Michael tried out for traveling soccer this year (the step up from in house). They get cool Lakeville uniforms and get to play a lot more games. In fact, they play from March all the way to July, vs just 6 weeks in in-house. Plus they get to travel and play other cities. The level of play was a lot higher and Michael did great and improved a lot. He played goalie and forward the most. It's one of the great joys in life to watch your kids put some effort into something, and then see improvement, regardless of how the score turns out.
At one of the tournaments he went to he was voted player of the game which made his day :). Daddy got to be the coach again, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. Its fun and frustrating at the same time, but a great experience.
Since we've been in Minnesota it seems the tradition is to color your hair with a funky hair color. This year Rachel "would die of embarrassment" if she did it this year, so she didn't, but here is Michael and Megan.
So Megan had been wiggling these for months it seems like. Plus almost all of her grade had lost their teeth already, but Megan finally lost both her front teeth 5/18 and 6/5, about two weeks apart. So now she looks cute and talks funny :)
Mother's Day is always a wonderful time for family pictures. Since it is Sunday the kids are always dressed up for church and we just have them stay that way a little longer (against their will) so we can take some pictures. We love our Mommy!
We had some home made cake and fun at home for Candice's birthday this year. She actually got to blow out the candles (looking as fashionable as ever :) )
So much for the live blogging.... But this was our funnest day :). Both of our first times to NYC and we had the whole day sort of planned out of sites we'd like to see. Our tour guides did a great job as we saw pretty much everything we wanted to see. Here's how our day went:
1 - we started off taking the train from CT to central station in New York City. We were really touristy and took lots of pictures :)
2 - We took the subway to downtown somewhere. Don't remember which of the hundreds it was. There would be no way to do this without a guide as it is really confusing. It's really kind of like how they always show it in the movies.
3 - First thing once we got downtown - check out the real NYC food. We found a nice authentic looking pizza stop and got some nice thin crust pizza.
4 - We were close to the WTC monument and wanted to see it so we walked over to the site and found out that they were actually already rebuilding the monument, so there wasn't much to see there now but construction.
5 - While we were there we saw a real NYC hot dog vendor and picked up a hot dog as a post lunch snack to try it out.
6 - From there we started walking towards the statue of Liberty. On the way there we passed the NYSE.
7 - Walking around downtown it's amazing how big and small things are at the same time. It seems you walk forever but pass all kinds of famous places at the same time. We stopped in at a few of the famous churches along the way but didn't take any pictures. When we got to the statue of Liberty we watched one of the Statten Island ferry's come in and then took some pictures in front of the statue (which was fairly far away). While down there we also picked up some authentic "I love NYC" shirts. He gave us a "deal" 3 for $10. Later on in chinatown we saw them 5 for $10 :).
8 - Had to try an authenic NYC warm pretzel with mustard as a post lunch snack snack.
9 - From there got on the subway again and went to little italy and chinatown to try out some of the foods there. In little italy we found an amazing bakery that had canollis, best NYC cheesecake ever, and lobster tail paistries. There was a picture of the owner with Ryan Seacrest hanging on the wall also. Apparantly they published the worlds best canollis all over. We walked over to chinatown and looked for a place to get some real general cho's chicken. Chinatown ended up being almost all souvenier stores and massage palours, but evently found a really great restauarant and ordered general cho's chicken. At least that's what I think they said as no one spoke engrish rery good. They had dead chickens hanging all over the kitchen and everyone was chinese so it looked really authentic. It was amazing! By this time I was pretty full after pizza, hotdog, pretzel, cheescake, conolit, lobster tail and chicken, so I had about an hour to walk it off before dinner :)
10 - We took the subway over to Central Park and sat for a bit and took it all in.
11 - From there we walked over to an italian restaurant and had a lite dinner. Nice restaurants don't do it for me now since I eat out for work so much, I wanted the nice street vendors on this trip :)
12 - From there we walked over to Sachs fifth avenue and window shopped all the high end fashion stores, saw Radio City music hall, walked by Rockafeller Center, popped in the Nintendo store, and headed over to times square. Times square was neat, but after all day of walking was pretty tired. We stopped into the giant Toys R Us store that had a giant ferris wheel in it and said how glad we were we didn't have the kids with us at that moment. We stopped in at a real NYC deli and chilled for a while. I contemplated getting a real pastrami on rye at a real NYC deli, but was just too full.
13 - From there we headed over to the broadway district and saw "Jersey Boys" on broadway and had great seats. It was our first broadway musical and ended up being great. Walking back afterwards took a pic of the area at night, as it kind of seems like a different city with all the lights on. Ended up being a great once in a lifetime trip!
We ended up relaxing at Lisa's the final day and watched some movies. Here is Lisa and Candice at the end of it all. Maybe in a few years they'll live close together again :).
