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

New paint!

Since my mom moved up to Sequim I thought I would take advantage of some of the space by repainting rooms and moving furniture. This is Erik's old room and it was very very green. I fogot to take a picture before we removed the top strip of wallpaper. It had jungle cats on it.

I wanted to make the room a good room for guests and since my mom left her queen size bed here I decided to put the bed up in this room. Of course Kent always ends up having to do most of the work......When we first started painting I really didn't like the colors I had picked out but in the end it turned out really good. The bed is pretty big in the room but it will be nice for people to have a large bed to sleep on.

Now we have 2 rooms set up with beds!

Family visits

One of Kent's cousins, Agneta, and her husband came for a visit last weekend. It was so much fun because Jennie & Sophie were already here and then Kent's 2 sisters came over also. We had such a great evening with everyone.


Agenta and Valter went to Florida first and then came to Washington. Donna, Laif and Ann showed them around in Seattle, Sequim area and Victoria. They went down to Chehalis to see Janet and her family.

It was so fun to have Janet, her 2 daughters and some of her grandchildren!

This is a great shot of the four siblings.

Of course Sophie has to be the center of attention.

Everyone enjoyed just sitting around visiting and catching up with each other.

Mark & Janet sharing great times.

Jennie & Agneta enjoyed getting to know each other.

Girls everywhere!

Lots of guys too!

The Joy of Sophie

I love that Sophie has such unbridled laughter!

Sophie & Jennie came up to visit last weekend. We had several fun events over the weekend. Sophie loved playing the piano and singing at the same time. She would sit at the piano and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star! It was great.

Sophie has a great laugh and often makes herself laugh just for attention.

Looks like she went to the zoo but it's actually her great-grandma's bed.