No crafting blues

I've got the no crafting blues in a bad way. Things have been chaotic with MIL's move. DH has spent virtually every non-working moment at her house since we got back from vacation. that means I have been a single parent. The 4 oldest kids are fine but my baby girl is high maintenance! I have come to really rely on the break I get when dh is home. I don't even see an end in sight because we finally realized that time is not on our side and dh rented a storage unit today. That means that we get the pleasure of paying $100 a month until we can deal with each and every box. I think I mentioned how slow MIL is at looking through stuff. DH is even worse! We went over there to pack yesterday and he kept bringing me stuff from his childhood to look at. He would look through every page of the photo albums and then show me and tell me about every relative. I love a walk down memory lane but not when it means that we don't have time to sort stuff...and then have to pay for a storage unit. I'm a quick processor. I've always been able to make quick decisions and the slow decision-making people drive me a little batty.

So...no lovely sewing pictures to share. I've been sorting through boxes. No knitting progress either. I've just got a big mess of a house that needs to be reaaranged and cleaned in prep for the new stuff we have inherited from MIL. wah wah wah I think I'm going to explode.

At the very least, I *will* be going to my LYS knit in this weekend. The thought of that just might tide me over a few more days...until I can get a 'hit' of creativeness.

A Birthday Gift for a Special Boy

My oldest son's 8th birthday was yesterday and this was my gift to him...a pirates of the carribean costume. We are calling it a pirate costume but it really looks more like a captain. Anyhow, he LOVES it! The pattern was Simplicity 3844. I am shocked that the sizing worked out so well. I expected it to be huge since the smallest size was 7 and my son wears a 6...and I usually have a problem with the big 3 running way to big to start with. This pattern size seemed right on...at least for the size 7.

I made the boots (covers over regular shoes,) pants and the jacket. The first picture is minus the black pants because they weren't finished until later in the day. I need to finish the shirt, too.

Details

Boots - I used leftover red vinyl from my cube seat project. A brown leathery looking vinyl would probably be even better but these are fine.

Jacket - I used stretch velveteen from my stash that came from Joann's clearance section last year. I love the feel of this fabric and I had planned on matching sister jumpers but that didn't happen. I did have to buy $17 worth of buttons - 8 larger ones and I used 12 smaller ones instead of the 15 it called for. I didn't do the ones on the back. 1) to save a couple bucks and 2) because I messed up on the back flap. The directions were not clear to me and I sewed, ripped, sewed and ripped several times. By the time I figured it out, the damage had been done and my final result is a bit squinched up which bugs the heck out of me. If I had more fabric, I'd remake the back. I also had problems with the sleeves. The sleeves are oddly shapped with an upper and lower sleeve and cuffs that have a rounded edge. Of course, I have sewn sleeves on a hundred times so I didn't mark the dots...I just did the pyramids...and I sewed the sleeves on backwards. Then I sewed the trim on the wrong side of one of the cuffs. I really, really think the pattern markings were poorly done anyway. These sleeves had a definate right sleeve and left sleeve and they should have had the cuffs done after the sleeves were attached to the body. There were just too many variables to get wrong. I suppose it didn't help that I was working on this at 3:00 in the morning. The final sleeves are still not 100% right since the buttons should end up right over the top of the sleeve vs towards the front like they are. Oh well!

Pants - black fabric from my stash.

Shirt - I have cut a shirt out of a pale yellow top sheet that my MIL gave us...that I had no use for. (She gave mismatched sheets and pillows and I can't stand when things don't match.) The thing that appealed to me about using a sheet was that it was well used and thus super, duper soft. I placed the pattern pieces so that the sleeve edges were on the top edge of the sheet...so I won't have to hem them. I did the shirt hem edges on the bottom edge...allowing for the hem and moving the pattern off the edge a bit. I hope i can sew it today. I watching a friend's dd in addition to my crew so I might not be able to.

And just for fun, his 'cake' was homemade cinnamon rolls based on his request.

