Christmas at the Olsons

Yes there has already been several family blogs with these pictures but since it was at our house I wanted to put some up myself :) Here is our cute family! So the family Christmas was a little crazy this year. We had the parties early this year so that our "kids" could have Christmas at home with their kids. Michael, Rachael and their kids came in Thursday evening and Jennie, Mike & Sophie came later in the night. Friday was a running around day for Jennie & Me and that was fun but at some point on Friday Jennie found out that their dog, Bjorn, had gotten out of the fence at her sister in law's house. Then very late Friday night around 11:30 our power went out. By Saturday morning at around 5:30 AM I was at 7-Eleven getting ice for a cooler to try to save food for our family party on Saturday evening. I kept hoping the power would come on and we even started cooking the turkey over at Kyle's. Some time during all of the commotion going on it appeared that our cat got outside and we couldn't find him. Around 1 PM we decided to try to find a generator and tracked one down out in Covington so Kent and Laif went to go get it. Then Jennie got a call and her dog was found hiding under a car at a grocery store so her SIL went to go get him. The guys got home with the generator and hooked up about 2:00 PM and we plugged in the fridge and one lamp. We were ready to see what else we could get hooked up when the power came on about 2:30. I'm sure if we hadn't gotten then generator the power would have stayed out (at least that is the story I tell myself) Then about 1 hour later Kent and I were upstairs and Kent heard the cat. He was just taking a very long nap on a bed under packages. He just looked at us like "what were you looking for me?" So the dog was found, the power came on and the cat appeared. All that was wrong became right in about 2 hours.

So onto the evenings Christmas festivities and then to Christmas morning with all of the immediate family (23 people).

The 2 youngest additions! Olive and Christopher are so adorable!

My little artist

I bought a set of coloring books, stickers and paint books for 4 bucks for Sophie. I guess she must have painted before at her Aunt Tara's house because she totally knew what to do.
She was so careful in dipping into the paint.

She actually liked to paint specific objects, it was so fun to watch her.

The family's newest Eagle Scout

A couple of months ago Erik earned his Eagle Scout Rank and we finally were able to hold his court of honor. There were many people that helped and his big brother Scott came and was the Master of Ceremonies for him. It was an awesome night!

Bishop Perkins took time out of his really busy schedule to say some really great things about Erik. Thanks Bishop!

Mike Jacobsen who has been the troop Scout Leader since Erik became a Scout helped us out with the Eagle Charge.

We had over 50 people at the Court of Honor and all of the other Scouts participated.

Even the food turned out great.

Erik and his mentor!

My 2 Eagle Scouts - Great family picture (just missing my sweet girl)

Lot's of other family members were here including Ann & Mark - Thanks for coming!

It's hard to see everyone but Daryl, Rachel, Avery, Karl, Aimee, Tyler and Kyle were also there

Fun at the Science Center

On Saturday Janet, Steven & the kids were in Seattle so we decided to join them. Donna and laif came over from Sequim and I told Scott They were around and since he lives pretty close he came down to join us all.

We went through most of the buildings and even into the butterfly house.

Katie is such a cute bug!

David was able to put together this bug all by himself.

There was even hands on art projects for the kids to do.

The final room was a circus room and the kids had a great time dressing up as animals.

Back to the trip

So finally some time to put up more pictures of the trip. On Thursday July 1st we took the Staten Island Ferry boat over. There is no cost to take the ferry boat, that seems such a foreign concept to me. Great views of the city, it was a nice day and not too much heat again.

After the ferry ride we took the subway up a few stations and then walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge. There were a lot of other people doing the same thing as us. There were also plenty of joggers and bike riders going across. Kent and Erik went up further than me, I just stood around and people watched :)
Next we took the subway up to the Bronx and went to Yankee Stadium. This is only the 2nd season for this stadium. It was nice but actually I think Safeco Field is better,

. We managed to go when the Seattle Mariners were in town. The Mariners won the 2 previous nights at Yankee Stadium but they lost the game we went to. But it was really cool to be at Yankee Stadium though!

In the late afternoon and evening we went back to the Rockefeller Center and looked at the 'Big Apple' that was completed.

We also got into the Lego store and they had a lot of displays with their legos. This 'Monster' ran throughout the store.

