Frustration

So, finally the community college I'm going to got around to posting the class schedule for next semester.  Registration starts on Thursday.  And, well, for every class I need there is only one section offered, and it is in the evening.  Which means, if I took the classes I needed, I will be gone from home 4 nights a week.  Not good.  In fact, that is unacceptable.  So what do I do...

1. take fewer classes so I'm only gone 2 nights a week, but then almost guarantee that I won't graduate while I'm in New Jersey, and so have to transfer again (5 different schools instead of 4 but hey, who is counting)?
2. not take any classes and, I don't know, stay at home, or get a job during the day?
3. Try at this late time to get accepted to a 4 year college?  (Theoretically could be done, but application deadlines are very close, and the three that are close by, Rutgers, NJIT, and Ramapo are all pretty competitive).  Also way more expensive.
4.  Take classes that I don't really need for my major during the day.
5. Go ahead and take all the classes, no one really needs me at home during the week at all anyway.

I'm just really in a complaining mood.  I know that finishing my degree is hard, it has always been hard, I just don't know why it has to keep getting harder and harder.
I'm just so frustrated.

What is it?

So Adena and I went to go clothes shopping, but the mall was packed, not a parking space anywhere, and bumper-to-bumper traffic in and out. So we didn't even bother to go in.  On the way home we decided to stop at an antique shop in the town next to ours that we had seen many times, but was always closed.  After tearing ourselves away from the very tempting set of the complete works of Mark Twain (make an offer) published in 1899, we were greeted by the two ladies that had owned the shop for years.  They said hello, then half to us and half to eachother debated whether or not our presence meant that they should get up.  We assured them that they were fine where they were, we were just looking.  The shop had typical antique shop stuff, linens, glassware, a few pieces of old furniture.  But Adena found a few tin boxes she liked, and I found something wonderful.  It was labled "what is it, but it's old $25". 

The ladies in the store said that they had found it in the attic of the building when they bought the shop.  The attic is crammed with stuff, and they just take some of it out once in a while and put it in the shop.  I am now the proud owner of the "what is it".

Be careful what you wish for...

You know the old story about the couple that was given three wishes then the squandered them on stupid things, and ended up with nothing?

Well on Monday, Christine and I were driving around a packed parking lot, could not find a space anywhere.  Christine mentioned something that she wished for, and I replied.  "I just wish I could find a parking space!"  I turn a corner and bam! there is a parking space near the front of the store right in front of me.  Ever since then, no matter where I go, no matter how busy the parking lot, I have been able to find one in the first two rows.  Yesterday at the busy grocery store, on the street in front of the butcher shop, picking up Ian from preschool.  Great parking no matter where I go. 

I tried to immediately wish for gold bars, but so far, nothing.

Museums

We only have 2-3 years here, and so much to see, so we really need to get to it.  Doug got a little bonus this week, which ended up being just enough to buy a membership to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History.  Now we can go for a year for free!  (Well not free, parking is $30 at least and it costs $8 to cross the bridge into the city, and believe it or not, that is the cheapest way to get to the city). 

The Museum in mind boggling just in its size.  Really it is bigger than I can comprehend.  It has more room dedicated to stairways than many museums have in total square footage. 

The museum has this terrific map for children, so we told Ian to point to something he wanted to see and we would go find it.
We first went to Egyptian wing to see some mummies, Ian was relieved that they didn't really wake up and wander around moaning, but did think that he wouldn't like to be around when they got resurrected. 

Then he picked a Rembrandt portrait on the totally other side of the museum.  On the way we came across this terrific painting.  Isn't that charming?

Then he picked the Greek wing, and we realized he was just picking the thing furthest from where we were, anyway I had to override him because on the way to the paintings I caught a glimpse of this:

The gold statue in the center is by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the archway on the right is designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.  Had to go there.

On very few occasion something is so overwhelmingly beautiful I literally get weak in the knees.  I just sat on the edge of the fountain in the picture just to take it in. 

Here's a close up of the pillars

We spent all day between this museum and the museum of natural history, and just scratched the surface.  Can't wait to go back.