The Red Tent

While working on this project, I started listening to a new audiobook...The Red Tent. I am really liking this story and all the details about sheep, wool, spinning and weaving are pretty neat.

Home Again

It was a long, long car trip home but we made it. We attempted to stay at a Walmart but I just wasn't feeling safe so dh found us a campground close by that allowed us to get a good night's sleep before the final leg of our trip.

I don't know if I mentioned it before but we allowed my brother to stay in our house when we were gone. He is in between houses again so I'm sure he appreciated it. It also made it nice that we didn't have to take Mia's rats to her friend's house...because the mom wasn't too crazy about the idea. So, coming home after my brother was here was kind of funny. He had asked me if there were any things he could do while we were gone. I told him he could finish stripping the wallpaper in the kitchen. DH said he could do yardwork. Neither of those things were done. He did organize our DVDs and CDs in our cases...which means that my blockbuster dvds are not where I left them. And at 29 years of age he had no idea that it was a bad idea to put a half-used jar of spagetti sauce back in the pantry. He did that twice actually. And I found an opened bottle of barbeque sauce, too. He must get food poisoning on a regular basis.

As far as knitting, I started Greyson's Wonderful Wallaby on the final leg of our trip. I got a good start on it but didn't get as far as I would have thought.

So we got home Tuesday and the camper is mostly unpacked. DH cleaned out the van and he filled a LARGE trashcan with trash from under and around the kids' seats. I had kept our area fairly tidy and I did clean up the back area several times over the course of the trip so I was shocked at how much crap there was. My kids are just slobs! They would just drop stuff on the ground with no thought.

The next phase of our lives will be consumed with MIL moving into an assisted living apartment. She sold her house and the closing date is June 20th. She gets her keys today. DH is the only kid in town so he will be the primary mover. One of his sisters will be coming June 10th and she's bringing her son, Nathan the college grad, so they will be able to help a lot. And we will pay my brother for his moving help, too. I'm a bit bummed because this move means that I will basically not have dh's assistance at all over the next month. He will go to his mother's house (across town) every day after work and on weekends. She's moving from a large 4 bedroom house into a tiny 1 bedroom...and she can't make decisions quickly about what to keep and what can go.

Winding down

Our mega vacation is winding down now. Sometime this morning, we will start our journey home. We will need to stop one place along the way and we should be pulling into our driveway tomorrow afternoon. The kids, especially Ethan, are more then ready for the comforts of home. I'm looking forward to it, too. I grossly underestimated how much 'free time' I would have for my creative activities during our vacation. Yes, I got lots of knitting in during our driving days and even during our sitting around and visiting times but I'm really anxious to develop more consistancy with my spinning and I think 10-15 minutes a day at home is what's going to help. Our days here have been 'go, go, go!' and I think I'll have a bit of on of down time at home for spinning. I have a ton of yummy fiber to work with.

I finished Mia's first sock last night. Instead of casting on the 2nd one today, I'm going to cast on Greyson's wonderful wallaby. Mia's 2nd sock can be my take-along project once we are back home. Greyson's wallaby will be a larger project and it would be great to have a big dent made in the progress.

Well, my time is up. I gotta help dh pack us up. It'll be a long driving day for us today.

Graduation #2

We have been in Indiana for the past 2 nights. Friday night, we went to my nephew's grad party. Saturday we had lunch at my all-time-favorite pizza place...Pizza King. They don't have them in Florida and nothing is quite as good as Pizza King. I like to get barbeque sauce and pepperoni. Yum yum!

We drove up to Muncie to visit with my grandma who is in a rehab place after her back surgery. I brought her a couple gowns, socks and chapstick. She was really appreciative and that made me feel good. Then we drove out to aunt's house in Eaton We visited for a little while and then we went to the cemetery to visit my cousin's gravesite. We talked about Nolan and Jared and we both got teary. My mom met us there. My aunt had previous plans for dinner at Red Lobster so they went that way. They had invited us but I didn't think the kids were up to it (plus I needed to spend time with my mom and I didn't want to complicate my aun's dinner plans) so we made plans to go to Chuck E Cheese with the kids. Mia actually LOVES Red Lobster and we never take her so I asked my aunt if she minded letting Mia tag along. She didn't and it actually worked out very well because my aunt's 12 year old step-granddaughter was with them. Mia and she had a fabulous time.

