New York City for a Week

After a month in Canada and a week-long road trip through the West, we finally made it back home to the Bronx. It's nice to be home. :) After a few days to relax, we headed down to New Jersey for my Nana's birthday party.


The whole family gathered down at Aunt Jeanmarie's house for the party, which also doubled as a birthday party for Uncle Peter, and a 25th anniversary party for Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Patty. But as much as we love all them, it was an excuse for us to be stupid on a diving board.


After failing miserably at no handed cartwheels, barrel-roll dives, and 1 1/2 flip/dives and hitting the water at various painful angles (watch the video I put together of all our craziness), we played some wiffle ball and ate A LOT of food.

Sunday we went to church and to Chris's Spartan Race. If you don't know what a Spartan Race is, watch this video. This is how Chris looked at the end of the race.


Monday was our only day to play in the City, so we took our Key to the City (remember that?) and went over to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and opened a side chapel there. This was our second time there. We went with Esther and Marie a few months ago and climbed to the top. It claims to be the largest cathedral in the world.


After that, we went to Bryant Park for our favorite use of the Key. We turned on and off one of the lights. This light:


Super fun. :) I'll post a video of that soon.

Then we went home, packed, and took off on a plane for our next adventure: Florida. Stay tuned for that fun story soon.

Temple Square to Las Vegas ROAD TRIP!!

After Spokane, Isa and I flew down to Salt Lake City to see friends and stuff. Isa had never been to Utah (or Vegas) so we wanted to do and see as much as possible. So we started out at Temple Square. If you haven't been there, you should go. It's really pretty and not just for mormons. We were there on a Friday so we played "spot the bride" most of the time. There were plenty of newlyweds around and it's always fun to see (and judge) the wedding gowns they chose.

I had never been up to the top of the church office building, so we did that. It's really cool and offers fantastic views of the capital building, the temple, the grounds, and the conference center.


The guides up top are also full of cool little insights too, so I highly recommend you talk to them. For example, did you know the capital building is built on a foundation of rubber pillars, allowing it to sway up to 2 feet in any direction in case of an earthquake (which is apparently long overdue).

After a day in SLC, we took off down toward Vegas. We made a stop in St. George to go on a little hike. We went up to Snow Canyon and hiked the sand dunes (which are super cool and really fun to see the wind whipping across them - and then pelting you which is not as fun) and then we went over to Jenny's Canyon. It's a really small canyon, but it gives you a good example (albeit on a MUCH smaller scale) of what Zion's canyons look like.


After our hike, we went on to Vegas, which is always farther than I think. If you've ever driven to Vegas, you know what I mean. I always think, "This is it... Just up and around this bend and you'll see Vegas." And then it's still not there for another 50 miles. Boo. But we finally made it and visited with my little brother Jason and his family (wife Christy, 3-year-old Ty, and baby Madison Jayne). We went to dinner and to see their new house (a ridiculous 5-bedroom house that they can actually afford because of the housing crisis in Vegas) and then we headed in to play on the strip.


We saw the volcano explode at the Mirage, we walked through the Venetian through the Grand Canal, and of course we saw the water show at the Bellagio.


Vegas has also changed a lot since I was last there. The whole new Aria and City Center right in the middle of the Strip was new to me. And I don't remember the Encore next to the Wynn either. But of all the new things that I noticed, probably the most surprising was a wonderful little restaurant out front of Caesar's Palace. (Go ahead and click on the picture to enlarge it.)


Yeah! Serendipity 3 is there now, complete with $10 Frrrozen Hot Chocolates. MMMmmm. Vegas baby, YEAH!!

Music!!

I finally caved and decided to add music to the blog. I followed the lead of people that are cooler than me (Elisabeth and Tyler - although they recently took down their player, which made me a little sad) among a few others that I read.

What do you think? Hate any songs? Love any of them? Should I add/delete any of them?

Followers

Ok, I've been on Blogger for years, and I've always felt they should do something like YouTube where you can subscribe to people's blogs so I can be notified when my friends update their blogs or post new things or whatever. It wasn't until today when my new friends Jordan and Chad showed me the little "Follow" button at the top left of the screen. So YAY!! I'm now following everyone I know about that has a blogger and I'll be leaving comments and I'm a happy little blogger right now. :)

If you have a blog on here then leave a comment and I'll follow you too. And here's a little picture of me and Isa, just for fun. :)


I don't know if I'm allowed to post wedding pictures yet, but this is my favorite. Actually it's one of my favorite pictures ever, not just out of the wedding pictures. So props and many thanks to my good friend and very talented Selena Moshell for sticking with us into the cold dark Central Park December night to get this picture. You're the best.

Culebra

Culebra is a little island about halfway to St. Thomas. When we bought our tickets in the morning, they told us that the return ferry was "conditional." Basically, if the weather turned any worse they would cancel the ferry and we'd be stuck on the island for the night, and Isa would miss her flight back to New York the next morning.

We figured it was worth the risk. :)

The ferry ride over was crazy. The people on the top deck were screaming like they were on a roller-coaster. I thought the boat would flip a few times. Way fun.

The island was gorgeous. We went straight to Flamenco Beach, which apparently is rated as one of the best beaches in the world. I beg to differ, but whatever. What do I know about tropical beaches, right? It was pretty, but one of the best, I don't know.



The coolest part of the beach were the abandoned tanks out on the LEFT side of the beach (not the right, as Isa and I found out when we hiked all the way out past the rocks into the bees nests and found no tanks).



At the end of the day, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the water was calmer than a lake, so we had no problem going home:

El Yunque

Yay. Isa came down to visit me. :)

We went out to El Yunque. This is the only tropical rain forest in the US. It was amazing. I've never driven though anything like it before. My favorite part was all the bamboo. I don't think I've ever seen bamboo growing in the wild. It was pretty exciting for me. You know, I'm pretty simple to amuse. :)

We went out and hiked to a waterfall and then continued up (off the trail) along the river. It was fun.


You should watch the video: I swung from a vine over a river just like Tarzan. It was awesome.