Planes, Trains, and Tow Trucks: Logan Goes to New York City (Part 3: Monday)

We started Monday off right with bagels and lox!!

And then I got initiated into New York City-style driving by following Iris to Queens from Rockville Centre.  I believe that the phrases, "We're all gonna die" and "she's going to do that?  Oh SHIT, I have to do that!" were used frequently as I white-knuckled my way through the ride while somehow managing not to piss myself or injure anyone.  Actually, it's a miracle that I didn't teach Logan any choice phrases in the process, because there was a LOT of New York City-style cursing occurring during this drive and not all of it was under my breath.  It probably would've been amusing if someone (my mom or Randy) took pictures of this, but that is probably for the best as it could have gotten distracting.  They were probably just too busy fearing for their lives.

We arrived in one piece and parked across the street from Iris' aunt's building and hopped on the subway toward Central Park.  Logan and the rest of us loved the Central Park Zoo.  We saw sea lions, penguins, a polar bear, a snow leopard, red pandas getting fed and lots more.  

That awkward moment when the deer
realizes that the crane is bigger than it. 

Mom's face after the ibis pecked at her finger 

The children's zoo is actually separate from the Central Park Zoo, so we took a little walk through Central Park to get there.  The Children's Zoo is mostly a petting zoo of farm animals, which I thought Logan would love.  However, he strangely didn't want to pet or feed (or get remotely close to) the goats or sheep in the Children's Zoo, but was more than happy to pet the statues of the animals.   Heather and I, as good Kappas of course, posed with the sheep!  

Since we were basically doing the "what to do with kids in NYC" tour of Central Park (even though 5 of the 6 of us were adults), our next stop was the Central Park Carousel, which was surprisingly difficult to find for us and included us walking in the completely wrong direction following what we thought was calliope music, but instead turned out to be street performers in the park.  Ooops.

We did find the carousel though, which was a big hit with our groups' kid and adults, who also took a ride!


By then we were getting hungry again, so grabbing NYC hot dogs in the park happened (pizza - check, awesome Italian food - check, bagel with lox - check, hot dog stand - check. We were doing a great job of eating our way through NY).  While eating our hot dogs, we headed in the direction of one of my FAVORITE places in New York.  Strawberry Fields.  Even though I've been there before ...

Spring Break 2001...Why don't I have that hat anymore?

...it was absolutely necessary to pay homage to John Lennon again.  Besides, LOGAN hadn't been there before, nor had mom, Randy, or Heather.






Right after I snapped that picture of Logan, he got super cranky, and then just passed out.  I like to think that it was John Lennon's ghost that sang him off to dreamland, but it was likely just pure exhaustion.

And I'd love to say that we left Central Park, hopped on the subway, and then got to our cars to head to dinner.  But that wouldn't be a very good story, would it?  Nah...traveling has to have some sort of excitement, right?  Right.  So we headed back to where the cars were parked and well...they were not there.  And we weren't lost, it was definitely the right street and there definitely were NO cars parked there anymore.  And then we saw the sign.  No standing 4pm-7pm.  Well FUCK - 5 adults missed that sign in the morning when we parked.  It was 6pm.  Both our rental cars got towed.  And we had no clue where to.  And didn't really know the license plate numbers or anything (well until we noticed that one of the three numbers on the key fob HAD to be the plate number).  Iris was really the rockstar here since she's the one that tracked down the cars with very little help from the doorman at her Aunt's building and the ridiculously complicated NYPD phone system for tracking down where a towed car goes.  Anyway, after several phone calls and lots of waiting, we finally found out where the cars were...and (drumroll, please)  they were in Maspeth.  We had a location and an address!  Oh wait, that intonation in Iris' voice when she said, "Maspeth" didn't sound so good.  Yep, Maspeth was not conveniently located from where we were.  Oh, and now nearly everyone's phones were dead and the chargers were (another drumroll, please) IN THE CARS.  How none of us went batshit crazy at that point, I will never know.  Next I knew, I was about to learn how to hail a cab with Iris while Logan, my mom, Randy, & Heather found some food.  This was supposed to be easy because, "cabs drive by on this road all the time".  All the time, but not when we need them AT ALL.  And apparently hailing a cab in this part of Queens involves waving ones arms around like a crazy person and jumping into oncoming traffic to get them to stop.  We FINALLY got one, and because at this point the universe hates us, the taxi doesn't take credit cards and we BARELY have enough cash between the two of us to get us to the impound lot.  We get there and wow, is it in a sketchy part of town, under an overpass and everything!