The other kids had a blast at CEC, of course. I think my mom has wanted a reason to go there so she had fun, too. My aunt dropped Mia off at CEC as we were leaving and we drove back to my SIL's house.

In the midst of all these activities, I got to spin and ply Nate! I did the bulk of the spinning in the morning. When we got back, it was late but I wanted to finish so I plugged on. Greyson was awake when I was dealing with a tangled mess from a yarn cake plying attempt. He actually peddled for me while I stood WAY back, untangling the 2 plies and then feeding it onto the bobbin. Nate, as yarn, looks great! I still have thick and thin spots so I have no idea what I'll knit with it.

I've also come a long way on sock #1 for Mia. I'm 4-5 rows away from the first toe decrease.

Today is the actual graduation so things will be busy. I'm sure I'll get some sock knitting in but that might be the only thing I get done. Tomorrow, we start our long trek home.

Chicago

We took a train from Michigan City, Indiana, into Chicago. We decided on the Aquarium although the Field Museum was very tempting. I quickly determined that it was $25 cheaper for us to buy a family membership then it was for us to buy regular tickets. So, we can go back as many times as we want over the next year. hee hee hee Before we went in, we met another loss family from Chicago. The kids all ran around and played on these rolling hills in front of the city and the lake. It was a beautiful view.

The aquarium was really nice. The kids all seemed to like it. The sea otters, beluga wales, penguins and komodo dragon were all favorites. Mia was acting mopey because she knew Chicago had an American Girl Place and that was one thing we didn't do in NYC that we had initially planned. DH and I decided to try to get there, if we could. It involved a few free trolley rides but we made it there. We let the girls picked out one item each. (So much for watching the budget!) Kendall picked a mini Julie just like her doll. Mia picked out an asian outfit.

We then got to take a regular bus to Millenium station to catch our train home. It was a great, busy day. Chicago was rather cool. I wish we had more time here. I would have liked it if I could have coordinated a few online friend visits since we were so close to others. I'm too tired to get the camera to upload photos. Maybe tomorrow.

What Day is it?

I think it's Wednesday. Time marches by quickly and there just isn't must lounging time here on vacation. There is an insane amount of work to be done for us camper dwelling folks.

Loads of laundry done: At least 15. Seriously. We've been gone for 11 days and we've done more then 15 loads. That's not really including bedding either..unless you count a few items here and there based on need.

When I last wrote, I hinted about diamonds. The kids and I went prospecting and sluicing in Herkimer, New York. Dh stayed at the camper with Lily and the rest of us walked across the way to the Herkimer Diamond Mine. I paid $42 admittance for the 4 big kids and I to get hammers and entrance to the 'mines' which were really 2 big piles of rocks.

It was hot. We smashed away but didn't really get anything good although we saw lot of possibilities. I think we needed better tools to be able to free the tiny 'diamonds' (quartz) from their stony homes. A chisel would have been very helpful. We tried anyway. And it was pretty fun. Kendall mosied up to people and told them she hadn't found a single thing. One man, a professional prospector working from a hole in the ground, told her she needed to look harder. Later, the man's lady friend gave Kendall a diamond which I thought was very nice but I had a little talk with Kendall about not fishing for gifts from people.

Since it was so hot, the hottest day of our entire trip, we didn't stay as long as I would have liked. On our way out, I bought a $10 bag of dirt and we sluiced using their water thingy outside. We found lots of great gems!

The rest of the day was spent getting cleaned up and then the kids tried swimming again. Somehow, the temp plummetted and it was too cold for swimming so they shivered at the edge. I dove in and it was...refreshing...bone chilling cold.

I can't remember if this was the day I took my wheel to the playground. I am seriously sad that I just haven't had hardly any time to spin. We have been moving too much for that. I did get to predraft all of 'Nate' so I am hoping I can spin him soon...maybe when we park at my SIL's house this weekend.

