What a whirlwind week! All the kids are now officially in school. Everyday. Thank goodness. As I put as my status on Facebook earlier in the week, I love my kids, but as a mom of FIVE kids, I think I might just love the first day of school even more! There is only so long my kids can stand being around each other and that got used up in the first 2 weeks of our trip, so the 2 weeks before school started weren't so fun. G and J marched off to 7th grade, advanced band and less nerves last Tuesday-
L, L and E started school this Tuesday (16th) and things are looking up for a great year! The three of them were really ready to go back and were counting down the days. I'm so glad they see school as a place to look forward to, a place they want to go! We met their teachers last Friday and took the pictures we do every year.......
Eric and Mrs. Horcasitas
L and L with Mrs. Robinson
Tuesday morning they were up, dressed and ready to go. Luke may have been slightly more excited to wear his new shoes than to be going back to school-we bought the shoes on our trip and I told him he could not where them outside the house until the first day of school. And then I didn't even take a close up picture of them!
PTA events have kept me pretty busy this week-a staff breakfast on Monday that the board COOKED! Build your own breakfast burritos.....they got thumbs up. Wednesday was gathering food donations for the kindergarten boohoo breakfast and Thursday was the breakfast itself. Today? Today did not include a trip to the school!
And now, back to day 36 of our trip!! Thought I'd never get back to it!
Day 36
Thursday, June 30th
Today we did the most important thing first. We slept in. After the 2 days prior to this one, we all needed a little extra shut eye! We fiddled around and took our time leaving and decided to head to Hoboken for lunch first. The kids were determined to eat a WHOLE slice of pizza from the pizza place we had eaten at during our first NYC stop. Benny Tudino's, home of the biggest slice.....look out, here we come! We donned our coordinating I Love NYC shirts (which Bill claimed made us look like a bunch of jelly beans), ready to meet the pizza challenge. No pictures of them eating this time, but they did get pretty darn close to finishing a slice since we didn't order salad. We were entertained by Beyonce music videos playing on the TV there. Random, I know! Our waitress, who had a very 'east coast' accent asked us 'So, have ya met Benny yet?' You mean Benny, as in the owner? Come to find out he was in the house and sitting at his favorite spot-the front booth. The waitress asked if we wanted to get a picture with him...well, heck yeah, why not?!
He was everything you would imagine for a typical Italian restaurant owner-nice, personable, and complete with a very smooth east coast/Italian accent. He told us how blessed we were with all our kids and smiled nice for the picture. He got a kick out of how much the kids liked his pizza. As were were walking back towards the car we had this nice couple come up next to us and ask if all the kids were ours. Thankfully Laurel and Eric had been playing and having fun with each other, G and J were speaking calmly to each other and Luke was walking next to me, so I was able to say with a smile 'yes, they are all ours'. The lady proceeded to say how great the kids were and how nice it was to see a big family....and I just kept thinking in my head 'if only you could see them in our van lady, you'd have other words for me!' They are right behind us in this picture, before they said anything to us
They were so nice and took a family picture for us...right in downtown Hoboken!
We then loaded back into the van and took our pizza leftovers to the hotel, packed up snacks and camel backs and waited for the bus to take us to our day's adventures in NYC. First stop, the World Trade Center. The area has changed so much, even in the 2 years since Bill and I had been there. Transformation is the best word I can use to describe the entire area.
Boys will be boys, checking out construction near the WTC subway entrance
This will be the tall Freedom 1 tower-over 1,110 feet tall at completion.
We walked around the site for about an hour, visiting the 9/11 memorial museum along the way. Then back for a short ride on the subway to get us closer to the entrance of the Brooklyn bridge-
and did you know, at some subway stations, we did actually see rats....many of them........but not at this one
Despite it being late afternoon, we all agreed we'd walk the ENTIRE Brooklyn bridge, just to we could say we did it. Well, that's not actually the entire truth. We had to walk the whole bridge so that we could eat some really good ice cream at an ice cream shop that sits near the bridge on the Brooklyn side. A famous place for making really good ice cream. Brooklyn's Ice Cream Shop
The bridge is currently under renovation, so some of the surrounding landscape wasn't so pretty
One of my favorite pictures!
Bill had the kids all stand on one of the encased cables....
Finally, after searching out bathrooms...again.....we made our ice cream purchase and sat down to devour it all.....good ol' vanilla!
Sadly, I can't remember exactly how we got back.....I'm thinking we found a subway entrance and then rode the subway back across to NYC. Gregory got a good lecture from me as we were walking.....I look so mean, but I do remember that he was being a total snot to Eric at the time.
Yikes, glad it wasn't me getting chewed out....
Our day in NYC ended with some random food from street vendors in Times Square.....a Gyro (the kids ate lamb and liked it, we had them try it before telling them the type of meat), some hot dogs and a Philly cheese steak sandwich. A completely balanced dinner, no? We were able to snag this bench when some people got up...it's like musical chairs, you know, when you dive into the last remaining unoccupied chair? Yeah, we kind of stalked this bench and like vultures on a piece of fresh meat, we claimed it as ours!
While some of us enjoyed people watching, the kids became the people to watch......I bet if we put a donation cup out, we might have made some money.
We gathered all our stuff, and decided to brave the massive 3 story Times Square Toys R Us. The kids could not WAIT to get into that store and find the floor that had........bathrooms! Forget all the cool toys and the huge Ferris wheel, we were just thrilled to find bathrooms. Second on the list of things to find? The Lego department, which is VERY cool at this store! All these were made out of Legos.......well, Mr. T Rex was not made of Lego's, but he was very realistic looking...even scared Luke! It moved and roared just like a real T Rex-
The kids each bought a mini Lego figure and then we got the heck out of there. The store was tremendously busy........we walked back to the NJ port authority bus transit, past the same McDonald's and made absolute sure we were on the right bus this time!!
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