2005 YEAR IN REVIEW:
PHILLY-DC-NYC-PLYMOUTH TRIP

Every year my aunt from Germany comes to the States to pick up my grandma to take her to Germany for 3 months. This year my aunt had a trip on the east coast so we packed everyone up and met her there! It was more spur-of-the-moment than our last few trips so I didn’t have a LOT of time to plan, but we still managed to pack a lot into this trip! Tim didn’t get to go so it was just the kids and I, my mom, Tim’s mom and her oldest granddaughter, and my 93 year old grandmother! We met my aunt on the 2nd night of our trip. She and GG accompanied us on all of the DC things. We left home on November 12th and came home on the 22nd with only one day to get ready for Thanksgiving! Here is one of the MANY pictures of Nathan talking to daddy! Amanda is holding him.
I accidentally uploaded these pictures in reverse order and rather than take the time to put them in the right order you’ll just have to see our trip from ending to beginning! Can you tell I’m still pretty new at this whole blogging thing? I seriously doubt anyone other than me will even care that they are in reverse order (LOL). PHILADELPHIA: We drove all the way from Plymouth back to Philadelphia in one day so that we could have a full day to tour around Philly. We saw Constitution Hall, Penn’s Landing, the Liberty Bell and all of the other history type things there were to see. In many of these places we weren’t allowed to take pictures so I don’t have a lot of photos from here either. But here are the ones I do have:Ride the Duck was the PERFECT end to our trip. It was HILARIOUS. The driver/guide had us laughing the entire time. It was very comical and somewhat informative. We were all given these silly duck beak whistles and the driver would have us blow them at people who were walking by on the streets!At one spot we were stopped at a stop light on a slight hill where you couldn’t see what was over the hill. The guide said we were going for the river, punched on the gas, and away we went. Josh thought that was SO FUNNY! We floated up the river and back aways before the tour ended.After the Duck Tour it was raining so we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel to get ready to leave bright and early the next day.We took the train into the city from our hotel which was out by the airport:Here are some of the things we saw along the Patriotic walking tour around the main part of Philadelphia.PLYMOUTH: Plymouth Rock: We stopped here just before heading out of town. Again, since we’ve been studying this time period it was particularly moving for us to be able to stand in the spot that commemorates the landing of the Pilgrims. Mayflower: We were only in Plymouth for a day and a half. Our pass for visiting Plymouth Plantation also included a stop at the Mayflower. Since we have been studying the Pilgrims since school started this fall Josh and Emily were particularly interested in this stop! It was perfect timing to visit and see how REALLY SMALL the area was where the Pilgrims stayed, how small the trunks were that they brought, the tiny sleeping/cooking quarters, etc. Here are pictures from teh Mayflower: Seeing Nathan look out this tiny little window really made one realize how difficult it would have been for the small children to be cooped up in the lower part of this tiny ship for such a long trip. Lantern Tour: After our Thanksgiving Dinner we were all supposed to go on a Lantern Tour through Plymouth. Emily, Josh, and I were the only ones up for it so we took the others back to the motel and hurried back to Plymouth to find the tour. We were about 15 minutes late, but fortunately we were able to find the location where they started and by the time we arrived they were just taking off. The lady who led the tour was a school teacher from the area who had been studying this time period all of her teaching years. It was an EXCELLENT TOUR! One of the favorites that we will talk about for a long time! The lanterns kept our hands warm and it was a walking tour so we didn’t have a chance to stand around and get too cold. The lady wrote a book about Plymouth Rock from the rock’s perspective that we bought for Nathan. I would HIGHLY recommend this tour to anyone heading to Plymouth. There is more than one so be sure to ask for the one led by the lady who is a teacher. Plymouth Plantation: Since we were here so close to Thanksgiving we decided we HAD to take part in the Thanksgiving Dinner with the Pilgrims that night! Everything served as as if we were back in that time period. The Pilgrims even came to socialize at each of our tables and they performed some of their traditional songs. Here are pictures from the Thanksgiving Dinner: Here we are getting a lesson on how to use the napkins, where to “spit” our food, which hand it’s polite to eat with and which isn’t, etc. This lady played the part of Elizabeth Hipkins whose baby Oceanus died shortly after the voyage. She seemed quite surprised that we knew all about her and the baby. Of course, we had been doing our “homework” before we came and she just happened to be one of the ones we had taken a particular liking to! So, we were VERY excited when she came to our table and we were able to strike up a time period conversation with her. We really enjoyed the Living History exhibit that is set up at Plymouth Plantation. All of the actors were dressed in period costumes and spoke as if they were unfamiliar with anything modern day. Here are pictures of the plantation as it would hve been in the 1600’s. It was SO COOL!
We went inside several of the homes and each one had different people in it and they treated you as if you were just one of their neighbors stopping in for a visit. This man was telling us about the difference between the Puritans and Separatists when it came to celebrating (or not) Christmas. It was very interesting! There was also an Indian Village setup at Plymouth Plantation. We enjoyed going through the teepees, watching the Indians do their work, seeing the dugout canoe being burned inside to finish it off, etc. By the time we finished this part of the exhibit it was dark and COLD! It was close to the water and there was a little wind which made it really chilly. We went inside and warmed up before our Thanksgiving Dinner.THANKSGIVING PARADE:
Plymouth ended up being another “God Thing”. The town of Plymouth has it’s annual Thanksgiving Day parade on the Sat before Thanksgiving. Since our trip was the week before Thanksgiving and since we were so close… you know we were on the east cost never mind that we were 4-6 hours south (LOL)…. I decided that we needed to head up to Plymouth and take in all of the Thanksgiving activities. You’ll see further down at the “beginning” of this blog that we are studying Colonial times so we really couldn’t miss a chance to have Thanksgiving with the pilgrims, see Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower, etc. We stayed at a mom and pop little place outside of Plymouth. We arrived SO late (past midnight) that they just set the key out for us (LOL). We were up bright and early the next morning to go get a good spot for the parade which I had scoped out on the internet before we left. I think we managed to get about 4 hours of sleep this night. Some people slept in the van while we waited for the parade to start. This was the longest parade I’ve ever been to. The boys LOVED seeing all of the marching bands with their drums, the period military troops with their canons and horses, etc. All of the original colonists were there, a miniature mayflower, an early style Pilgrim house and more. It was GREAT! Here are the parade pictures. Josh enjoyed seeing all of the army costumes so you’ll see lots of those pictures.











