He's Home!

I'm excited.

Joe is here! And he's staying longer than the originally planned 11 days! God bless ya, Southwest, for allowing free flight changes. We've had quite a smorgasbord of activities since Joe's been here. Take some stabs at what we've been doing based on the pictures. I want some creative captions here, people.

Atlantic City

It seems that my posts lately reflect us as being travelers. This is far from the truth. In actuality, we mostly just hang around, and occasionally get out. We recently went to Atlantic City because my dad had a few days off of work and my kids have never seen the ocean.

I don't know what you think of when you picture Atlantic City. I think of old people obliviously gambling away their life savings in a smoky casino. While this does happen, that is not all there is to Atlantic City. We looked past the casino atmosphere and found ourselves on a beautiful beach.

We stayed at the Hilton Casino. The rooms were nice, the boardwalk was outside the back door, and a few feet away was the ocean. It was a quick trip. We stayed one night only. But it was worth it. I love the beach, and so did my kids. We practically had the beach to ourselves!


Dottie ventures in. She was at first afraid of the waves. Then she discovered that the water was salt water. Salt is her favorite condiment, so she kept on dipping in her hands and licking her fingers. By the time we left, she wouldn't get out of the water.


Carrie and Jared worked hard on this sandcastle. Elliot did his best to destroy it.

Dottie drank the ocean, Elliot ate the sand. More than once. What is with my kids eating things that are obviously not food?

On the last day, we went to this "destination" restaurant called the Rainforest Cafe. There's one in Disneyworld. It's a bit pricey, but we wanted to try it out. It has a great atmosphere; it's supposed to feel like you're in a jungle, with animated animals surrounding you. However, the food was way overrated. My suggestion? Walk in the restaurant, look around, don't get the food. Save yourself some money.

So my husband comes home on Monday! HURRAY! Happy 4th, by the way. Fireworks? Yesiree!

Ithaca is Gorges

No, I didn't misspell gorgeous. Yes, Ithaca, NY is a beautiful place. It is known for its gorges. You can buy t-shirts and bumper stickers there that say "Ithaca is Gorges."

I love Ithaca. Part of my love for the city stems from me running away to Ithaca in high school with my best friend Amanda to meet various friends (yes, some of them were boys. Okay, that was why we went there: the boys) from our stake. Good memories, good times. As Amanda and I visited Ithaca, we discovered what a cool place it truly is.It's the home of Cornell University, the home of the Moosewood Restaurant, the home of Purity Ice Cream, and the home of several waterfalls.

It takes an hour and some change to get to Ithaca from my parents' house. I've been known to drive to Ithaca just to go to the Moosewood Restaurant. This trip was no exception. The Moosewood is a vegetarian restaurant that changes its menu daily. You never have the same thing twice. That alone is pretty dang exciting. Now, I'm no vegetarian, not even a health nut. But the food is dang good; you'll never have fresher food. Eating it just makes you feel good.

After doing good for our bodies, we indulged in Purity Ice Cream, homemade ice cream that's to die for. We ended the day by visiting Robert S. Treman state park, a park with several gorges. We hiked to the most famous waterfall there, Lucifer Falls. Turns out we took the long way: it was a 4 mile hike, half of that ascending (to have beautiful waterfalls, you have to climb a long way, baby). Dottie climbed the WHOLE THING. I'm impressed, since I was dying myself.

The Moosewood. Jared's home, by the way. He's been a huge help with the kids. See? His new best friend, Elliot.
Elliot's lunch was spoonfuls of pure, homemade peanut butter. Mmm . . . I could go for some right now.

Here we go: the hike to Lucifer Falls (great name, eh?). Carrie got to carry Elliot first. Lucky girl had her hair pulled for nearly 2 miles.
Dottie was a little trepidatious over this wobbly bridge.

Okay, I'm dying at this point. Elliot's killing my back. But isn't the waterfall beautiful?

Here's the big one: Lucifer Falls. The picture doesn't do the mass of this thing justice.
On the descent, Dottie was starting to get pooped. She would periodically squat like this to gain her strength. 4 miles for a 4 year old? I'm astounded, still.

At the end of the hike, we went to this swimming hole at the park that had this gorgeous waterfall to swim under. Nice, right?

Jared carried Dottie back to the car from the waterhole. She was truly tired at this point.

So, friends, visit Ithaca if you get a chance. It's truly a GORGEous place.

NYC!

One of my favorite things about going home is the trips to New York City. My mom, like me, is a Broadway addict. When I did my advertising internship in college in NYC, we discovered a cheap way to do Broadway: student rush tickets. If you're in college, all you need to do is show your student ID at the box office and you can get 2-4 tickets for a show for $20-30 a piece. While I may not be a student anymore, my sister Carrie is a student. So she got Dottie and I tickets to see Mary Poppins with her student ID.

Now you'll remember last summer, we took Dottie to see The Little Mermaid. She liked Mary Poppins, but she said "It was a little scary" (I agree; parts of it were), and that she likes The Little Mermaid more. Still, it was fun to go. We had a good time. It was nice to do something with Dottie sans Elliot.

While we were at the play, my mom and Carrie took Elliot to the Central Park Zoo. He had a blast! Elliot adores animals; he's mastered many sounds. However, my mom said many of the animals said "moo" in Elliot's book.

Carrie the turtle. Apparently, she got stuck in the turtle shell after this picture was taken.

Elliot rode the carousel several times.

We also stopped by the Toys R Us in Times Square. There's a giant ferris wheel in the store with each cart designed after a popular toy or cartoon character. Dottie, Elliot, and I got to ride the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head cart.

There was also a giant Barbie house inside of Toys R Us: every little girl's dream. Here we are at the Barbie house.

Dottie and I at the play. Did I mention we got box seats with our $30 tickets? Yeah, we were pretty cool. This was during the intermission. I was trying to get the backdrop to the stage in the picture.

Dottie looks kind of bedraggled (as do the rest of us) because it was raining. Even though we had umbrellas, it's kind of a challenge to hold it up as you push a stroller.

Spoonerisms

In my family, we LOVE spoonerisms. What is a spoonerism, you ask? Well, let's allow wikipedia to explain: "A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants or vowels are switched . It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency."


Let me give you a few examples. Carolyn Weed, if you switch the consonants, would become Warolyn Ceed. We mostly switch consonants. Dottie likes to quiz me in the morning, just by changing the beginning consonant to whatever she wants. This morning, she said to me: "Mommy, do you like Carolyn or Farolyn?"


Because we do this so much, there are often embarrassing faux pas which occur. One time, when driving into Provo in high school, I said to my siblings when I saw the restaurant Fuddruckers: "Look, there's Rudd . . . (you know what came next)." Boy, did I get teased for that one.


My favorite one that I've come up with drives Dottie CRAZY. One of her favorite movies is Barbie and the Nutcracker. Switched around, it becomes Narbie and the Buttcracker. Such a better title, don't you think? I love plays on words. Try out spoonerisms sometime. It'll give you some joy.