Okay, two outta three ain’t bad.

We made it to our home for the week at Pacific City, OR.  Pacific City is the place you go to when you can’t afford Cannon Beach and reserve too late for Newport.  But it has plenty of sand….and this week, rain, wind, and clouds.

But that will NOT stop us from dunking ourselves in the ocean.

We try to role model wearing warm, dry clothes, but it hasn’t rubbed off on the kids yet (or the nieces, it turns out.)

Another favorite past time is making sure to get sand in every crevice. 

Ready, set….

ROLL!

(Piper is the orange sand monster.)

Pacific City has a bluff, designed for climbing…and dying.  There’s a very obvious fence strung with clothespins as remembrances to those who’ve died falling off and drowning.

There were an unexplainable number of people on the other side of that fence.  We stayed on the sand side and climbed. And climbed.  Then Isaac, Wesley, Piper, and finally Mama, kept climbing.

The fun part is running down!

Our annual week with the cousins was planned Pacific City this year.  Our determination to take two days to drive 6 hours landed us in Cannon Beach on Saturday night.  Yep, on design, we landed in the most popular Oregon Coast city at 8pm on a summer Saturday with no reservations.  You can tell where our children get their intelligence.

We sat in the car and used our GPS and phones to find and call all local lodging options.  Finally, Dwayne called a hotel that had one last room left.  Matching our intelligence, they were going to discount it deeply, but it was still more than we had planned on spending.  However, it was the last room in town, it was a sweet suite, with a separate king room for the kids, and they had a pool open until 10pm. 

We took it.

And can I tell you about the genius behind Hallmark Hotel?  Each kid gets their own plastic bucket and shovel set AND a beach ball.  The three kids probably cost them about $3, and it was like getting a priceless gift.  In spite of waking up to rain the next morning, we knew the beach was meant to be for us, now that we had our sand pails. 

The donuts from the local bakery didn’t hurt either. 

Pacific City, ho!

We had heard from the Humes and Krugs that the Children’s Museum in Olympia is fantastic.  We had about 3o hours to drive 6 hours, so we thought we’d see what the fuss was about. 

It was awesome. 

I loved…I mean, the kids loved the play house, the market, the outside stream, the huge sandbox, the art room, the ship, the science, etc. 

I don’t know if we’ll make it back before my girls outgrow it, but Wesley can play amongst the driftwood and sand for years.  He even built an office so he can get some work done.

One of our summer highlights is going to the Whidbey Island Fair, just minutes from our cabin.  To make it even better this year, my parents joined us, and we met up with some of our favorite island people on the fairgrounds.

It’s a small fair, which works well, as my kids go different directions, but we always run into each other eventually.

Since the midway ticket is $30 per kid, it’s nice that there are a lot of free things for kids, like balloon animals and cupcake decorating.

They also all got to try cardboard loom weaving.

The Crazy 8’s were new to the fair this year, and I always enjoy the pageantry.

The kids enjoyed the rides, the friends, the food…and can’t wait to do it all again next year!

 

The Peninsula is not a geographic feature, but a hotel.  I should certainly put some adjectives in front of hotel.  “Luxurious” is the obvious one, but it is also refined without being too modern. We’ve already checked out, but we have access to all the accommodations until our car picks us up about 5:30, so I type this pool-side.

I wanted to show the kids some pictures of the hotel.  Daddy got us a Junior Executive Suite (a sweet suite, as we never tire of saying).  Even though we didn’t spend much time at the hotel, it was nice to come back to a living room separate from the bedroom. 

Ridiculously, there were 3 televisions, including the one for the bathtub.  This was really the only one I used, as I soaked while listening to Michelle Obama’s speech on Monday.

TV’s are wasted on Dwayne and me … when we have our laptops and smart phones. I usually spent a few hours a night blogging and trying to ignore email. 

But we didn’t scoff at the feather soft bed and extra pillows.

Or the hallway bench (great place to throw down the backpacks upon as we crawled back at the end of the day).

And the living room was a pleasant place to just be quiet after a day in Manhattan.

It’s not going to be affordable with kids (I can’t guarantee it was affordable without kids!), but I’m going to fondly remember our Home Sweet NY Home.

Dear Ducklings,

I’m not trying to sermonize.  Patience and Fortitude are the names of the lions guarding the New York Public Library, or “The People’s Palace” as it is also referred.

I think this is Fortitude (and I’m sure it’s Daddy)…

…making this the backside of Patience! Hee-hee.

By the way, Wesley, fortitude means great courage when facing difficulty.  Remember that, you may need to name something Fortitude or Patience.

Ta-da!  Here is….The Library.