So I'm finally updating....

After watering the lawn, making breakfast, checking facebook, emailing people, checking all the blogs on google reader and playing 3 different computer games, my house is STILL full of cardboard boxes, so clearly I need to update my blog.  Maybe that will do the trick.  If not I will have to resort to UNPACKING which would be pretty tragic. 

So we live in a small town, which we love. I usually think of living in a small town as a town in the middle of fields or mountains with nothing around it.  This small town is surrounded by lots of other small towns and beyond that is NYC. 

Something I really love about our house is that there is a church a block away with a bell tower that chimes every hour.  How cool is that?

 Just down the street is a nice library, it is smallish, but has a nice collection and the kids can easily walk to it.

We are also two blocks away from the the elementary and middle school, which is nice.

So far we have only met one of our neighbors, but waved at a lot of people walking by.  There are always people walking by, which means either that people walk A LOT in this neighborhood (even at midnight) or that people are just walking by to check out the new neighbors.

Sorry about no pictures, but I bought the wrong size batteries for my camera.

So I was taking a nap today...

And I wake up and Doug is home, at about 4:30, which is pretty early. 

He asks what time we had lunch

I said 1 o'clock. 

He says, well I was thinking about an early dinner in Hoboken. 

Hoboken, why Hoboken? 

So we can go for dessert afterward.

So we drive about 20 minutes to Hoboken and go to Grimaldi's pizza.  I love good pizza, shortly after Adena was born we go pizza at a place called DeLoretto's in Salt Lake city, and I loved it.  There was a pizza place in Florida we loved too, but nothing holds a candle to this pizza.  The crust was thin but doughy, the sauce actually tasted like tomatoes, and the cheese was white and thick.  It was amazing.

We had about a 7 block walk to Carlo's, the bakery on "Cake Boss".  We got there about 6:00 and the line streched down the block and into the next block.  After half an hour later, we were giddy because we got to cross the street!  Another half and hour and we realized that the parking meter was going to run out, so Doug ran back to give it more quarters.  By about 7:15 we were finally allowed into the store and given a number.  The smell of the store was amazing.  Almost as good as our house smells after one of Doug's baking days.  Every once in a while, some other delicious smell would come wafting through.

The cases are filled with cakes, trays and trays of cookies, and a case in the corner holds the custom cakes people have ordered.  Today there was one that was 4 layers with the NYC skyline on it.  It was amazing.

So we don't want to go overboard, so we only bought:

A Chocolate Buttercream cake

3 Cannoli, A red velvet cup cake and 2 dozen cookies.

Here's the cool thing; this guy could charge anything he wanted for this stuff, people are waiting for and hour every day to get into his shop, but for all of that it was less than $50, which I think is pretty reasonable.

So how was it?  The texture was velvety, the frosting was creamy and chocolatey, with lighter and milder chocolate flavor on the outside and a darker chocolate frosting in the middle.  Yeah, it was good.

Just one more note,  the people that worked there had to deal with a crazy busy shop all day long, and they were so friendly patient and helpful, it really made the whole thing so nice.

Thoughts on the Indian Wars

For long trips, we try to locus out stops on a theme.  Not everything is associated with the theme but it is a general guide.  The theme for this trip has been the Indian Wars.  I knew hardly anything about this topic before this trip, and now I feel that everything I have learned has mostly taught me how little I know.

Over the miles of driving we have discussed what the difference between a battle and a massacre was.  Every battle ground we have been the (even Little Bighorn) started with the army surrounding and attacking an Indian village early in the morning. As unethical as a surprise attack in the early morning seems, I not sure that makes what happened afterwards a massacre. 

The incident at Sand Creek in south-eastern Colorado in 1864 (even before the end of the Civil War) was early enough to set the tone for the later indian wars.  I felt that this incident was a massacre because of these factors.
-most of the "soldiers" were untrained volunteers that were rallied for 100 days to avenge the death of a family killed by indians
-the casualties were disproportionate--12 soldiers to at least 160 indians
-women and children seem to have been killed with the same impunity as fighting men
-the bodies of the dead were mutilated

One soldiear wrote:
"I refused to fire and swore taht no one but a coward would, for by this time hundreds of women and cildren were coming towards us and getting on their knees for mercy"
News of the Sand Creek Massacre spread throughout the Indian territories and to the east. Unfortunatley it set the tone for more than a decade.

