Category: Family

With some spectacular weather in New York last weekend, my wife thought it would be a good idea to go hiking as a family. Pre-kids, my wife and I did a lot of hiking together.

Being spur of the moment, we checked the web for hiking spots close to Brooklyn that wouldn’t be too hard for a 4 year old. That’s a bit of a crap shoot if you don’t know the spots, so we rolled the dice and headed to the Cranberry Lake Preserve in Westchester. Figuring a lake hike can’t have too many hills and there were a few short hikes so it looked like a good call.

And it was.

My wife was afraid that it might be too easy, one of those paths that are more like walks than hikes, but it wasn’t that. There were ups and downs and you had to scramble over logs and streams. There were some rickety wooden bridges that added some fear factor and even one that had been washed out forcing us to turn back and try a different path. Tori started out holding my hand for support, but about halfway through she started taking off on her own (and only fell once).

Just the right amount of challenge to make it fun but not discourage the girls. They are now both really excited about going hiking again.

The obligatory pictures:

We just finished our vacation in Cape Cod. This is the fourth year we’ve gone to this same beach house, so regular blog readers can pretty much refer to any of the last three year’s posts, (2008, 2009, or 2010) to get the general sense. This year’s post will be mainly pictures.

This year we had absolutely spectacular weather except for the very beginning and the very end. We knew we were in for a rainy ride up, but it looked like just a regular rainy day. So we took off without really checking traffic reports. Not a good move.

As we were driving, major roads had lanes closed due to flooding. As we approached the Whitestone Bridge to get out of the city, traffic suddenly comes to a halt. We see people turning around and going the wrong way off an on ramp to get away. Never a good sign.

A little further we see the big traffic sign:

Flooding conditions ahead. All lanes closed.

Suddenly the people going the wrong way on the on ramp made perfect sense. So we did the same. We find an alternate route and get across the bridge.

A bit later, going up I-95, we see a traffic sign saying:

Accident at Connecticut Exit 2. Major delays.

Well, great. We turn on the traffic report to hear that a tractor trailer has flipped and I-95 northbound is completely closed. Time for alternate route #2. But we get around that craziness, the rain subsides and a normal 5 1/2 drive is just 6 1/2 hours. Really not bad, all things considered.

We had to put up with one more day of rain. But we still manage to have some fun on the beach. This is Danielle doing handstands. This will be a major theme of this vacation:

But after that day, the weather was perfect every single day. So it was all beach, all the time. Our beach at low tide:

There were minnows and hermit crabs to catch:

Seashells to find:

boats to ride:

and of course, more handstands:

For the second week some friends joined us. They have twins (boy and girl, Cooper and Marieé) age 6. The kids play well together and the great thing about this beach is that the water gets deep so slowly you can give the kids a lot of slack without worrying:

And aside from handstands, there was a lot of hula-hooping:

and fun meals on our deck.

The only time we left the beach was to go bike riding on the Cape Cod Rail Trail, usually with an ice cream shop as the destination:

During a walk on the beach, we saw an older guy with his adult daughter digging. Tori of course, immediately goes up to them and asks what they are doing. They were clamming. Digging for clams right there. So the guy explains how to look for the little holes that result from clams squirting water so you know where to dig and the kids help out. They help find several claims and we have a great time.

So the next day Danielle says, “I want to go dig for claims”. Now we have no clue if there’s a certain time of day or spot or what. The tide is different so we can’t just go back to the same spot. So we find as similar a spot as possible and look for those holes. And guess what? Clamming is easy. We’re finding clams bigger than your fist and we fill up a big bucket. My wife made clams casino.

The next day we are out there doing it again, and people are asking us how to do it (hey, we’ve done it twice now, we’re experts). So now we have other people giving us clams and having a grand ole time.

What else? Well, of course there was dancing…

and ridiculous sunsets…

The only downside was Hurricane Irene coming just a bit too early. With it due to hit Brooklyn late Saturday night, we knew that we couldn’t stay until Sunday. We left around 1:15 PM on Saturday afternoon. Most people must have heeded the warnings, because we’ve never seen such little traffic coming home from Cape Cod. We were home before 6 including a McDonald’s stop, just beating the beginning of the heavy rain.

All in all, a fantastic vacation for me and my girls…

We’re still a bit in low budget mode, so our spring vacation was to Orlando where my wife’s brother lives. And we managed a couple of days at Disney to make the girls happy (somehow, no matter how hard you try, Disney is not low budget).

It was a nice trip. Our girls Uncle Herbie has a new dog, a Chihuahua to go with their Golden Retriever (talk about an an odd size ratio) and our girls love dogs.

Danielle prefers the big dog, but still loved the little one:

But Tori has always been a little dog fan:

Regular blog readers might find this picture familiar, except the last time I posted it, Danielle was catching the fish:

And of course there was Disney. We had to do at least one character meal. Tori, as the second child, gets the bad deal here. I think we did three character meals for Danielle when she was four (ok, we had a bit more money then too).

So Tori got breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and company:

We stayed a couple nights at Animal Kingdom Lodge which was nice for the girls. This was the view from our balcony:

And these two just couldn’t get along:

And this was just behind the pool:

Tori was good on the rides, though she’s a bit of a scaredy-pants. Danielle will ride anything, but Tori doesn’t like dark rides, or overly fast ones. The best picture came from Splash Mountain. To look at the picture, you would think Tori loved this ride. The truth is that she cried for half of it. But check her out in the picture, hands up having fun:

She has potential…