Photo credit: Iris Goldfeder

We get in and they take our info and they tell us that we have to get the rental car agreements.  Well shit...those are in the cars (of course - that's where they're SUPPOSED to be).  So we get sent out to the nice security officer to get driven to our vehicles and get our paperwork out and then driven back. Where we waited some more (and amused ourselves taking a few pictures) until we got called up.  We were being nice and friendly with the cashier lady and she managed to get distracted and got our paperwork all kinds of screwed up with each others AND with someone else's, and then she couldn't find our licenses for a while in the mess, and then we find out that it was this woman's first week on the job.

See all those stamps?  That's because she was using the
wrong fucking stamp on top of everything else!

And at this point, I think we were probably both twitching from the uncontrollable urge to laugh (because what else COULD we do at this point), and from the want to make a lot of noise about the level of incompetence.  But being in there, we sort of saw that things could be a whole lot worse, because some people were definitely not getting there cars back that day, and whether that was their own dumb faults or not, that definitely sucks.

Photo credit: Iris Goldfeder

Eventually ($185 poorer from paying the impound redemption fee) we got our cars back only to find the $115 parking tickets affixed to the windshields.  Most.expensive.parking.spot.EVER.

But not all was lost, because I definitely got some good bonding time with Iris!  And I got to do some more NYC-style driving to follow Iris back to her Aunt's to the rest of our group, where Logan was keeping himself busy causing noise complaints from the downstairs neighbors by repeatedly dropping his toys and running around on the hard wood floors.

And THAT, Ladies & Gentlemen is how we added a taxi, a police car, and a tow truck to our tour of NYC transportation (well WE didn't get to ride in a tow truck, but our cars did, so...).



 More pictures here.

Planes, Trains, and Tow Trucks: Logan Goes to New York City (Part 2: Sunday)

Sunday

For our first full day in New York, we had quite an eventful day!  After breakfast we headed into Lower Manhattan to explore.  Logan loved the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) and the subway as we added to our many modes of transportation.  We came out of the subway near Battery Park, so we started there.  The bonus was that there was a playground right at the entrance, which is always good when embarking on some sight-seeing with a 2 year old.

Grammie also had fun on the playground AND is going to kick my ass for posting this.

mmm...NY pizza

The goal was also to see the 9/11 memorial (which is still under construction), in addition to Battery Park and the Staten Island Ferry.  However, apparently one needs advanced tickets to visit the memorial since its on limited access thanks to the ongoing construction. I checked the night before, but forgot to get tickets. This turned out to be a good thing though since it looked pretty packed when we walked by looking for lunch after a walk through battery park and the waterfront there. On the way to find lunch, we found huge ass bull testicles on display.

If only I could have caught her
rubbing them instead of snapping
a picture...

We stopped at a random pizza place for a slice of genuine NY pizza before continuing on back to Battery Park to see the Sphere and walk through another way on our way to the Staten Island Ferry. We almost made it to the building housing the ferry dock before the sky opened up on us. We probably could have made it with just a few sprinkles on us, but with Logan's cast, I didn't take any chances and put his raincoat on even though I probably got wetter just getting his jacket on. The weather wasn't a detriment to us though, as the rain tapered off while we waited for the ferry.

With skies like this, it kind of makes you
wonder where the storm came from!
The answer is "from the other direction".

It's far away, but the Statue of Liberty was in view.

Logan loved the boat ride! The cool thing about the Staten Island Ferry is that it is essentially a free boat ride that passes the Statue of Liberty. Sure, you don't get a tour guide telling you all about lady liberty, nor do you get to stop there, but you ride past it twice - once on the way there and once on the way back. We wandered around Lower Manhattan a little more, stopping for a cupcake and cookie snack before heading back to the subway. We got off the subway at Penn Station to switch over to the LIRR and quickly realized that it was much easier to take the train INTO the city. We had to wait for about 20 minutes to just find out the track the train would be arriving on, only a few minutes before it came. Logan rested on the train and we still had plenty of time to freshen up for dinner at the hotel.

