Orange butterfly

I need a break from city shots. Here's one from the butterfly conservatory at the Museum of Natural History.

Madame Tussaud's

If you want to see a bunch of snapshots of us acting silly with fake celebrities, you've come to the right place. More from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.

A view of Times Square from one of the windows.
You're greeted by The Hulk on your way in.
The kids hanging out in the Oval Office with the POTUS.
I photo-bombed Brangelina!

One-on-one with Yao Ming:Delaney's friend Hannah has a photo of herself picking Speilberg's nose, so I told Delaney to do the same.
Delaney and Johnny Depp.
Cam and JLo:
Laney tries out Oprah's pose. Trump's in the background:
Get these (bleep) snakes off my (bleep) plane:

More Ripley's Believe It or Not

Another pickled head shot, this time of Delaney and me:
NYC is full of amazing art museums, but my kids turned their noses up at them and loved this place instead. It is pretty fun--there are lots of torture devices and shrunken heads.

I liked this display, because I've been morbidly fascinated with Chinese foot binding ever since I read "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan":



This is a ship carved out of camel bones:
A little detail:
I took photos of these statues so I can pretend I was in an exotic foreign country (Who am I kidding? To me New York IS an exotic foreign country):
This one reminds me of the World's Ugliest Dog we see every year. I think it's the mouth:
In case you haven't had any luck googling this:

New York

Why we waited until Laurie had moved away from the city to visit, I have no idea, but I guess we managed to make our way around okay and see a few things. Here are a few more from the afternoon we arrived and headed off to see the Empire State Building.

I think that's the Brooklyn Bridge:
I don't know what this building is, but I just thought it looked cool from the observation deck.
A street scene from our walk back to our hotel.

Weed of the Day

Back to the Birds

Male/female pair of goldfinches. I wish she hadn't turned her head away.

Buds of Spring

Budding trees in our yard.

Hearth and Home

The hearth at Mom and Jim's house. So pretty.

New York days 3 and 4

Yesterday we spent the day at the Museum of Natural History (I loved the butterfly conservatory) and then saw Wicked in the evening. Wicked was WICKED awesome! I loved it. It made my whole trip. Afterward we had a late dinner at Shula's, where I had the best steak I've ever had in my life.

Although it rained on and off all day, today we headed to Battery Park and took the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, including going up into the pedestal of the statue. Then we walked up and saw the beautiful Trinity Church, Ground Zero, the New York Stock Exchange, and Federal Hall. Then we all had a meltdown trying to decide what to do for dinner, so we came back to the hotel to regroup. (We ended up at a Thai place.) On the walk back we saw a couple of cops trying to roust a guy sleeping on the corner. Cam and I wanted to watch it play out (and I wanted to get a photo) but Chris kept going. Probably for the best. ;-D

Can't have a post without a picture. Statue in front of the Museum of Natural History.

BirdHOUSE of the Day

You thought it was going to be another bird, didn't you?

Bird of the Day: Robin

Rockin' Robin.

NYC day 2

This morning we walked over to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum and saw lots of cool things like pickled heads in jars. Anyone look familiar? The kids enjoyed that place quite a bit.
They also really liked Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum right next door. Here they are in Rachael Ray's kitchen.
Cam with Regis.
After lunch (Hard Rock Cafe, Times Square) we walked in the pouring rain ten blocks up to the Museum of Modern Art, where we were told I could not bring in my backpack with my camera inside. The line for the checkroom was so long Chris ran the bag back to our hotel and then met us back at the museum, where we saw many, many people with bags bigger than mine and all kinds of flash photography. (Isn't that supposed to be bad for paintings?) I was peeved; I feel lost without a camera, but I could deal with it if nobody else had one either. I enjoyed seeing some Picasso, Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol, Dali, Mondrian, Miro, etc. The kids hated it; they've never enjoyed a single art museum we've brought them to over the years.

We had dinner at a pizza/Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel. The rest of the family ordered entrees so I shared my pizza since it was so delicious. It was my night to get spoken to by scary street dude on the way back to the hotel. I'm not sure exactly what he said to me, but he wanted to do something to, and I quote, "your ass." :-O

The plan for tomorrow is to go to the Museum of Natural History and then I'm not sure because we had planned on another art museum, but I think I'll let the kids off the hook on that. We have tickets to see Wicked in the evening, which I'm really excited about!

Bird of the Day and other photos

Female goldfinch:

A few random photos from Easter Sunday.
Chris has a nice rack:
Mom's eggs:

George's wood pile.

Greetings from NYC

The invisible force field that keeps me within a 50-mile radius of home 99.8% of the time opened up and let me out of the state of Maine today, and we checked into our New York City hotel just before 5 p.m. We stopped in North Andover so I could get a Harrison's Roast Beef. On the way to New York we saw: someone lose control and drive right off the interstate, an 18-wheeler blow a tire right next to us (I thought I was getting shot :-P), three cars street racing on the interstate, and a motorcycle gang passing us on either side, between the lanes. I mention those details just because I forgot my travel journal and I'm going to use the blog instead, and that's the kind of boring detail I like to include.

After we checked in to the hotel we walked over to the Empire State Building (we hadn't gone a block before Cam got 'propositioned') and headed up to the observation deck. Then we walked up to Times Square and had dinner at ESPN Zone. Cam LOVES ESPN Zone. When I choose I'm going for local, no chains. Then we headed back here to the hotel to plan our day for tomorrow. Looks like rain so we'll make it a museum day.

The Chrysler building from the observation deck at the Empire State Building. I have no idea if this photo looks any good. My laptop screen is not good for editing photos, so I'll probably wait until I get home to post most of my photos.

Blooming daffodils

Yay, our daffodils started blooming! In a few days we'll have dozens of them, but we won't be here to see them because we're headed to New York City today and will be home on Friday. I'm going to try to post from there, but if not I've got some other photos going up during the week.

{Yellow}Bird of the Day

Male goldfinch.

Baxter

Sometimes I let Baxter play like a real dog instead of dressing him up in holiday gear and humiliating him.



See what you've gone and done, Meaghan? You mention that he hasn't made an appearance lately and then you're inundated with Baxter photos.

Sully

My niece Allison's puppy Sully. He's a daschund/miniature poodle mix.

Fun with fungi

Mom and Jim have this cool tree stump covered with fungus in their yard.
Of course I moved in for a closer look.
I like the stripes.


I thought this one would look cool in black and white, but I think I like the color version better.
The stump is topped off with a "corsage":