Our Date, Part 2

We have some wonderful friends in the ward, The Castles; Carol was our realtor who got us into our home. Her and her husband, Dave have been volunteering to take the boys for the day since we moved here, in order to let us go on a date... and we FINALLY had a moment to take them up on it :D
What started out as a couple hours plan for a date turned into and entire Saturday that quickly became a full 24hr date, with the boys spending the night at their house.

Mine and Travis's Date: It started off as a family getting to walk down to Maddix's last soccer practice together, then I went running over to the church to help clean. Dave and Carol brought me home and exchanged me for the boys! Then they were off! Travis was excited at what he'd planned, but he hadn't told me yet. When we got to the subway he told me he'd planned an all day walk! You may not know but I LOVE walking. I could walk from one end of the earth to the other and be content and happy with what I get to see and how I feel. So this was perfect. And cheap;)

We started by finding out our subway was under construction so we were forced to hop in Bushwick! That was intense. Childhood home to J.Z., we were definitely outnumbered demographically, and as we walked past "The ChUrCh oF GoD" and they were blasting out WooTang Clan... I was feeling a little uneasy. We hopped another quick subway and popped out in Park Slope; that was MUCH BETTER. And that's where we started our walk. Travis showed me around his old neighborhood and took me to the places he used to go eat at. We had the BEST Turkish food i've tasted since leaving Europe, and then jotted over to grab some Blue Marble ice cream, which was to die for. We ate it as we strolled through the park.

Brooklyn Museum

We kept walking on until we reached Statin Island where we saw our Lady Liberty, and a few tools that I couldn't keep from snapping a picture of! We walked through the financial District and on Wall Street. Then onto Ground Zero. Since it was just memorial day there were several flowers, with memory cards placed on the names of the loved ones who died that day. 

seriously? 

We kept walking and eventually reached the Highline. There was a set of above ground subway tracks, no longer in use, that they converted to a lush walking trail right through the city. 

 And eventually we reached the end and walked, and walked, and walked, stopped for an all natural, organic juice (because it seemed like the hipster thing to do, and the only juice around), and eventually reached Time Square.

Passage into Manhattan

Time Square

We couldn't take the crowds anymore and headed over to Rockefeller Plaza before hopping a subway home. 

I Loved the day of just walking, and by the end of it I was relieved for two reasons as we got off the subway: 1- My feet were SO done and 2- It was like a breath of fresh air to be back in Middle Village! It gave me a renewed sense of gratitude to live where we do, with the ability to go join the crowds, but get to leave them and come home! We then fell asleep to a movie, I think we made it 20 mins in.
SUNDAY: Well that was just a treat again. After walking 10-12 miles the previous day, it was so nice to sleep in, take our time getting up, cook a big breakfast, and just be lazy until late church. AWESOMENESS is the best word I have for it right now. And that was our date! 

Maddix & Aaron's Weekend: 
Gpa Dave, and Gma Carol, as they are now referred to, picked the boys up and within 15mins were at McDonalds:) From there they went and saw HOME at the movie theaters and were even spoiled with treat packs, popcorn, and slurpies! They got to play in the Arcade (Which Maddix has been begging for), and after Aaron crashed out at 5:45pm, Maddix and Dave played chess for an hour ;p Carol and Dave purchased a special dinosaur tent specially for their weekend with the boys and Maddix was SUPER excited to be allowed to watch cartoons from the tent until he fell asleep! Scooby Doo never seemed so good! In the morning the goofballs got the V.I.P treatment of bathes and hair stylings. Then at church when we met up with them they had more snacks and printed off pictures to color.... SpOilEd or What???? I think their weekend was maybe more awesome than ours! 

It was such a treat to know the boys were in good hands and having such a ball!!!! It was the perfect way to end the months of May and celebrate before we leave on a plane for Utah tonight! 

Get Ready for us! 

The Perfect Date

As I've mentioned, life has slowed down considerably since entering this surgery rotation; and to Travis's dismay his 14 hr shifts aren't leaving much time for him to study. He seriously walks through the door only two hours before bed and is so fried he can't think about opening a book. However, now he is entering clinic hours which are much shorter, and we are also one month out (as of yesterday) from our final boards exam that will count for SO much; that nine hours he sits in on that test will effect years and years of our life to come... no pressure, right? Well, it's also very hard to want to study when you have a family here whom you get no time with, and so we made a decision that for this final month, the boys and I needed to leave. Plus my work said I could pick up shifts, so that moots out the cost!
It works out perfectly because one of my dearest friends is getting married, AND now my brother-in-law is getting married while we are home so it's the perfect time for us to bounce out of the big apple and let Travis become a secluded medical school hermit crab... because for four weeks he's going to hold the weight of our future on his shoulders...
That sounds so dramatic.
The nice thing though is having the beliefs that we have, we know God has a plan for us, and he is carefully laying it out in front of our eyes each day. So, whatever we score, what ever medical field we end up in, or where we go for residency, we can be assured that if we put in a full effort our our part, it was EXACTLY where where God wanted us to be.
That's more comforting.

That all being said, the boys and I have been enjoying the days of sun and rain and nothing stops us from playing outside when we want to. The other day we hopped on our scooters and went all the way to Juniper where we ended up playing in the rained out park. Scootering is our new thing: Maddix takes his own, Aaron stands on the front and place a foot behind his and we can scooter really fast and he's totally chill to just stand there. And he never wants it to end. Sometimes we even brave up and hook Nala to the front of our scooter and that's how we take her for her walk/fear for our life as she drags us everywhere.
We also have taken advantage of all the boxes lying around and built forts, and converted the cereal boxes into knights hats, by cutting them then taping them to real hats so they stay on :) That was fun. As you can see we're still enjoying our time and love the evenings when Travis does walk through that door. Sometimes we're the perfect picture, just waiting at the dinner table with smiles and clean faces (rarely). But other times he walks in the boys are running around the house, the dinner is ready to go, and I'm waiting at the door in running clothes, escaping out before he's even closed the front door; I love that hour in the evenings when I can run off the stress of harder days. Boys are tiring.

For Memorial Day our ward's scouting program hosted a bake sale/ bbq. We made a dessert to auction off, the whole time the boys jumped on their chairs/banged their fists/sang super loud to the "What do ya do with a drunken sailor" as their way of "helping."

They were tasty

He was pretending to be asleep

But THIS is his real sleepy face:) 

Then daddy came home:)

We love all the outdoor time we can get. We are so lucky/grateful to be in the area we are in. It's not too crowded, completely safe, and in a nice location that makes it easy to get over to the park! 

And it's not a park like in Utah, this park is like a community center! Everything goes on here. 

We love it. 

while playing in the back alley one day, we were asked to go in
our yard, and then the boys got to see THIS
concrete mixer carefully back
down the path. 

It is HOT

And HUMID

This was Maddix's last soccer practice of the season 

Okay, now for the BEST part of the blog... it should almost be a separate post... hmm... That's what I'm going to do: Find our DATE in the next post :O)