Notice these really long guns!

NEW YORK CITY! Here We Come!I have to admit that I was slightly nervous about driving the 15 pass van right into the middle of Times Square. The Hotel Edison where we had reservations was only 1/2 a block from the center of Times Square. Looking at this picture, I’m still not sure exactly how we actually got there and safely parallel parked with all the cabs and traffic zooming by… but here is proof… I doubt you’ll find very many pictures of a 15 pass van in the middle of Times Square (LOL). When I told the front desk it was a 15 pass van they didn’t believe me (LOL)! As if driving with 6 lanes of traffic crammed into 5 driving lanes wasn’t bad enough, it was dark AND RAINING when we arrived. We did ok getting through the tunnels and even somehow THANKS TO THE GPS managed to even be in the correct lane for our turn after we got through the tunnels. I figured there wasn’t any sense in mentioning that I can tend to get clastrophobic since there wasn’t any way around the tunnels. I don’t mind tunnels… it’s just REALLY LONG ONES and lots of them and traffic not moving that bothers me. So… here’s one of our MANY tunnel pictures followed by pictures of our drive into NYC! After we got checked into the hotel we made our way in the pouring rain without an umbrella to Build A Bear which was at the top of Emily and Josh’s to do list and tonight was the only FOR SURE time that I knew we could fit it in so we decided to make a RUN for it! We met our friend, Karen, who lives in NYC! She was kind enough to meet us there.. staying late after work to catch us on our schedule. It was a short and sweet visit. I couldn’t imagine going to NYC and not getting to at least say hello. THANKS again Karen for taking the time to meet us! You’ll see her in this picture below with all of us at Build A Bear.
Build A Bear is a cool place where kids pick out a bear, then they get to use a foot pedal to run the stuffing machine, they place the heart in their bear, and then they get to dress it up! You also get to make a birth certificate for your bear… name and all. They had a BLAST! We didn’t get back to our hotel until about 10:00 p.m… we do like to pile in as much as we can when we’re on vacation. Here are the pictures from our time at Build A Bear:Emily surveying all of the bear options.Nathan pumping the stuffing machine to fill his bear.Josh rubbing his bear’s heart before putting it inside.Nathan and then Josh putting the hearts in their bears. We toured NYC via the Gray Line Double Decker bus. It takes several different loops around the city. We bought a 2 day pass and decided to use it instead of the subways. Our tickets also gave us preferred passes into several of the things we went to see including the Empire State Building. The lines weren’t very long this time of the year, but we got free extras such recordings to listen to as we looked out over the city, free tickets on the mock helicopter ride over the city. That ended up being one of our favorite things. Amanda wasn’t up for it though so she stayed outside with Nathan. Here is a picture of the bus. Most of the time we liked riding up on top. The boys and I just LOVED the noise and sounds of the city. Josh could NOT get over how many cars there were. He kept saying DAD WOULD NOT LIKE THIS! One time Josh called daddy from the top of the tour bus while we were in the heart of the financial district and traffic had come to a complete standstill. I kept getting all turned around with all of the one way streets (my family knows I don’t do one ways very well… another reason to take the bus instead of the van while in NYC) and tall buildings obstructing my view of ANYTHING That I could zero in on as being North or South… anyway… Amanda has a GREAT sense of direction and she pretty much took over the guiding while in NYC! Here she’s bringing up the rear making sure we’re ALL on the same bus! In the 2nd picture you can see the rest of us trying to decide it was the right bus or not (LOL). Nathan was looking very intently out the window trying to spot a truck or backhoe or anything that looked familiar!and then he would get SO EXCITED when he spotted something! On our 2nd day of touring we took the Express Bus down to ground zero. It was much faster since it avoided all of the stops that we had gotten off at the previous day. We remembered that the buses all got hung up in the traffic at the furthest point. So, it didn’t make sense to catch a bus right where we were. Instead we walked a LOT of blocks over to where we could catch a bus AFTER it had gotten through that part of the traffic. Here we are waiting for the next bus. A few people ended up having to go to the bathroom so we quickly went to find one hoping that we got back before the bus! Josh also took time to tie his shoe!! It was a good place to sit and wait since there were some boats at the pier and it gave us something other than buildings to look at.Riding the tour bus was a good plan except we should have stopped at ground zero the first day when we came to it instead of going back the next day since it was clear down in the lower part of the loop. We just didn’t want to take a chance on missing our boat tour around the NYC harbor which would have been very disapopinting to miss if we had gotten caught in traffic. We had plenty of time, but we didn’t KNOW we would have plenty of time until we got back. Oh well…. next time I will know how to NOT lose 2 hours in NYC (LOL)! However, as you can see by these pictures I don’t think