Biking thru Central Park & The Met

So on Wednesday morning we took a guided tour through Central Park. It was so much fun! The ride was about 7 1/2 miles long and mostly flat which was good (only 2 hills that we had to walk up) It wasn't too hot so that made it even more enjoyable. After the bike ride we went to The Met (Metropolitian Museum of Art) It is a huge place with so many exhibits that you could spend weeks there is you wanted to look at each piece of art. We only had a few hours so we went through it pretty fast. Here are just some of the 350 pictures Kent took for the day!

On Tuesday we went to the "Top of the Rock" that is the observation deck on the top of the Rockerfeller Center. We had read that it was easier to get up to then the Empire State Building and the same cost. It was good in that we got to combine the observation deck along with a tour at NBC studios in NY. The view was incredible and other than the fact it was still pretty hot we loved being up so high. After we went upstairs we went on a tour of the NBC Studios. We went through a few sets such as the Dr. Oz show, Jimmy Fallon and the SNL studio. It was a great tour and they had a video that made me feel really old as I watched so many of the old shows that NBC has produced over the years.

In the Evening we went to see West Side Story on Broadway. Of course it was great and Erik loved seeing all of the performance.

Just a sobering reminder

In Rockerfeller Center plaza they had a brand new Lego store open up so they had huge Lego displays everywhere. You had to get in a line just to get into the store. Outside they had kids building blocks that were then taken over for the main builders to put together to build "The Big Apple"


In the evening we went over to the Empire State Building after the show just so we could say we were there!

708 + Steps

On Monday we went to the Staute of Liberty. We had bought tickets last February. It's a good thing since only 240 tickets are sold for anyone day to get up to the crown. People were in awe that we had tickets for "the crown". Right now if you try to get tickets for the crown you can't go up until the end of September. It was quite the walk, 354 steps up to the top of the crown and it was 97.7 degrees up there. Kent and I were both drenched with sweat but it was well worth the view and the bragging rights. Erik loved the journey up there also and of course beat us to the top by a mile. Throughout our days in NY there are many more stairs than just this as we are up and down the subway stairs several times a day. It seemed liked every we went there was stairs!After we toured around the staute we went over to Ellis Island. At both the staute and the island we had rented the audio tour guides and it was great to hear about each room and how the island worked. We loved it!We actually went over to Wall Street before the statue since we had a bit of time. It was fun seeing the bull and walking around looking at all of the buildings that you hear about on the news.This is the New York Stock Exchange. Mostly we wanted to see the building where we send all of our money to die.Later in the day we went to Time Square. It is a really busy tourist place but fun to look at all of the lights and advertising. I wanted to put more pictures up but I'm working off my phone for intenet (I'm too cheap to pay the $12.95 a day at the hotel for most days) and it takes about 5-6 minutes for every picture to load up. LOL I will try to get caught up a bit more tonight and write about our day on Tuesday.

We went over to the World Trade Center site. It's not quite the same right now as they are working very hard to build the new buildings. It was still a strange feeling walking around what was there and remembering what happened there.

1st full day of vacation in NYC

Yesterday I met Kent and Erik at the Penn Station in NY and we easily made it to our Hotel up on the upper West side of Central Park. I had checked into the hotel earlier in the day so I knew exactly how to get to the hotel via the subway. So this morning we took the subway over to the NY Museum of Natural History. If any of you know Kent and cameras it will not surprise you to know that I downloaded his pictures to my computer he had taken around 225 pictures for just today! I'm saving each of you from the pain and I have just put a few of them on the blog.They had so many cool exhibits in the museum. There were 4 floors of exhibits to look at. We took a short 1 hour tour of the museum to give us the highlights and then we walked around for another 3 or so hours. After the museum we went over to Central Park. If you recognize this bridge it was used in the movie Enchanted. It was really beautiful there but it was pretty warm today and very humid. This fountain was also in Enchanted. It was used during the finale of their big musical number. Tomorrow we are going to the Statue of Liberty at 12:00 P.M. Of course we got tickets for around the hottest time of the day and it's going to be 93 degrees with more humidty. I guess we will see how we do.

Throughout Central Park you can find these large rocks that have marks on them from where glaciers came through. I guess they had "global warming" long before we were around. LOL