Tuesday was a long road day. In our initial planning, we planned on stopping at Niagara Falls but we nixed those plans after we got a late start and a falls diversion would have put us behind schedule. As we approached, I asked dh how far off our path was it? 16 miles. We both decided to heck with the schedule and we stopped anyway. It was a whirlwind stop. We were in and out in about an hour. We didn't get to see everything but we can say that we went and we saw the falls. Lily was especially impressed. Mia hated it. She was freaked out by the panhandler who approached us in the parking lot. He was really agressive and it ticked my dh off.

I finished my 2nd monkey sock just as we arrived at Niagara Falls...ends woven in and everything!

We stayed at a Flying J last night...don't ask me where. Tonight we are back to a regular campground. We arrived here, got set up and I watched the kids on the playground while working on my next sock project...socks for Mia with yarn purchased in NYC. They will be short socks so I hope they go quickly. I'm not following a pattern on these ones. This playground has lots and lots of DIRT under the equipment. Kendall rolled around it in wearing her wonderful wallaby....the only 'jacket' she has so it meant another laundry round for me. And we had somehow already accumulated 2 full loads anyway.

I met a longtime online friend, Rachel, at the Hanna Andersson outlet here. I was in heaven walking among all the cute clothes. Oh my how I love HA clothes on my girls. On the way there, Mia proclaimed that she hates it along with Gymboree but that didn't stop her from finding 2 things that she liked from the racks. I could have bought a ton more but I exercised great restraint which dh would probably disagree with. Rachel has 2 daughters and they seemed to hit it off with my kids, especially Kendall and her oldest dd.

Now we have tentatively planned a quick day trip to Chicago tomorrow. I think we will check out one of the museums there.

Graduation #1

We met our family at the college campus Saturday morning. It was dh's oldest sister, her dh, their son Nathan - the graduate, and MIL who flew up for the event. We walked around campus a bit and then had lunch at a buffet there. MIL can no longer walk down stairs in general and the buffet was upstairs so we had to scramble to make a seating area so that she could avoid the stairs. That was a fun arrangement...when having to get food & drinks downstairs for kids. After lunch we walked around some more...it is a lovely place.

We came back to the campground where our crazy kids went swimming in the freezing cold pool. DH and I watched them and I tried to sneak a little sock knitting in. Somewhere between there and our camper, I lost a dpn...a size 3.0 US 3 dpn not your tandard 3.25 US 3. So almost halfway through sock number 2 and I lost a vital tool that can't be found at any of the local craft stores or even LYSs. Grrr!

Dinner was at the Hotel Utica in a meeting room. It was a catered event held in honor of a network of 11 friends, including Nathan. Our kids were fairly well behaved but I was not entirely comfortable there. It seemed liked a lot of the people were monied and we were just plain old camper traveling folks. Kendall, however, was the belle of the ball and she charmed quite a few people with her contagious smile and fancy dress twirling. Ethan kept 'stealing' the fancy graduation toothpicks near the appetizers. He had a stack of 20 of them when I finally caught on and he was quite convinced he was keeping them. Mia felt uncomfortable and after dinner I let her walk around the lobby with Lily.

Sunday was the big day. We arrived on campus an hour early and still had to park very far away. Lily lasted 30 minutes before I had to take her out. Eventually all my kids joined me outside where lots of other children and toddlers were playing. I pulled out my sock and was able to knit a bit while they played. (I had swapped a 3.25 us 3 for the missing dpn because at this point I just want to be done with the damn sock.) On the way to lunch, I discovered that dpn #2 was missing. I had an entire afternoon on a beautiful campus with lots of waiting time and no way to knit. I retraced my steps but didn't find it. The college hosted a catered picnic for all attendees so we participated in that. Once the crowds cleared out, I retraced my steps again and found my dpn stuck in the grassy area close to where the kids were playing earlier. It truly was like finding a needle in a haystack because my dpn matched the little tree triggy things that were all over the grass. I was thrilled to be able to knit again! And yeah, I guess I should give magic loop another try.

