Oh My God, Mary is 13!!!!

This must mean that I am getting old.

To commemorate the occasion, I took her and her friend Samantha to New York City. Here they are waiting to get on the plane in Boston:

After the short flight to NYC, we caught a ride to Times Square. This was right after we were dropped off:

We walked around Times Square, ate lunch and checked into our hotel a few blocks away. After dropping off our backpacks, we took the subway to Chinatown. We shopped on Canal Street (I showed the girls how to haggle for goods.)



Then we ate cannolis in Little Italy:


I wish we had eaten dinner in Little Italy, but we had tickets to the Broadway show, "Spamalot" and we had to get ready. Mary consented to a picture with mom:


This show was hilarious!

The next day, we went to the Museum of Modern Art, commonly referred to as "MoMa". This is my favorite painting by Van Gogh:

After the museum, we walked to Central Park and bought lunch from a street vendor. I figured that was enough for the trip so we headed back to LaGuardia and caught the 4:30 flight back to Boston:



Hopefully Mary will have fond memories of her 13th birthday! Now if only I can survive the next 5 years!

Picnic

Yesterday Raymond and I went on a picnic on our dirtbikes. We rode on an 8-mile trail through the woods (and over many bridges), along the Sugar River. It starts in the town next to ours, so we packed the dirtbikes in Cranky's truck and hit the trail. It's very scenic and we saw some people walking dogs, jogging, and riding bicycles. During the winter, this is also used as a snowmobile trail.

There are 2 covered bridges -- this is the first one we drove over:


Here is the second covered bridge where we decided to have our picnic.


Raymond and I took pictures of each other:



Near the end of the trail, it there is some construction work being done on a nearby road. The road is being widened, and they have been digging the tall slopes on the sides of the road. It looks like they have found several discarded cars and put them in this holding area:


On the way back home, Raymond was leading and took quite a spill. He hit a large rock and lost control. He was a little freaked out at first but got over it very quickly. He had ripped his shirt a little bit and scraped his arm, but his helmet, chest protector, gloves and boots took the brunt of the fall. After a few minutes, he hopped back on and continued. Before I knew it, he was zipping right along like nothing had happened.

We had a great time and I hope we go again soon.