***I just realized that this post has been sitting in draft form for about a month now. I guess I'll finally publish it now.***Matt and I are really fortunate that we have about 4 weeks every year when we're off of work at the same time. This usually happens for 2 weeks around Christmas and for 2 weeks sometime during the summer. I'm off all summer long, or at least most of it, and Matt was off the first two weeks of June. After an especially stressful spring we/I decided that we were going to take advantage of our time off and take a real vacation. So, we bought tickets to NYC and added a couple of short trips to see the grandparents too.
First we went to IA to see Matt's parents and visit the farm. Colin has been absolutely in love with tractors lately but he wasn't to excited about Grandpa Kent's tractors. They're kind of big when you're used to seeing them in model size. He's content with riding the John Deere lawnmower...it's a tractor to him.
After about a day and a half in IA, we set off on the next leg of our trip toward Jefferson to drop the kids off with Grammie and Papa. I think they were a little nervous about us leaving--the kids, not my parents--but they did fine and had lots of fun on their vacation to SD. They still ask for the froggy slide.
NYC was a blast. I love the city and all of the walking and public transportation. We went to several museums, a concert of the New York Philharmonic, a barbeque festival, a cruise around the south end of Manhattan, the top of the Empire State Building, The Bodies exhibit and lots of other very cool stuff. Roxie was a very generous host and let us crash her place while we were there. The only down side was that we picked the hottest weekend in the history of the city...or maybe it just felt like it...to visit.
I think that NYC is a great place for people who don't have children. Every time we went somewhere or did something I was thinking about whether or not Gabby and Colin could handle that activity. I concluded that they could almost always handle the activity but that I would have a hard time getting them there. I don't think I could handle not having a car but still having to transport 2 toddlers. I'm sure people who live think what they do is perfectly normal and are well adjusted to living in a big city with little kids. They'd probably think I'm crazy for owning 4 car seats or 3 cars for that matter.
We will definitely be going back someday and maybe we'll even take the kids along at some point. We won't be crashing at Roxie's though since I'm pretty sure we'd exceed the maximum allowable number of people in a NYC aparment.
When we got back to SD to pick up the kids they were excited to see us but even more excited to see what we'd brought back for them. Gabrielle got an Ariel doll from the Disney store and Colin got an FDNY firetruck from FAO Schwartz. They were glad to come home but I they missed Grammie and Papa too.
