baby Brigade!

Little Robby really liked the lego race track that he got drive on. I included this picture because you can see the kid who rear-ended him in the yellow shirt.

Dad and Little Robby taking it all in.

Here we are standing in front of a lego model of New York City.

Here's Jenna sleeping in front of the lego model of New York City. (I didn't want you to think that we were excluding her from our family picture. We just didn't want to disturb her.)

Big Robby took this picture of Andra and me enjoying our fried apples. He really likes it.

Of all the lego creations, the Daytona Raceway model was one of Big Robby's favorites. He really liked looking at all the lego spectators. From a distance it almost looked real.

Our little angel slept the afternoon away.

Robby and James take a ride on the lego pigs.

When we asked Chap what his favorite legoland creation was he said the model of the Freedom Tower that is being built to replace the World Trade Towers.

All in all, we had a great time! This trip fulfilled one of Little Robby's dreams and solidified his dream of becoming a master lego builder one day!