We met Nathan's girlfriend and her parents. For whatever reason, I was a bit surprised when I met her....a very beautiful Korean girl named Kate. We have known about Kate since Nathan's freshman year so I have had 3+ years to envison her as someone completely different. She was incredibly nice and tried to convince Nate, as she called him, to take them to a playground across campus. We hitched a ride on a golf cart back to our van while dh pushed Lily in the stroller.

DH and I discovered that we have burned through an insane amount of money and we aren't even halfway through our trip. Yikes! I think we got a little free with the spending since we are on vacation and all. From this point on, we need to buckle down and watch our spending. The main thing we can do is actually eat from our camper vs eating out.

The kids, minus Kendall, went swimming again. Well, if you call standing in the water up to your knees and shivering 'swimming.' We cooked tilapia on our griddle/grill and had cesar salad, apple slices and oreas on our picnic table outside the camper. Afterwards, we took the dishes down to the campground's outdoor dishwashing sink. Once chores were down, we all took a bike ride around the campground and we ended up on a rocky beach along a river. This was seriously one if the best moments of our entire vacation. We let the kids take their shoes off and walk around in the frigid water. Kendall fell on her bottom but she wasn't too upset. Mia tried to get to one of the huge rocks but she just couldn't do it. Lily sat on the edge and tossed little rocks in. I took my shoes off and joined the kids, too. We all did a kind of river rock dance, walking on the rocks, slowly and step by step, and trying not to step on sharp ones. It was dark by the time we biked back. Our neighbor's fire was still going and the kids were hungry so we let them roast hotdogs. It was a lovely way to end our evening.

It's now the start of day 9 and we have plans to add 'diamonds' to our family wealth today. More on that later.

Day 6-7

Day 6 and 7

As usual, it took us hours to pack up camp and get back on the road again. The bikes had to be attached to the roof rack, our outdoor table folded up and brought inside, the camper slide cranked in, the 2 tent bed ends disassembled and folded up, the outdoor carpet swept off and folded, etc, etc, etc. The coolest thing was listening to the kids play outside in that field while we packed up. There were no arguments...only a few squeals from Lily who wanted out of her secure (safe) spot in the stroller. We let her run around a bit, too, but we mostly needed to make sure she didn't run down the road while the big kids were preoccupied.

It was lunch time by the time we headed out. We are getting low on groceries so we were going to do a quick fast food run...which always starts a big argument of who likes what. McDonald's is almost always the popular consensus except that I am getting sick of Micky D's. Greyson doesn't like the chicken at Wendy's or Burger King. No one likes the fries at BK for that matter so it's usually out anyway. And so on and so on and so on. We used our handy GPS to locate a McDonald's on our path. It led us to a freakin food court in a huge outlet mall. That just wasn't working for us so we picked the next one a mile away. That ended up being a distribution center with lots of golden arches on semi-trucks. We gave up and got back on the highway. We then decided to try a service exit which boasted of a Roy Rogers. DH and I made the executive decision to go there. Mia & I went in to get the food since there was no drive through.

There was a hold up on chicken and there were 20 or so people behind us. There were 4 peeps, including us, waiting for chicken. Someone from the back got the great idea to let the non-chicken waiting people go ahead to grab there food from the cafe line style warming slots. Which meant that by the time we got our chicken, the mashed potatoes that Mia wanted were gone and so were the fries. Of course, I didn't think about that when they were all walking by. It took an INSANE amount of time for us to get our food. And the food we grabbed earlier was cold by the time we checked out. We ate in the van. It was seriously the most disgusting meal I have ever purchased for my family.

I was in the mood for knitting so I worked on my 2nd monkey sock. Right after one stop, when we were moving, my dpn from my monkey sock flew out of my hand and disappeared to the right of me. I emptied both compartments and it wasn't there. I HAD to be able to knit so I unbuckled and dove down into the foot area where I finally was able to find it in the step area of the door. I was able to knit to the heel flap. I was hoping to be done with this sock already so it's getting old! Plus I'm majorly ticked off at a knot I encountered. I cut the knot out and left the ends to be tied but the new area was in a different color and it's patterning in a different way which irks me. I'm ready to move on to another project.