There are over 80 circulating branches of the NYPL system, which means those are places patrons can check out materials.  This branch, however, is strictly a research library.  The public can access its maps, genealogical collections, periodicals (magazines and newspapers), and books, but only for use in the reading rooms.  Some rooms you have to apply, probably with the right academic credentials, to have access to some of the rare collections. 

Like so many other places we’ve loved this week, a lot of the treasure is in the architecture.  Before we even went into the building, we got lost in the statues, giant urns, and balustrades. 

(Cover your eyes, it’s another naked woman statue!)

You can open them now.

Poor Daddy.  Why does the entire city of NY get balustrades and arches and he has none?

We enter through none-too-shabby doors…

 

…and encounter a palace of white marble.  Pretend my pictures do justice to the soaring ceilings and elaborate staircases.

This is just a regular, ol’ ceiling of the 2nd floor Rotunda.

The murals were specially designed for the library.  They show the evolution of writing: stone engravings, manuscript copying, the first metal printing press (the Gutenberg Bible), and then newspaper publishing—and updated way to rapidly print something new daily. 

Gutenberg made approximately 180 copies of his Bible, though only 48 are known to have survived.  This is one of them! 

The children’s library is supposed to be exhibiting the original Winnie-the-Pooh bear and friends (except for Roo, who went on a family picnic long ago in an apple orchard and never returned).  This is the original bear belonging to the real Christopher Robin, whose father based many books on his life and stuffed animals.  However, the friends must be vacationing this week and will return next week.  That didn’t stop the gift store from selling replicas!

These Lego Lions guarded well the Children’s corner.

It was truly a fantastic glimpse into the largesse of the founders, and a very popular place to read, study, and to tourists like us, gawk!

Bryan Park shares the block with NYPL, and it’s charming as well.  With game tables, an open field, a beautiful carousel (designed for very young or timid children), an outdoor Reading Room, and picturesque restaurants, it’s truly a public space. 

I’m becoming charmed by public green spaces completely encircled by skyscrapers.  It makes an interesting juxtaposition that constantly reminds me that I’m not from here!

And to top off our afternoon before we had to check out, we finally had our New York hotdog. 

Tastes exactly as you’d think—bland and slightly off. 

Thanks, New York.  I can’t wait to come back and show you my awesome kids.  They certainly want to meet you!Love and kisses,

Mama

Dear Ducklings,

I don’t know how today could have been better.  After I bombed choosing the comedy club and restaurant, I encouraged Dwayne to plan our Friday.  He chose the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is quite a bit north and very different.  Like the Met, it is situated in beautiful gardens, but that is where the similarities end. 

First, it took 3 train transfers to get there, but we got off at 190th and the world changed.

Just to relate it back to Hamilton, there’s a lyric that repeats a few times after Phillip’s death,  It’s quiet uptown, and it was hard not to hum it as we opened up into a quiet park full of the block walls Dwayne and I favor.

We walked through Tryon Park, a beautiful hill Rockefeller, Jr. liked so much that he bought it, helped build the Cloisters, purchased most of the medieval art for it, and then donated it.  God bless Rockefeller! 

The Met proper has so many objects that any one gallery (of the 400!) could make your head explode.  The Cloisters had several rooms, but you wouldn’t need to take off a second shoe to count them all.  And most of the art is architectural, which meant a lot of the rooms were works of art without further adornment. This included doors, stained glass windows, and, ahem, entire rooms.

The Chapters, where monks would congregate for daily meetings and readings of a chapter of the Benedictine’s handbook for being a monk (or similarly entitled), was taken from Europe and reassembled here, with only the floor being new.

Similarly, this Romanesque Apse was also taken down brick by brick in France and rebuilt here.

You can barely see the door in the right of the picture above.  That door was originally on a older church (1100AD, give or take a century) until it was removed to put in another door.  Supposedly it got moved around and around until it was found lying unloved in a field in France. 

Here’s a quick architecture lesson, ducklings.  Romanesque buildings have semi-circular arches.  Look in that last pictures.  Very Romanesque—you should be able to count 8 arches in that shot.  That was earlier medieval.

Here’s another example:

Then medieval went Gothic.

I always think of Gothic as gargoyles, and there certainly is an aspect of elaborate, slightly twisted to Gothic.  But especially in architecture, it meant using new methods (like flying buttresses) to make a building’s skeleton narrow.  Cathedrals now were able to point up to heaven.  Windows, doors, ceilings all come to a point rather than the semi-circle that Romanesque does. It meant significant amount of walls being taken up with windows (compared to Romanesque structures, at least), and so much lighter.

You can see a strong Gothic influence on this decorative Virgin Mary box—about the size of a toaster.

Kyla, do you remember one of the first artists we read about in your art book last year?  It was about 3 teenage brothers who made marvelous illuminated books?  This is by those brothers:

The books are some of my favorite medieval treasures.