We met Heather and Iris for a delicious dinner at Sole (Heather's favorite restaurant on Long Island), where we gorged ourselves on delicious pasta and dessert.  It was SOOOOOO GOOOOOD!!!  The pastry chef is a genius for the "cannoli chips".  They basically give you a giant pile of cannoli filling and mini chocolate chips with the empty cannoli pastries.  NO.SOGGY.CANNOLIS!!!

Heather and Logan were fast friends as he showed her his new airplane play set from Grammie and Randy.

More pictures from our trip are here.

Planes, Trains, and Tow Trucks: Logan goes to New York City (Part 1: Travel Day)

My best friend (and Kappa big sister) was getting married on Long Island, so Logan and I decided we would have a short adventure, because there was no way I was going to miss this wedding! My mom and Randy came from Buffalo to join in the fun too! We had quite an adventure and it was certainly full of various transportation methods, which Logan loved!

We started out taking a thankfully direct flight from SFO to JFK and then hopped on the airtrain AND shuttle bus to get our car and head to the hotel. Logan was actually pretty good. He had some cranky moments and we have to work on not kicking the seat in front of us, but he was a great traveler for a 2.5 year old, especially one that hasn't flown all that often and was sporting a bright red cast that earned us a swab at the security line.  The lady sitting behind us even complimented his good behavior.

We got in fairly late, local time, but we were hungry since it was our dinner time, AND tired from the traveling, so we stopped by the hotel to snag Grammie and Randy and went out for some evening frozen yogurt for dinner/snack/whatever weird jet-lagged meal it was supposed to be.













Back in California, RJ and Daddy were busy building with giant legos and fighting ninjas (For real! Ninja attacks are fairly commonplace in San Francisco).



















Stay tuned to the blog for more.  I'm splitting these posts up by the day because there's a lot to share!

DeLanceys Do Sonoma/Logan Breaks His Arm

We've been in California for 6 years and had yet to get ourselves to Sonoma Wine Country.  When we heard that our friends Otte and Eva were going to be there for a wedding, we took the opportunity to try and see them, as well as go to a winery or two.

Otte was free for a little bit, so we met up with him for lunch and walking around downtown Healdsburg.  It was great getting to see him, though we were bummed that we were missing Eva, who was busy with wedding preparations with the bridal party.  The kids loved Otte (because who wouldn't!), and we had a great day so far.

When Otte had to leave, we decided to find a winery.  We decided to try out Bella Vineyards, because they had wine caves, which we thought might be cool for the kids to see (rather than just a regular tasting room).  The winery was beautiful, and they actually had a neat tasting setup where there were food pairings as well.  Some were outside and some were inside.  After hitting the outside stations and letting the kids run around on the grass and play with the provided hula hoops, when we sat on comfy chairs, we headed into the wine caves.  We got our first tastes (maybe our 3rd wine, total) inside and sat down at a table inside the cave.

And that is when Logan got fidgety and as we were telling him to sit on his bottom, instead of kneeling backwards on the chair, he tipped it and landed on the concrete on his arms.  Luckily, he didn't hit his head at all, but he was NOT calming down, which is very unlike Logan, who is normally our tough kid, who calms down quickly.  He was even reacting worse than RJ, who is known for histrionics over the slightest injury sometimes, so we knew something was wrong.  And he wouldn't let go of his left arm.

So yeah, we drove him to a hospital.

Thank goodness for PBS Kids on the TV in the ER rooms!
Great Distraction.

We probably could have taken him to a closer hospital, as I'm sure there are hospitals in Sonoma, but we made the decision to take him to Children's Hospital in Oakland, because we knew that was a good hospital and would handle his case well given that they specialize in pediatrics and he was still only 2.5.  And upon getting him in the car, he was reasonably calm, although obviously still hurting a lot (I seem to remember giving him Advil to help with that - I figured that by the time we got there and got seen and they figured out what was wrong that it would be out of his system anyway).