Our new campground is awesome. There are tons of children here and we are close to the playground. Our neighbors are 2 elderly couples who have taken a liking to the kids. They had a fire going last night and they gave our kids sticks and marshmellows for roasting. I didn't reealize that it was Memorial Day weekend which explains all the campers here. The camp also has lots of activities planned..like the flashlight candy hunt last night. We aren't actually going to be here a whole lot over the next few days since we will be doing nephew graduation stuff.

I did 5 loads of laundry when we got here. It would have been 2, maybe 3, loads in our front loader. I think this was 3 days worth of laundry. It it wasn't so darn cold and wet we could go a week between laundry but our severely limited clothing options forced the camp laundrymat trip.

If I can, I'm going to set my wheel up outside in a few minutes. I really need a shower first but I can't bear to go to the showers in this 40 degree weather...with no heat in the showers. Yes, they have hot water but the air is just too cold. I can't really shower here because we don't have a full hook-up site...just water and electric.

A Perfect Storm

Day 5

We took our time getting ready for our second trip into the city. At the first station, dh realized he left his phone in the van. He decided not to get it because it was raining and because we didn't need it at all the previous day. He also rationalized that he had his work Blackberry that could be used for calls in an emergency. Once in NYC, we took the subway directly to the Museum of Natural History. We stopped outside and had hotdogs from a street vendor before we went inside. Somewhere around the 3rd floor, the kids started whining and they just wanted to go to Central Park for cotton candy and playground time. We had to see the dinos though so we trugged on. The museum was very cool. I read some of the information out to the children but who knows what they may have learned. Naturally, the boys gravitated to all the weapon displays. Mia loved all the little house displays and she was in heaven in the Asian area. I worked on my monkey sock there and throughout NYC.

We walked to another LYS, Knitty City. At first, it was a bit uncomfortable because of the smallness of the store and the wideness of our stroller. DH moved it to the side and he waited while I walked around. No one greeted me or asked me if I needed help and for some reason, I was a little bothered by that. There appeared to be a class going on in the back of the room and it made me feel like I was intruding. I walked around, touched lots of fiber and yet again I have a knack for finding and drooling over the $60 a skein stuff. I was prepared to leave when Kendall spotted the same yarn I used for her Wonderful Wallaby...Cascade Sierra Quatro. OMG - how I love that yarn. It's a Pima Cotton and Wool blend. So soft to the touch, almost silky, and it knits up beautufully. Plus it's machine washable. At this point, I needed help figuring out how much to buy to be able to do Wonderful Wallaby sweatshirts for Mia, Greyson and Ethan so I found an employee and they happened to sell that pattern so they brought me one to look at. And the girl was very nice, I might add. I bought 16 skeins of Sierra in 3 colors! Red for Ethan, dark blue for Greyson and 2 greens for Mia. They didn't have 7 skeins of any color for Mia so we picked 3 varigated green and 4 solid light green. I came so close to not spending a dime and yet I ended up spending $150, my biggest yarn purchase ever!

We walked to Central Park, looking for a playground...that we didn't find until it was too late. We went right when we should have gone left. We walked and walked and walked. We stopped and let the kids play on a huge rocky area. I knit some more, dh replied to a work email on his crackberry, I mean blackberry, and he was wearing sleeping Lily in a sling.

One thing I noticed was the huge number of nannies pushing strollers in this part of town. It was like we had fallen in step with nannies and their charges heading to a nanny convention. And I think there was even one male nanny pushing a stroller. He definately did not look like a dad. I know a few people who have nannies back home but it was nothing like what we saw. Now, if we had been smart, we would have turned left to join the convention which I am sure was at the playground to the left pathway vs the path we took. I think it was a happy mistake though. I did notice that moms/nannies? hover right next to their children on the playground. DH and I can't do that with 5 kids so we would have looked negligent. {gasp} The rock formation thing was enjoyable to us and the kids so it was a win/win situation.