Oklahoma City National Memorial

Crater of the Diamonds State Park

Murfreessboro, Arkansas

After going there twice, I think we have figured it out enough that we might be able to find one next time.

Antebellum Mansion in Natchez, Mississippi.

Goodbye Florida

Maybe...

I'm finally at a place where I can download some pictures.  It is 5:15 now, and we need to be on the road by 6:30, so if I can shower and get dressed and have everyoned eat breakfast in time, I might be able to post some.  We'll see how it goes.

Guardian angels....

I don't really know how the idea of guardian angels work, but I am grateful that we have been watched over on this trip so far.  Our first Sunday we were driving through the Texas Panhandle and knew that we were driving into some dark clouds, but didn't really have an idea of what the storm was like ahead of us.  We just kept driving until we passed a really strangely shaped vehicle that looked a lot like this: Storm Chaser Vehicle.  It was parked next to a truck by the side of the highway.  We decided to turn on the radio to see what was going on and heard weather warnings involving tennisball sized hail about 5 miles away from where we were.  The storm was definitly one of the worst I have ever seen, and the worst that I have ever driven in.  We only got small hail where we were, but rain was pouring.  We had the terrible decision to make of just to pull over and hope it blows over.  (Park next to the storm chasers perhaps?) Drive through it (um, no).  Go back to the nearest town, or try to find our way around it.  We decided to try to find our way around it, and drove for a terrifying half an hour to get back out of the storm that we had driven into for less than 10 minutes.  We were relieved to get out of the storm, but were in an area that the storm had just passed over and some roads were flooded.  We drove through one that didn't look that bad, but got worse as we went along.  We came to another flooded road, and fortunately there was a highway truck that could guide us through the flooding, and make sure it was shallow enough for us to safely pass.  We were very grateful to get to clear skies and dry roads again.

The other scary highway moment happened today as we were driving in Montana.  We were on a two lane highway following a semi carrying a load of gravel, when it suddenly started to dump its load.  We were totally blinded by the gravel and dust flying at our windshield, but couldn't stop quickly because of course the road was covered in gravel. We were sure that we would need a new windshield and possibly a new front end and radiator, but in the end (so far) the only damage we have found was a dent in the driver's side door. 

I view these incidents as evidence that it isn't our time to die yet, because ya know, if God wanted us to, we could have all been gone right there. 

Oklahoma OK, Texas, not so much.

I'm really behind, so I'm really in Colorado, but I'll try and keep these in order so I'll write about our Sunday in Oklahoma and Texas. 

We started out the morning in a hotel with me doing laundry, unfortunately the "guest dryer" worked so poorly that after I took the clothes out, no one could tell they had been in the dryer at all.  We were in a time crunch, so we really had a problem of what to do with two loads of wet clothes.  Doug went up to the desk and informed them that the dryer wasn't working, and convinced them to let us put all our clothes in the industrial dryers in their laundry room.  The maid wasn't all that thrilled about having to take all the sheets and towels out for us, which was too bad.  All it took was for them to dry while we were eating breakfast and everything was done.  I wonder how much one of those things cost?

We first went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial,  such a beautiful and somber place.  It is the first time that I have been to a major Memorial for an event that I remember.  It has a different mood there, it was built while wounds were still very fresh.  There is still a fence there that people still leave things on, the most touching was a "Class of 2010" t-shirt that was signed by the students who would have been the classmates of the children killed there that day.  It was difficult to try to explain things to Ian in a way he could understand, mostly because I don't understand.

