Bright Lights Will Inspire You

What to say about our trip? We basically went to as many tourist attractions as possible and tried to soak up as much New York as we could. I want to say that we are the hip couple that goes and sees offbeat things, but there's a reason so many people go to see the tourist-y things. Most of them are pretty cool.

Touristy things we did: Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Empire State Building, Top of the Rock, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Yankees game, Museum of Natural History, Broadway, eating food from street vendors, etc. I know I left something off the list.

Some pictures:

At the Museum of Modern Art

I searched the entire wall for the rifle shot and then read the plaque that said the "artists" decided to just put the words on the wall and not actually shoot the wall. Lazy! What I should have done: Pondered the artists' deep ironic message that incidentally made me look like an idiot. What I did: Hope the museum didn't pay too much for this particular work of "art."

The most ridiculous tour bus ever

All the tourists were sitting in these sideways stadium seats. Why? I don't know. But it gave them the unfortunate effect of looking like animals in a traveling zoo, being driven through the streets of New York for our viewing pleasure. Trust me, you cannot look at this bus in person without laughing.

Non-touristy things we did: Chinatown foot massages. So painful, yet the results.... Also walking the Highline, a favorite from our last trip. Oh yes, and the New York LDS temple. That's about it. We were really very tourist-y tourists.

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I have a bunch of pictures, but there are two that really encapsulate our whole trip, taken at the Natural History Museum.

Picture 1:

Picture 2:

 You see?

And best of all, I got to come home to these two characters!

When I gave Sammy the little Yankees hat /bowl that we ate ice cream out of at the baseball game, I expected Cici to freak out...instead she just ran over to their kitchen and stuck a bowl on her head to match Sammy's.

More travels to come! And after checking out three bonsai books from the library I have concluded that buying a bonsai right now is not a good idea...they don't like to be moved, and much like the problem with owning a dog, I would need someone to look after it every time I traveled. I like my fairly portable lifestyle. I guess I'll have to wait until I'm old, maybe wheelchair-bound or bed-ridden.

Five Years Later

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

"Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”

― Louis de Bernières

The Latest Hobby

I went to a specialty plant store yesterday to buy a friend a wedding gift and was confronted by multiple shelves of trees. Mini trees. !!! (Also called bonsai trees by cultured people.) I want one. Not just because I seem to collect hobbies that are fairly un-exciting to the average person, (reading, writing, weeding, etc.) but because the only thing as awesome as a huge tree outside is a tiny tree inside.

Another Summer

Ahhh...summer. The time of the year when the blog posts get few and far between. I uploaded some pictures on my camera and thought I'd share a few of our fun summer things:

Hiking with the girls:

Going to weddings:

Swim lessons:

(Sammy just started today)

Going on fun vacations for our 5 year anniversary:

And to keep it real (What, people's blog posts are not very representative of their real lives???) :

Wasting time making these instead of healthy whole wheat bread:

(ourbestbites.com recipe)

Cleaning up after this child constantly: