Love, Learn, Play: City Mouse, Country Mouse

After our busy week of filming we were ready for a weekend to relax, hang out, and explore New York! Jon flew in with cousin Alex early Saturday morning. He wasn't planning to come out this weekend as flights were more expensive because of the holiday, but we were able to find a cheap flight on United into Newark. It looked good on paper, until we attempted to navigate them from Newark up to White Plains! It was gosh darn near impossible. They took two trains into Penn Station and instead of having them take two more to get up to the apartment, we decided to just drive down and meet them in the city. Despite the cost of parking in the city for a day, we figured it had to be cheaper than my mom and I paying for train tickets down and then all of us paying for train tickets back. Again, it looked good on paper! By the time you pay to cross the bridge there and back and the guy at the parking lot insists that you have an oversized vehicle, I think it was a wash. But at least Jon and my mom can now say that they've driven through Manhattan! Jon was excited about that, my mom- not so much!!!

But we did successfully navigate into the city and we met up with Jon and Alex by 9:00 in the morning. Alex's math teacher had suggested we check out the Museum of Mathematics so we went there first. It was quite cool- we all got to ride a square wheeled tricycle and the boys found all sorts of stuff to build with. For the first hour or so, I swear you needed your MENSA card just to get into the place. We sat down at this building station next to this kid who was so obviously gifted it wasn't funny! I guess only a certain kind of kid wakes up early on a Saturday to go to the math museum :) After we spent a few hours there we grabbed some lunch and figured we'd get our money's worth out of our parking lot, so we jumped on the subway and headed down to the Brooklyn Bridge. It is one of the boys' favorite bridges and my favorite part of traveling is taking the boys to see the things they have studied and love the most live and in person. Their eyes light up and you can just see the excitement spilling out of them. I'm no teacher, but I'm pretty certain that is what learning is supposed to be... to study something and then get to experience it and explore it with your own hands, which in turn ignites the desire to learn more. We were able to walk across the bridge and back and the view of the city was just incredible! After that we walked about a mile to Battery Park where we were able to see the Statue of Liberty in the not-so-far distance and we also went into the Skyscraper Museum. Unless you are four years old and obsessed with the architecture of skyscrapers, you can save your five dollars and skip the Skyscraper Museum. It was rather underwhelming for all of the grown ups, but of course the boys skittered around excitedly shouting out the names of all the buildings they knew. They may have been the most enthusiastic visitors the place has ever seen! We caught the subway back up to midtown to get our car and make the drive home. We got back to our apartment shortly before 5:00pm- it was a long, incredible day exploring the city!!

On Sunday Jon made everyone pancakes before we headed out for a day in the country. We wanted to take daddy and Alex up to the New Croton Dam that we had seen earlier in the week. It is about a half hour north of White Plains and it is the exact opposite of the city! At the top of the dam is a giant lake surrounded by forest and the water tumbles down over the spillway and the natural rocks, trickling into a beautiful stream that flows through a forest of trees as far as the eye can see. This time we were able to drive to the top of the dam and walk across the bridge over the water. There were a few inches of fresh snow and it was just gorgeous. While the boys were just playing in the snow in the woods, we saw a bald eagle fly in. He perched on the ice flow looking for fish and then took off a few minutes later. Jon had his spotting scope so we were all able to get an up close look of him while he sat on the ice. After exploring the dam we drove into Peekskill to show daddy where the boys filmed one of their scenes and we had an awesome lunch at this tiny little café right on the Hudson River. And then we went on a wild goose chase of an adventure! A few months ago the boys watched a documentary on a Frank Lloyd Wright house built on an island in a lake that was supposed to be about an hours drive north of New York City. When we realized that it was only a little farther north than Peekskill, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to check it out. Except that it is a private house, on a private island- and we had absolutely no idea if we could even get a glimpse of it from the mainland! So we drove north to Lake Mahopac in hopes that we could at least use the spotting scope to get a peek of the Massaro House. We only had to trespass a little bit into a private subdivision on the peninsula that jutted out into the lake, providing our best chance of seeing anything at all- and sure enough we got a perfectly clear view!!! The boys about launched out of their car seats when we saw it. I have to admit I was pretty excited too... it's funny how Jon and I become quite interested in the boys' strange obsessions as they develop over time :)

Daddy and Alex had to leave super early Monday morning. Grandma drove them to Newark because it would have taken four trains for them to get there on their own and with their flight leaving at 7:30am, they probably would have had to leave at 2:00 in the morning just to make it on time! It's always hard to say goodbye to daddy, but we had a wonderful weekend full of city fun and country fun- and daddy will be back on Friday to see the boys film for a day!

Museum of Mathematics