After the memorial we went to sacrament meeting in a ward in Oklahoma City.  I wish I could find a way to issue a blanket apology to the Oklahoma City First Ward.  We were sitting in the middle of the chapel about five rows back, and were all so exhausted that after sitting down we immediatley fell asleep, the whole row except of course for one 5 year old who was just thrilled to finally be out of the car.  I have no idea how he behaved, because, well, I was asleep.  So embarrassing.

Arkansas

We stopped first at Arkansas Post, a trading post that had been active from the 1600's to the 1870's.  Honestly there wasn't much to see since it was built on the river, and the river had changed course several times and washed everything away.  But we did enjoy a nice 2 mile hike around the property, Arkansas just has a unique beauty to it that we really love.  (Seriously)

Then we stopped at the one site that isn't new to us, Crater of the Diamonds State park in Murfreesboro.  We went there when Doug was taking paternity leave after Ian was born.  Who is crazy enough to go on a road trip in February with a 5 week old baby?  Apparently, we were.  This time we were determined to find a diamond.  We started out in the diamond field just digging in the mud, this is the best way to find big diamonds, we were told (1 carat +).  Soon, we realized that since it was almost 100 degrees, we would rather be in working in the water troughs in the shade.  Basically the procedure is this, you fill a bucket full of dirt, bring it to the trough and dump a shovelful of dirt in the top of your two screens.  The first one with larger holes, the second with smaller holes.    The top screen just gets out the big rocks, then you rock the bottom screen back and forth, turn it, rock it, turn, rock, until all the heavy rocks are settled in the middle.  Then you flip it over onto a table and look through the pebbles in the bottom to see if there is a shiny mettalic one that doesn't have any dirt stuck to it, that is a diamond.  We spent about 5 hours there, until we were ready to move on.  About 600 diamonds are found there a year, most by "professionals" that spend all their time looking for a selling diamonds.  Ian had the most fun, playing in the mud in a big puddle in the pavilion.

Natchez, Mississippi

After spending the night in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, we drove to Natchez, to stop at A.'s favorite type of place, a big historic mansion.  This one was the Antebellum manion of the McMurran family.  It was built to impress visitors with opulence and exhibit the wealth of the family.  Surprisingly, most of the furnishings were original to the house, including even the china on the dining room table.  Also impressive was the hand painted oilcloth flooring and the giant solid mahgony fan installed over the dining room table.  There was also a majestic magnolia tree growing outside the master bedroom window that had been planted when the house was built in the 1840's.  A. decided that she wanted to live in a house like that someday.

Gulf Islands National Seashore

I apologize for not having pictures, I forgot the cord that attaches our camera to the computer, so they will have to wait until I get one, or find a computer with a SD card drive.

Gulf Islands National Seashore is on the very tip of the Florida panhandle, and happens to be the only National Park site in Florida that we haven't visited, so it was the logical first stop for our trip.  Originally we planned a longer visit, but as it was, we ended up with only an hour before sunset. 
The kids played in the water and searched for seashells, most were types they had never found before. We watched birds start high in the sky and then dive to the surface of the water, only to inexplicably stop at the last moment. 
It was a quiet visit, knowing that this was our goodbye to Florida.  Also a goodbye to this beautiful place that we had only just discovered.  You couldn't help looking out at the ocean and wondering how close the looming oil spill was, and when would it reach that shore.  After taking pictures and some quiet time, I went to search for shells with the girls, in addition to shells, we found flat, oval shaped pieces being tossed in the surf before settling on the bottom.  Picking these up, we found them to be tar balls that were being washed ashore in the high tide. 

Trip Day 0

So yesterday was supposed to be the first day of our trip, but we discovered early what most of you probably already knew, that it is not reasonable to expect to be able to finish up leaving (all the odds and ends), painting an entire house, have movers come, have a birthday party, and prepare for a cross country trip in three days.  We are coming close though, and will probably be able to leave today, thanks to the wonderful people who came and helped us.  I cannot thank them enough.  I'll post pics later. 

For now, goodbye Florida, we have loved living here and will truly miss our dear friends here.

Dry Tortugas National Park May 31, 2010

I will post more about our visit later, but I wanted to post a picture of the beautiful ocean, the water is actually more teal than it appears in the picture and so clear that you can't tell how deep it is. 