anyone in our group was too disappointed at having a few hours to rest. In no particular order, here are some of the sights we saw:FAO: The boys had SO MUCH fun looking around this multi story toy store!CHRISTMAS SIGHTS: Everywhere we turned we saw store fronts getting all ready for the upcoming holiday shopping season which starts next week with the Thanksgiving Day parade. Here are a few of our favorite Christmas trees! The first one has cameras all over it and the next one has computer accessories covering it.USS Intrepid was right next to the area where we boarded the ferry to go on the NYC harbor tour so we toured it after we got our passes for the ferry. It was COLD down by the water. During this entire trip I’ve been PRAYING that we don’t end up in some snow storm here on the East Coast! I was a bit nervous doing this in November, but so far so good. Josh and Nathan really enjoyed looking at all of the airplanes. Night time harbor tour around NYC shoreline and the Statue of Liberty: This tour was SO MUCH fun. The boys really enjoyed the change of pace from the bus touring we had been doing all day. I wanted to do this the last time we were in NYC, but I didn’t want to spend that much $$ and I didn’t know my way around, wasn’t sure how to get there and back to where we were staying, etc. This time there was a smaller shuttle bus loop included in the package that we bought for the touring the city. I never really did all the math, but I’m certain it saved us money considering there were 8 of that would need subway tickets everytime we went somewhere AND even if we broke even or it cost us a little more it was STILL worth it to keep all of us together. Last time we were here it was hard enough to keep 4 of us together on the subway… I just couldn’t wrap my brain around trying to keep 8 of us together this time. This harbor tour was included for free in the City Pass that we purchsaed in conjunction with our bus tour pass. I KNOW we came out $$ ahead on the City Pass. We loved seeing the sights of the NYC skyline from out on the water. It gives you a different perspective since it’s hard to image it all when you are right in the middle of the city. Here are a few pictures from that tour which also went around the Statue of Liberty.$60 Cheesecake! Ok… This is a funny story. After our night time City Lights Tour we decided to stop in at the Carnegie Deli that the tour guide pointed out. He said it’s his FAVORITE place to go for cheesecake… that got everyone’s attention. When we arrived we looked at the menu and decided we would go ahead and eat dinner. We knew it would be expensive to eat in NYC so we had packed some things for b-fast and lunch and planned to eat hotdogs and peanuts from the street vendors the rest of the time (see picture above)! We were only in NYC for 2 days so it wasn’t like we were going to starve or anything. Anyway, we decided to go ahead and sit down to eat here and the prices didn’t look TOO bad considering several of us usually share anyway. AFTER we sat down while reading the “fine print” on the menu we noticed that there was a $20 cover charge PER PERSON and they don’t take credit cards… ok… that meant we had a problem because first of all some of us were going to share a meal so we’d have to pay $20 per person even if you didn’t order anything to eat AND they don’t take credit cards and none of us carry much cash. We talked to the waiter and explained that we needed to leave for those 2 reasons and he convinced us to stay and that he would not charge the cover charge… then we had to count up how much we all had and all we could afford was cheesecake (LOL)! It was YUMMY!Here we are all resting on a bench outside Central Park and the next is a picture of central park which is so pretty this time of the year.Ground Zero: We walked around the edge of ground zero which is fenced off while work continues. In one of the nearby buildings there is a memorial which has photographs, stories of survivors, and models of the plans for this area. It is still eerie to walk around ground zero and remember what happened on 9/11.CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR WITH THE RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL ROCKETTES!! We were so excited to get tickets to this show even though we were booking at the last minute only a month ahead of time. When we arrived in NYC the big news around town was the dispute between the orchestra musicians and the show producers. The musicians were back in the orchestra pit for the FIRST time this season during our show. I was SO excited because again this was another GOD THING! We could NOT have planned that any better if we had tried. It would not have been the same without the live music. The show was AWESOME. My favorite part was the rockettes as reindeer, but those pictures didn’t turn out. Here are pictures of the Rockettes in various scenes.The last scene was a live Nativity that was AWESOME! It’s hard to see in this picture, but it was very cool and they played scripture beyond it all on the back screen.MOUNT VERNON: This is one of those thing I just couldn’t have planned to fit our schedule more perfectly – it’s what I call a “God Thing.” MT Vernon just happened to be having Colonial Days while we were there. We had enough people in our party to schedule us in as our own “school” with discounted prices and all. This entire trip fit PERFECTLY with our school studies this year which is Early American history. Here the kids are at the gate into MT Vernon.