We took the Subway back towards Penn station where dh inadvertantly gipped the system by only scanning our pass once before we were let through the gate with our stroller. P.S. the stroller was a life-saver! Since we had the sling, the stroller became available for Kendall or Ethan as their legs 'ran out of gas.' Greyson even took a quick turn in there. The moms of NYC have evolved and have strollers better then ours. They all seemed to have these cool looking ones with bigger wheels, yet with a small footprint, and the child was raised higher and could be faced in or outwards. We saw a few of these $500 strollers at BRU when we made a quick trip to BRU restroom.

The 7:07 train to Secaucus was somewhat full so dh stayed in the handcapped area while the kids and I moved forward (or was it backwards) to find seats. A very nice gentleman offered to move so that Mia and I could sit together. I had Lily in the sling. The 3 middles sat diagonally from me. If the one butthead sitting scross from them would have switched with us, then we all could have been together.

They announced that Secaucus was near and I got our stuff ready...and waited until we were supposed to get off. There was no activity by our area and I was facing the back. Then we started moving and realization hit...we missed our stop! I took a quick inventory and immediately realized that dh had my backpack which had my money. I had 5 kids, 4 bags, no stroller, no money and no cell phone. (My cell phone died, totally died at the beginning of our vacation.) And our navigator had gotten off the train in Secaucus. He had his blackberry but I had no idea of what that number was. The kids started asking questions. I assured them that we would be fine...that we would get off at the next station and then go back to our stop. I was a wee bit concerned that dh would realize we didn't have money and that he would hop on the next train to find us. Ultimately I decided that he would stay put because we still had to ride to Harriman and that train left from Secaucus, where he was. As we got off the train, I had a moment of panic that our stop might not be a 'real' full station with an information desk. We were in luck...and we headed down the stairs to find someone to tell our sob story to.

'My husband and I got separated and we need to get back to Secaucus. Is there a train heading back that way?' 'Yes, of course' she replied as she looked the schedule. 'OK, great,' I replied. 'My next dilemma is that all of my money is with my husband in Secaucus so I can't buy any tickets.' She immediately came out of her glass information booth and she walked us to the track that we needed. We had to walk down a broken escalator. She even helped me keep my wanderer, Ethan, in line with the group. And then she waited with us until our train arrived a few minutes later. She told our story to the conductor and he let us on the train without tickets. And voila...we were on our way. But we had no idea where Daddy was and if he had gone looking for us. The kids spotted him first and they ran full throttle towards him. We had to go into the customer service office to get the stroller and our belongings. "Hello Kerri' they greeted me. "We know all about you.' They were trying earnestly to locate me on the trains by sending out calls to all the possible stops. I have to say that the employees were all very nice!

We made it to our track, which was empty of any commuters, we looked across to the next track and saw a stopped train heading down our line. DH insisted that was the one we wanted so we rushed up the yet-again broken escalator and down the other side where we *just* missed it. DH looked at his watch and said 'Wait, that was too early.' We headed back to the other track, where commuters were now arriving and we were able to get on the right train. Just another little bit of excitement! I was secretly glad that dh led us on this one because it took the heat off me for my little diversion.

I think the kids will love sharing this little 'story' (of our missed stop) with anyone who will lend an ear. We all made it back to our camper safely where everyone fell asleep fairly quickly. They are all still sleeping, those lazy bums. ;) My body feels like I ran a marathon and I'm hobbling around today.

Next stop - Hamilton College, New York.

One final thing before I forget...we were definately an oddity in NYC. During our entire trip, I saw 2 other families with 3 kids. The vast majority was one child with a fair sprinkling of 2s. We were the largest family for sure. OK, I'm sure other large families were probably in the city but we did not see them and we certainly got lots and lots of comments. The kids were all ready to move to NYC. I think it would be pretty hard to do a Sam's trip on the subway. Yeah, that would be horrific. Nevermind. We never could afford to live here anyway. It has been a wonderful place to visit though.