Spring Break in New York City

lobby wall

Whew!  It's a long drive to New York from Milwaukee.  We did the trip home in one straight shot, too, so between that and spending the first few days back desperately trying to catch up on the workload at the store I'm only barely feeling recovered, but I think I'm finally ready to get some of this down on my blog.  Brace yourselves for a long post of too many photos and a whole lot of everything while I still remember any of it.

The kids and I hit the road very early on a Saturday and drove as far as Ohio.  (Ian had classes to teach and flew out to meet us in New York later.)  There we stayed with my wonderful aunt and uncle and got to see my cousin's new house where we had a big family dinner.  Seen here is the cuteness that is Quinn playing on the piano with his cousin Kate:

We love visiting Ohio and hate that we don't get to do it more often.  Our family there is so loving and welcoming and we have equally generous and kind friends whom we're hoping to see sometime this summer.  It was too short a visit since it was really just an overnight stop to give me, the lone driver, a break, but it was great.  When I went to tuck Aden into bed and hugged her, she hung onto me as I tried to stand up and said, "We have to come stay here again."  I promised her we'd find a way.

The drive from Wisconsin to Ohio was dominated by getting through Indiana, which takes forever and is incredibly dull.  Usually there is at least the excitement of seeing lots of windmills a couple of hours in, but this time they were all still, which was a little eerie but mostly boring.

The drive from Ohio to New York was dominated by Pennsylvania.  It takes forever to cross Pennsylvania, but it's beautiful, so that helps.  My kids like to do a countdown as we come to state borders, and they couldn't believe how long we had to drive through Pennsylvania before we hit New Jersey.  (Wait until we eventually do a drive out West!  They have no idea how big some states really are.)

We arrived in New York City in time for dinner.  Kids were thrilled to be reunited with their cousin and to get to meet her new puppy, Pepper.  Pepper is adorable.  Teeth like needles and in a "must nip and chew on everything" mode, but adorable nonetheless.  Pepper needed frequent walks and frequent naps.

The Amazing Milwaukee Race!

Was, in fact, pretty amazing.  Most amazing was that out of 70 teams we came in 5th.  5th!  If we hadn't missed one of the clues we might have had a shot at 2nd place, which, being our team name, was in theory what we were going for.

(Me and Linda in our "Korinthian Violins & The Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra Team Up For Second Place!" T-shirts waiting at the starting point.)

But first things first:  You want to know what I packed, oh yes you do.  Because I like to be prepared but I am also a geek.  How much of a geek am I?  Well, the morning of the race I decided it would be fun to bring my Dr Who sonic screwdriver, but the batteries weren't working.  So I had to pack my SPARE Dr Who sonic screwdriver.  That's how geeky I am.

Because that could come in handy.  (Actually, it doubles as a pen, so maybe it could have.)  I also brought a Rubik's cube.  That only ever becomes useful if I need to keep other people's children distracted in public places for some reason, so I don't know why I always feel compelled to bring along a cube except that it makes me happy.  And happy is good, so why not.

The funny thing about doing the race with Linda is that I love her company and we get along well, but part of that is we think alike in many ways.  Too many ways to be helpful to each other in a team event where maybe a variety of skills might prove important.  We have too many of the same instincts.  For instance, we were both inspired to bring a compass and a fancy whistle.  And Linda approved of my bringing scissors, the sonic screwdriver, the cube, and asked if maybe we should have some twine which had also occurred to me, so I grabbed a thing of dental floss.  We used none of these things.  All we really needed were my bus tickets, some cash, her smart phone, a pencil and paper, and the snacks and water were nice but it's not like we were in the woods and couldn't have picked up something.  (In fact, one of our clues sent us into a grocery store and we got ourselves bananas.)  What we needed was someone with a different approach to substitution cyphers, but it was fun, we were never bored, and we had a great day.

Now let me tell you about the race: (And this is long, so seems like a good idea to add a jump here.)