Josh would tell you his two favorites were the Air & Space Museum shown in the pictures below and the American History’s train exhibit. Emily’s favorite was the 1st Ladies inaugural dresses in the American History museum although I didn’t get any pictures of them. Here Josh is enjoying some of the interactive things to do at the Air & Spacke Musuem, which btw, had the MOST interactive hands on exhibits of all the museums.


Thanks to my friend, Lee’s, suggestion we decided to prebook a tour of the Library of Congress. This was probably my favorite thing in DC this time. I especially enjoyed the exhibit that contained early American documents, the printing presses that you could compare side by side, art work, and many other things. I had no idea this building would be so interesting. I’m SO GLAD Lee recommended we add it to our itinerary. Thanks LEE! Actually, Lee and her family took a similar trip last year and I basically started with their itinerary and copied what would fit us! Here are only a couple of pictures. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside ANY of the rooms so I only have pictures from the main public areas. They did, however, give us a CD which shows many of the things in each room which obviously I won’t upload here (LOL).

We booked a tour of the Captiol Building throuh our Congressman’s, Denny Rehberg, office. The person who normally gives these tours was out of town so this young man filled in. You could tell he was definitely not versed in giving these tours. He didn’t know the answers to many of our questions, but he was very helpful in getting the wheelchair for us and giving us directions for some other places we needed to go around DC. Here we are in the Capitol Building.
MEDIEVAL TIMES IN HANOVER MARYLAND: We booked dinner at Medieval Times which is only about 45 minutes from where we are meeting Dolores in DC. It was a LOT of fun. The kids all enjoyed the show and you can see in these pictures that Josh and GG have found their way around eating without utensils! I think they may have done ok living back then. I LOVE the picture of GG. It’s become one of my favorite pictures of her! She’s sure enjoying life and new adventures even at 93! The first picture is with the falconer whose hawk had a part in the show.
We set aside our Colonial studies for a week to review knights, castles, and other Medieval things since I knew we would be having dinner here.



INDEPENDENCE SEAPORT MUSEUM IN PHILADELPHIA
This was the first stop of the trip. In the little time that I did have to plan this trip, I found out that it’s free until noon on Sundays so we headed there right after getting our van. We went through the museums and then outside we were able to go through several of the boats and a submarine.
Mom and GG didn’t want to venture down into the submarine so they stayed behind and enjoyed the waterfront. Here GG is sitting with Camden NJ to her back.

Even though we don’t know how long it will “really” take us to get to Maryland for dinner we decided to let the boys play in the east coast fall leaves for awhile. The colors are spectacular… just like everyone has said they would be! Here the boys are playing near the memorial to Christopher Columbus which is in the picture that follows the boys.

We didn’t get into Philly until well after midnight so we took the shuttle to the airport and dealt with getting the rental van the next day. This motel had a cushioned window seat which worked well for Nathan’s bed! It was right next to one of the queen beds so he was close enough to me that he felt comfortable sleeping there and was excited that it was JUST HIS SIZE! oops.. this is the wrong picture, but in an effort to get this part of the blog done I’m not going to go searching for the right one (LOL)! This is still a cute picture of him on the roll away.Amanda and I are glad to have the laptop so we can stay in touch with family and friends back home!HERE WE GO! Thanks to all of the traveling we have done the last few years Nathan LOVES airplanes. Josh still gets a little nervous, but he was the “man” on this trip since he was the oldest male and he rose to the occasion helping me keep Nathan occupied. I did hear Nathan telling Josh a few times that “it’ll be ok.”