Our campground...Black Bear in Florida, New York. After 3 days in the van, we were looking forward to letting the kids loose to burn of some of their never-ending supply of energy. And guess what? It was raining..and freezing cold, too. So we all danced around each other while dh set up the camper and I made a lunch of soup and sandwiches. Eventually, when the rain lightened to a mist, we let the kids run around in the small field next to us. They were very cold so I made some hot cocoa for them. When the rain stopped completely, I brought out M'lady and I started spinning my second batch of kool-aid dyed roving (bought at Knit-Witz.) This stuff is reds and pinks from 3 varieties of Kool-aid and very pretty. I really enjoyed spinning while watching my children outside playing princess (Kendall and later Lily) and sword fighting princes (Greyson & Ethan.) Mia was the director. She even got Ethan and Kendall to fake kiss for a scene. I didn't get too far on my spinning, maybe 1/4 a bobbin. I don't remember if I got much knitting done...maybe a couple pattern repeats on Monkey Sock #2 (or #3 depending on if you count the doomed one.)
We hung around the camper all afternoon. Everyone got much needed showers so we would be clean for our jaunt into the Big Apple on Wednesday.
NYC - Day 5
We parked our van in Harriman, NY, and we took the train into Secaucus. From there we transferred to NYC Penn station. The kids, especially Ethan, were thrilled to be on trains
. I can't even describe how thrilled I was to be walking around in NYC! So many sights looked familiar from movies and whatnot. It was just cool. We used our GPS to find the big Toys R Us and it looked like a local yarn store, Yarn Connection, was on the way there. We had to drag the stroller up to the 2nd floor of a residential building. The store was tucked away in a tiny room that had very tall ceilings. I felt claustrophobic with the towering walls of yarn. I picked a ball of tofutsies sock yarn and we headed out.
GPS let us down with her outdated information because we arrived at TRU to discover it had been converted to a Babies R Us. We decided to have lunch and we ate at Good Burger...and it was very good...but ended up costing us $69 and that was with some sharing among children.
We took the subway to TRU. We rode the Ferris Wheel ($4 each.) Dh and I waffled about whether to let the kids pick out a small toy. We decided to let them...and that was a BIG mistake. It was just too over-whelming...too many choices and we, the parents, had limited them to $10 and something small that they could hold. I think we spent 2 hours in there including the Ferris Wheel ride. I was ready to get out. I mean, the store was nice but it was still loaded with the same toys that could be bought at our TRU or online. Here's what the kid's picked...
Mia - cheap Barbie Doll and a clothing pack. She really went over the $10 limit by a couple bucks. I'm not even sure why she picked Barbie considering her age and the fact that she doesn't really play with Barbie's anymore.
Greyson - Star Wars figurine with light sabor
Kendall - a little Bratz Baby that pees after you give her water from a bottle and 2 bonus pets that pee into a litter box with sand. I obviously didn't look at that package closely before buying!
Ethan - The best choice among the toys - a 2 pack of Speed Racer cars.
Lily - I picked out a little stuffed giraffe for her.
We headed towards the Empire State building. I was surprised at the security check point. I guess this was one of the things that changed after 9/11. I understand why they need to do it but it was really a pain to unload all the bags and keep the children together. Mia ended up getting pushed aside by several non-english speaking tourists because they crowded the metal detector as it was her turn and someone set it off. We were herded through ropes and we took 2 elevators to finally get up there. We did get an express pass up the last elevator, thanks to Lily screaming. They escorted us right out of the line. LOL Thanks, baby Girl!
It was WINDY and cold. I was not digging the continuous blast of freezing air. DH's hat blew off and he had to chase after it. We looked around a bit from all 4 sides and then I headed inside with all the children. Lily was still very fussy so I thought I would sit down and discreetly nurse her. Wrong. No sitting allowed. After a long day of walking...and no place to sit, I was done with the Empire State Building.
We had dinner at McDonald's close to Penn Station. Thank goodness for fast food prices! Greyson's tiny light sabor got stuck under a bench and dh had to lift the bench so he could retrieve it.
Then we took our trains back to Harriman and dh drove us back to our camper. I think it was 9:30 and all 5 children were fast asleep. A fun-filled exhausting day!
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