Learning to ride

Today we visited the Grandparent Ashton's house. I'm taking a GRE online prep class. Until recently I have been able to study and do the online class while Andrew entertains himself.  His recent development makes this significantly harder. Not only is he becoming more mobile, he has also realized that people should play with him. As Wendy gorgeously stated it Andrew thinks,
" I'm a person. I'm interactable!" Which leads to the reason we are at the grandparents. I need someone to entertain Andrew while doing class portion of the GRE class.
It worked today. Andrew has been having a ball.

Backwards

This is how I described the above picture to Wendy while she was at work.

"He hits the buttons to make the noises. Then attempts to push with his legs to make it move. He isn't tall enough to make out work though."

Of Gardening and Water

Inspiration.  Somehow Wendy caught it. I don't know who to blame more; KaLyn with her recreational gardening or Arden with his self-sufficiency gardening.  Either way, starting this Spring Wendy decided that some sort of gardening would exist. Now as we currently do not own the place in which we stay we were limited to pot planting.

Andrew has become an eager participant in "helping" his mommy with her gardening.

He helps prepare for planting

He chooses the right spot to plant

He waters the plants

He sorts the harvest

It's sad to say that Ben has not caught the gardening bug. Instead he has introduced Andrew to one of the other great Summer activities. Playing with the water hose.

Toothy Grin

Shhhhhh!

Shhhhhh! 
In the movies there is always someone in the library shushing the protagonists. In the movies the library is supposed to be a quiet place of medication and thought. I love libraries; however few libraries that I have ever frequented have had this aura of elevated thought.

That is...until we visited the New York City Libary. The architecture, the decorations, even the room arrangements just said, "This...is a place of learning." I felt that I was absorbing knowledge by merely being present in the building.

New York City Cruise

So Michael, what would you suggest doing in NYC? The Ellis Island Ferry!
So Elizabeth, what would you suggest doing in NYC? Don't do the Ellis Island Ferry!

As feedback from the immediate family seemed to be contradicting Wendy and I requested the assistance of a tourist agency in New Jersey. The name? Ian and Alice Touring Inc.  This agency has amazingly personal service. They will pick you up at the train station, they will provide a "rental" care for your use during the stay, they will provide a place to sleep, and most importantly tourism advice.

Their advice? Do the sightseeing cruise.
So we did.

New WTC

For Liberty

It was cloudy and rainy day...(slight pause while I consider writing a mystery novel with that beginning).  Fortunately the cruise ship had a covered and heated compartment area from which you could watch the views without getting wet or cold. Wendy and Andrew stuck there. Ben, being made of sterner (or masochistic) stuff stayed out in the rain and cold...while wearing shorts.  Very invigorating.  There was a nice side effect though; Ben had complete reign of the observation deck for almost the entirety of the ride.  No need to fight for a place at the side of the boat to take the two hundred or so pictures of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty that are clearly needed for archival purposes.

It was a little bit cold

Fire and carnivores

Yin Yang chocolate

"Oh! No...please don't give me the table with the infant!" Our servers reaction when we walked into the melting pot for a two hour meal with Andrew in tow. A four course fondu meal is not a quick meal; infants don't exactly have a reputation of being patient for extended meals.

It's on FIRE!

Fortunately Andrew had just taken a nap, had received a snack from Mommy and had plenty of people and things to watch. Andrew so impressed the server that at the end of the meal the server gave him a chocolate bar.

There were a lot of exciting things during this meal. The biggest exciting thing that occurred during the meal?  To use my journalist sister's succinct words, "It's chocolate (cheese) that's on fire!!!!" I would like to say that Andrew was as excited about the fire as Elizabeth; to do so however would be fable.  For Elizabeth the highlight was fire; for Andrew the highlight was becoming a carnivore.

We've gradually been introducing Andrew to more "real" food. It is to the point that if Wendy or I have anything to eat he expects to be given at least a portion. Prior to this we had not given him any meat. When an entire course consists almost entirely of meat it's hard to distract the little guy. So, he tried meat, then more meat, then more meat, then that meat.  His favorite was shrimp. I'm fairly sure that Andrew ate more of Wendy's shrimp than Wendy did.

Take me out to the ball game!

The home field for the Baltimore Orioles was a two to three minute walk away from our hotel. Wendy's museum group had a couple of people who actually follow baseball.  So as an evening activity we went to a baseball game; as an added bonus the game was against everyone's favorite team to hate, the Yankees.

Meeting the mascot

Up in the nosebleeds

Watching the game

Day out at the park

I also had a fun time playing with our telephoto lens. I thought these were fairly decent shots from up in the nosebleed sections of the park.

Oh yea. In case anyone wondered. The Yankees lost.

General conference

I've always struggled with general conference weekend. It's not that I don't like what's said. I just struggle to maintain focus during the ten hours of talking faces.

The Deseret News had an article this past week that encouraged people to participate on convergence with the hashtag of #ldsconf. They claimed that it would be full of commentary and reactions much like is commonly seen with political or sports events. I thought it would be interesting to test out. Unfortunately the thriving Twitter community consisted of the Deseret News, the LDS CHURCH. and once got twittering while driving to some place. Didn't really improve my experience.

Wendy was listening to a Mormon channel episode yesterday that discussed how to make conference more valuable for children. While listening I thought that maybe some of the ideas might work for us.

The most intriguing idea was to create traditions that family members can look forward to every conference. I've staryef to try to think of traditions that would work. This one that I think we might sometime is based on my personal experiences. Wendy has noticed that I can pay better attention to conference talks if I'm driving. The idea would be that we d rive in the mountains for the morning session. Inbetween the sessions we can have a picnic. Then we drive during the evening session to come home. It sounds like it could work.

At the same time we would miss out on some of the things that we saw during the sessions today. It was fun to watch Andrew play with his grandpa, aunt, and the resident dog during the talks.  My favorite was when grandpa and aunt Debbie got on the floor and made a human barrier do Andrew could not go climb on the television