Broken Elbow

We got to the hospital and they took x-rays.  The first person said it wasn't broken, just very swollen and sprained badly.  Then the second person came in and said that there was a small fracture, but that it was of a type that usually healed very quickly and sometimes didn't even need a cast (but given his age, it made sense to put a cast on and prevent further injury.  It was non-displaced, so they were going to be able to wrap it quickly with him awake (as opposed to needing to sedate him and set it with surgery).  So the orthopedic resident wrapped him up in a cast and we were sent on our merry way home.

Luckily, Logan is pretty resilient and was his happy self again the next day.  And less than 48 hours after the incident, had managed to tackle RJ to the ground one armed.














More pictures of our Adventures in Sonoma/Oakland Children's Hospital are here.

Cheryl & Lance Drink Wine: The Livermore Wine Festival 2012

Lance and I like to drink wine.  We like to go and taste different wines because it's yummy (and doesn't make Lance sick like beer and mixed drinks) and usually leads to some pretty interesting conversations with people.  

In the barrel room - where we
managed to snag a free barrel
tasting (they were charging extra
for that) because I think we
looked confused to whether
we should do it or not.  The guy
at the door took us over to one
of the pouring stations like we
were old friends and we got
 hooked up!

It was my job this year to plan something for us to do for our anniversary.  So when I learned that the Livermore Harvest Wine Festival was over Labor Day weekend, and that our friends could watch our kids during it, I decided that we would just celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary a couple of weeks late.  

Livermore is about 20 minutes away from Tracy, where we live and it's home to about 50 different wineries. It's not nearly as large as Napa or Sonoma, but 50 wineries is a lot to taste our way through without having to drive an hour and a half to get to the more well known areas - and the wines are good, so I don't feel that we're suffering on quality by not making the trek North.

The Harvest Wine Festival is a two-day event, where tickets include tasting at about 40 participating wineries, access to the shuttle bus taking you to the wineries, commemorative glasses, and discounts, etc.  Some of the smaller wineries actually bring their tastings to booths set up at the larger wineries, so if you hit the larger wineries, you can taste from many wineries selections. The larger wineries also hosted more food options from local restaurants, as well as craft booths (Lance bought me a wine glass holder necklace from one!), and live music.  

Yeah, I was tipsy

It was a nice relaxing event for us and while we were planning on splurging and taking a cab all the way home (with plans to retrieve the car the next day), the cabs were so busy with the event that by the time one came for us, Lance was actually sober, so we just had the cab take us from the winery to our car (we had missed the final shuttle, opting to stay longer at the winery rather than take the shuttle and take the cab from the parking lot) to head back to Tracy.  I, being a complete lightweight, was still a bit tipsy when we arrived at our friend's bbq, where our children were busy playing with their friends.

The second day of the Wine Festival is typically a little calmer, they don't run the shuttles, and some of the

Dancing!

 smaller wineries pour at their own facilities. Since tickets were good for both days, we thought we might find a winery in the program that would be okay to take the kids to.  Fenestra Winery fit the bill with live music and a lawn, and also happened to offer a port (which I LOVE) for tasting.  This was also tons of fun because the live band was incredible, playing lots of Classic Rock, with a hilarious drummer. The kids enjoyed dancing around and were good for us, making it a nice afternoon.

 

Listening to the band

Logan rolling to the music

RJ snuggling Daddy

August 2012 in Pictures

RJ continued to play soccer.

Logan continued to tolerate RJ's soccer practices.

We played at the park.

RJ, Logan, & I went to Gilroy Gardens for some amusement park fun the week before Kindergarten.

Logan was big enough to ride the monorail at Gilroy Gardens!

Google was doing their mapping thing while we were there!

RJ was bummed that we couldn't ride the swan boats because I had both kiddos
and they only hold two people and little kids need a parent to actually pedal.

We tried a new sushi place in Livermore (I believe to celebrate surviving
RJ's first week of Kindergarten) and got a roll that was lit up.
This was the Lady Gaga Roll and it featured LEDs.  Seriously.

And in case starting Kindergarten wasn't crazy enough, both
boys also started swim lessons.  We plan on taking lessons
at this indoor facility until both boys can swim confidently.
So far, I am really happy with the instructors and the facility.

More August picture can be found here, here, and here.