Memorial Weekend

We hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day! Every once in a while I get this "gotta get out and plan an adventure" bug. Friday afternoon on the way back from the playground I picked up a local newspaper and started scanning it for ideas of what to do this weekend. Cliff and I had recently been on a Civil War historical binge, so I was voting for this civil war memorial and cemetery in Brooklyn. I was voted down--too far away for an only semi-not-boring thing for Isaac to do.
My second vote was for the Intrepid. Apparently thousands of other people had the same idea--the line to get in was at least a half hour long according to the line employee people. If anyone reading this has a children's museum membership, please take note, the Intrepid counts it as a membership pass and not only do you get in for free, but you can walk past all the people waiting in line and go right in, which we did.

Cliff now says that if you just buy three memberships (botanical garden, children's museum, and zoo) you can get into almost everything else in the entire city for free through reciprocal museum agreements. It seems to be true. Of course, purchasing those three membership costs so much that you are broke afterwards and thus can't afford the train ride to get there.... ok, that's not really true. But perhaps its only a pretty good strategy to get lots of memberships.

The USS Iwo Jima behind Cliff and Isaac. Isaac enjoyed looking at all the ships and air planes. He especially loved winning jelly beans at the Dean and Buster's spin the wheel game. The Armed Forces all had booths, the Army had a push-up stand where you can compete for who can do the most push-ups. Cliff won. Well, maybe not. But we had fun.

Isaac and I in front of the Blue Angels' airplane. Last year we went to the Blue Angels' air show over Memorial Weekend. This year, the Blue Angels air show was canceled because they apparent almost flew into the ground last week and the commanding officer-pilot was immediately suspended. They are supposed to have at least a 300 or 500 foot no fly zone buffer from the ground, and he flew 130 feet above the crowd. I wonder what it would have felt like to have been watching the airshow and feel like the planes were getting a little too close. If a news reporter asked me what it felt like, I would probably say "what, what?" because my ear drums would have exploded from the sound.

Monday we headed out to Coney Island with some friends. The original plan was the beach, but the morning rain changed our plans to the Boardwalk, Aquarium and Russian food at nearby Brighton Beach. We passed the famed Nathan's hot dog shop where they have the highly publicized hot dog eating contest. It was unfortunately too early in the day to eat hot dogs for me.

It was our first time at the New York Aquarium and Isaac loved it. Here he is looking at the shark. In the upper right side of the picture you may see a little bit of this gigantic turtle that was also in the shark tank. Cliff and I were talking later and I asked if he thought it was weird they allowed other sea life in the shark tank. Cliff asked if I noticed that the turtle looked like he had had a chunk taken out of his fin. And I thought I had some rough roommates at BYU--at least they didn't try to EAT me.

If you can read the side banner behind us* it says something like "Brighton Beach, known as little Russia by the Sea." Cliff ordered us lunch, in Russian, so we had no idea what we were eating, but it was pretty good. In fact, it was really good. It brought back a flood of memories from our trip last year to the Temple dedication in Kiev. This time, however, I was able to savour the food instead of being saddled with morning sickness, all day. Nothing kills a good meal like feeling your stomach flip-flop at the smell of anything cooking.

*Check out our new double stroller--there is a baby under there!