How long it will stay clear and beautiful like this is anyone's guess, it all depends on the currents which are pretty unpredictable.  Someone there said "It is like taking a bullet, you don't want it to happen to anybody, but it is going to happen, so you just hope it isn't you".  As we were enjoying the beautiful water, thousands of birds, the coral reef, and thousands and thousands of fish that the oil spill could destroy it all in a matter of days. 

Anyway, 135 National parks down 256 to go.

You haven't failed until you stop trying

This is one of my favorite sayings, or mantras or whatever you want to call it. 
I think it is one of the really great things about life.  We get to decide how long the race is going to be.
For example, I really want to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  I decided in 2002 that I would qualify by my 30th birthday.  My training program was headed in that direction until surprise! I detoured to get my darling boy.  I couldn't eat or sleep during most of my pregnancy, so running was out of the question.  Re-set goal to qualifying by my 35th birthday.  Well, that was 2 weeks ago and guess what? I'm not even close.  Between then and now I have acheived an intermediate goal of completing a marathon.  The great thing is though, even though I haven't accomplished my goal yet, I haven't failed because I am still trying.  My new goal: Qualify for Boston while we are living in New Jersey.  This would be a great opportunity, because unlike other times, it wouldn't be a big burden on my family to travel to Boston for the race. 
I use this for all kinds of things; finishing my degree. (I have been a junior in college for 15 years), being a good housekeeper, etc.  As long as I am still trying, I haven't lost the race because I haven't crossed the finish line.

Where to go, where to go?

I told Doug that I would be in charge of planning the first week of our trip this summer.  We are planning on taking...hold on a minute while I check....8 days to get from Orlando to Idaho for our family reunion.  So now I need to actually sit down and plan it.  That needs to include a couple of days in Colorado. 
So here is my general method for figuring this out.
1. Mapquest the route to get an idea of generally the best way to go, and what is on the way. 
Well, Mapquest wants us to go through Missouri and Kansas, so we need to figure out a new route. 
2. Look at a National Park map to see which sites we need to go to on the way.  The goal for this trip: Tuskeegee in Alabama, possibly Tupelo National Battlefield in Mississippi, Arkansas Post NM, Abilates Flint Quarries in the Texas panhandle, Capulin Volcano in New Mexico and Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado.  I'll see if I can work it all out.
3. Hopefully I can also find the time to stop at some other places on the way.

One of the things I'm going to really miss about Florida is watching the space shuttle launch from my front yard. Of course by the end of the year there won't be any more shuttle launches to watch anyway.  This is Atlantis' last mission.  Then it will be put in a museum somewhere.  There was an article about the selection process for museums in the paper today.  Apparently you have to apply and make a good case for why you deserve a space shuttle, and pay the $28 million dollars it will cost to prepare it for exhibition and transport it.  Some places on the list: National Air and Space Museum, Kennedy Space Center, the flight control center in Houston, the space flight center in Huntsville Alabama, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at the Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, and an aircraft carrier in New York that was responsible for retrieving the early astronauts from the Apollo missions.

Personally, the National Air and Space museum should be obvious,  the Kennedy Space Center, I'm not really sure about, they already have a replica on display, but should be a front-runner.  I think there should be one in Houston.  That way they would be in a variety of areas across the country, in places that people would expect to them to be.

This is a picture of a photo on the wall at Fort Smith National Historic Site in Arkansas.  We went there as part of a family reunion in 2007.  We had a great day with the family and all the cousins. 

About the photo; "Bill" is a outlaw that has just been captured by the sheriff (#4) and his possee.  As the photo was being taken, Bill was trying to get the sheriff's revolver out of his pocket.  Fortunalty for the rest of the people in the photo, he was unsucessful.

Fort Smith National Historic Site is right on the border of Arkansas and Oklahoma, in fact it overlooks the Arkansas River that forms the border.  It has a nice museum, preserves an old west style courthouse, commissary and gallows, and has a nice grassy hill and picnic area.  While we were there, we saw a couple coming there to get married.  I would love to know what about the place made them decide to get married there. 

www.nps.gov/fosm

I'm pretty proud of myself.  What should I tackle tomorrow?  Backyard perhaps?

FYI the cracker box on the table contains files that are not being packed.  I figured they would be easy to keep seperate if I put them in a bright red box.

Here is my sunroom.  There is a problem with my sun room.  It is kind of the junk drawer of our house.   Anything that doesn't have another home goes in the sunroom.  My goal for today.  Clean out the sunroom.  Hopefully I will post another picture showing my awesome clean sunroom later.

New Jersey Day 4

So today we went to the ward in New Jersey that we will probably end up in.  It was kind of cool because the building was built on the same floor plan as the church that I went to all growing up.  The ward was about the same size as ours now, with a pretty big YW program (15 or so).  They seemed friendly and excited about having us move in.  The most amazing thing about the ward was the primary.  The primary kids have been taught to line up in the hallway and fold their arms until the leaders are ready for them, and they do it!  Wow.  They also gave the mothers big bars of dark chocolate, instead of flowers, which I think all around is a good thing. 
It was really hard to go to church though and see a bunch of unfamiliar faces and wonder if I will ever make friends there like I have here.  All in all, it was a nice visit.

New Jersey Day 3

So today we drove around the neighborhood to see how far the church and schools are.  The elementary school and middle school are next to each other which is nice.  Then we took a deep breath and left the small borough area that we have been in the whole time.  It was a little scary, but I was determined to go shopping. 
We used to love to shop at Lord & Taylor in Colorado, but then they closed all their Colorado stores, and there were none in Florida, but there is a Lord and Taylor about 20 minutes away from here and an outlet about an hour away.  I saw that there was a sale this week at the outlet so we ventured down there to try and find it.  The mall that it was in was packed!  Not only did we have to follow someone out of the store to find a parking space, but someone did the same to us. 
Was it worth it? 
Well, we bought 2 boys' shirts, 2 linen skirts, 2 blouses, 1 silk skirt, 2 scarves, 2 men's polo style shirts and a pair of slacks for $108.  My favorite was the Anne Klein silk skirt for me that was originally $250 that ended up being $12!  I just wish I had bought the $30 suede pumps I had been looking at. 
Then as we were driving home we hit what looked like a big black grocery bag that we can now hear flapping whenever we drive, but we can't see it anywhere under the car, it makes quite the noise on the highway.  I guess we will just let the car rental company figure out where it is.
Then we stopped for my birthday dinner and ice cream afterward. 
We will be going to check out the local ward tomorrow.

New Jersey Day 2

Another day of getting acquainted with the area and looking at houses.  Had another high school visit today.  Where yesterday there was a beautiful school with people that weren't really friendly the high school today was totally different.  The principal met with us answered all our questions, then gave us a tour of the school.  Highlights: 
1. The principal said that they really ignore standardized tests. He said he felt that the level that the tests assess is much lower than the expected level of acheviment for the students.
2. 2 years of required American History
3. A lot of intership opportunities for students
4. Framed art prints in the high school hallway
5. The cafeteria actually cooks all the food!  Nothing is brought in and reheated.
6. The school has about half the student body that our current high school has.

We saw a few more houses today.  One that was nice enough, but right on a busy street.  We might put in an offer on the  house we saw yesterday, still the frontrunner.

We looked at a few new areas today, some less populated and more like a typical suburban town.  Didn't like it as much as the other  cities we were looking at. 

Houses

We looked at four houses today.  Two were Cape Cod style houses one with a teeny tiny kitchen.  (It is smaller than any kitchen we have ever had since the girls were born.)  Cookie baking day in there?  Not possible.  Another one was in really nice condition, and we should have liked it, but we totally didn't.  It had a nice kitchen cute bedrooms with slanted ceilings (how fun is that?)  There is a little playhouse in the back, and a detached garage and a fun walk-in basement, nice size lot, but meh, just didn't connect with it. 
Another house was across the street from an active railroad track.  (Like I could throw a baseball from the front door and hit the tracks).  The carpets were disgusting and I have a high tolerance for dirty.  In the backyard there was an old broken down pool and a trampoline in similar condition.  Nope.
Then there was this house built in the 60's and hasn't been updated at all.  It has the original dark gold oven, hardwood floors with paint all over them.  (like they painted with no drop cloths)  tiny 1 car garage, (if the car isn't very big) no dishwasher and one of the cabniet doors was just sitting in front of the cabinet.  I don't know what it was, but everyone LOVED it.  I'm sure the agent thinks we are crazy, but seriously we walked in and just were so excited about it.  Weird.  An advantage would be with the condition that it is in now, it isn't like the landlord could complain about wear and tear on the property when we move out. 

Bergen County, New Jersey and Joe, our agent.

So the company hired a tour guide to show us around the neighborhood, and he also is a real estate agent.  So we spent the day looking at different neighborhoods.  The neighborhoods are beautiful.  Old deciduous trees everywhere.  Many houses are on wooded lots, that are just gorgeous.  The county is a bunch of small towns.  There are a lot of cities in Florida that are trying to re-vitalize their historic downtown area.  What they are trying to do is to create a feel like there is in these small towns.  Not a lot of restaurant chains, but individually owned restaurants, bookstores, hair salons.  It is so cool to see these downtowns thriving. 
We visited one high school today.  Ridgewood High School, the one with the best test scores in the county.  I'll try to figure out how to post a picture of it.  The staff wasn't particularly friendly or helpful. 

Since I just finished my English paper on John Updike's short story "A&P" I thought it was fun to actually shop there.  Sale prices are in line with sale prices in Florida, and store brands are reasonable, but name brand not-on-sale prices are much higher.  I will have to be more careful about sales and couponing. 

As we were driving around town "I." asked us "Why did they build all these big bumps all over the road?"  Then we got to explain to him that they were HILLS! 

Joe is the guy that was hired to show us around town and we hired to find a rental for us.  He immediately got on my good side by pointing out a revolutionary war site, and then giving us an in depth history of the area.  Turns out he is a big history and family history buff.  Then when he gave me a list of all the best cemeteries in the area, well that is just a different level of awesome.

Flying to New Jersey

Flying to New Jersey:
Here's a tip, if you want an easy time at the airport fly out on a Wednesday night.  There was NO ONE  at the airport, no lines any where, we were flew through security, were the only people on the trains.  Then we got on the plane and at that moment it we knew: We had left "I.'s" backpack somewhere.  I was hoping it was just at the gate so I swam upstream on the airplane to get out and go to the gate.  No backpack.  Asked at the desk; No backpack.  The people at the desk recommened that I go look on the trains.  I could make it if I ran.  Not hurried, RAN.  So I ran (with all the kids on the plane I ran, looked on the train, waited for the next train. No backpack.  I ran back to the desk, they called the lost and found, it was closed, then someone at the desk remembered that a co-workers husband worked in security.  So they called him and they had the backpack!  Quick discussion on how to get it back.  Could I run some more?  Yep.  Did I know where to go? No.  So one of the lovely workers at the desk ran with me all the way back to security, got the backpack back, ran back.  As we got to the end of the concourse, the desk worker said I'm stopping, you keep going.  I arrive at the desk dripping in sweat from running, but with the backpack.  All the flight attendents on the flight asked if I had found it. Apparently, they had already started the security talk, and Christine had stood up and called the flight attendent over and told her that they couldn't leave because I wasn't there. I can't thank the desk workers at Continental enough, they were incredibly helpful. 

We landed in Newark, and found our way to the guy in the black suit hold a sign that said MOULTON, he picked led us to the SUV limo, "I." was very impressed that they had given him a carseat that was his favorite color.  I was just happy to see a bottle of water.  I also realized that other than knowing that Doug was in a hotel somewhere near Montvale, I had no idea where we should go.  Luckily the driver did.  So weird to be one of those people who has a driver waiting for me at the airport to whisk me off somewhere. 

This post is really long, so I think I'll break it up into several sections.