I won’t—can’t—show you everything but here are a few articles that stood out.

This tapestry was less religious than most of medieval art, but still has saints and other Christian symbols mixed in the lords and ladies it represented.  It looks in terrible shape (it is about 800 year old cloth!), but its history included being cut up to make curtains!

These is reportedly the only intact deck of cards from this time period still in existence today!  There are 52 cards, though only a few are on display at a time. 

This was a choir chair. Like theater chairs, they can be folded upright or left down. When it is up, the seat has a bit of a leaning post on it, as choir boys had to stand for long times and needed to lean against something. The funny face?  Just a bit of levity, I believe!

I just thought this was a marvelous carving.  His face is beautiful in its realism.

Unicorns are a huge part of medieval themes.  First of all, the unicorn was supposed to have all sorts of magical power (being able to purify water with a touch of its horn, for one).  Secondly, it was a symbol of Christ—pure and strong.  The Unicorn room had several tapestries.  Just this room alone probably makes the Cloisters priceless.

But I thought the narwhal horn here in the corner was amazing.  It’s about 8 feet long, and was thought to be a unicorn horn hundreds of years ago (probably not by the person who sold it as such, though!).

Daddy and I were most enchanted by the cloisters (the covered walkways) and the courtyard gardens.  The entire cloisters were naturally uncrowded, peaceful places, again in contrast to the Met proper, and this time of year, smelled divine.

Here’s a 5 minute video of the Cloisters, if you wanted more.

Once we left the Cloisters, we had garden paths in every direction to choose from, and so we began to meander in earnest.  Dwayne was well rewarded when we came across the New Leaf Café.

From the outdoor draped ceilings accented with chandeliers to the fancy food, he was quite pleased with himself. 

Between happy hour and dinner there (yes, we did both), we explored more of the Heather Garden and Fort Tryon.  I know my ducklings would have enjoyed exploring this park with us!

We had a great plan (and it was Daddy’s so it was supposed to work well) to take the subway to the north end of Central Park, rent Citi Bikes, and ride to the south end, close to our hotel.  However, all the north end Citi Bike lots were “coming soon”, as opposed to the south end where they are ubiquitous. 

Central Park is about 1/2 mile wide and 2.6 miles long…with no straight paths.  Dwayne and I walked the entire park, slightly by accident, and with lots of zigzagging. 

But the sunset was beautiful, and there are so many pockets of joy in Central Park.  Even with all the walking we did tonight, we saw only the most obvious landmarks.  It would take real dedication to know this entire park well, which means there will always be a surprise…if you are willing to walk for it!

This time tomorrow, we’ll be landing in Seattle.  See you soon, beloved children.

Love,

Mama

 

Dear Ducklings,

As I go through my pictures of the American Museum of Natural History, most of them are not worth adding to the blog.  Here’s a short video that from the museum that gives you a small taste of it.  This video is 8 minutes long, but gives a better overview. 

Here’s a few pictures for you.  Kyla, here’s the tail club of an ankylosaurus:

Piper, I was explaining what dioramas are, a 3D scene of something.  Using taxidermied animals, plants, rocks, and a background mural, “natural” scenes like this one were displayed all over the museum.

Wesley, look at this cool ammonite!

Lucy’s skeleton was displayed!  It’s about 3.2 million years old, so forgive her for not looking her best.

 

This is what a real meteorite looks like.

This necklace has about 90 carats of diamonds.

 

 

We had a very disappointing evening—I suggested we try a comedy club.  Never have a paid so much to be so thoroughly disgusted.  It was followed by pizza recommended by the concierge.  Not great either.  But at least we did get to see a real comedian.  Stephen Colbert (a very famous TV show host) was outside the restaurant window, doing his Party Convention “Hunger for Power” Games skit—actually on the restaurants rooftop, which they accessed from a window just a few feet away from our table.  It was weirdly nonchalant. 

Dear Ducklings,

As I settle in with a cup of tea and terry slippers, I couldn’t rewrite this day better.

First of all, we didn’t realize how tired we were until we woke up probably about the same time you all did back in Washington.  Yeah, even with the 3 hour difference!

Not having enough time to ride bikes around Central Park, we got even lazier and took the NY Times up to the top floor pool and spa, and ate apples and drank tea.  (Okay, coffee for Daddy.) 

We swam for exercise and took advantage of what most gyms would call locker rooms, but here are referred to as the “ladies’ (or gentlemen’s) spa”.  I love the steam room and sauna, as well as the rain showerheads, and vanity tables with everything but my makeup. 

From there, it was easy to get ready for a 10 hour date.  The hotel has a car they call a Mini Cooper, but it is suspiciously bigger and has the strange words “Cadillac” on the back.  The car and driver is complementary to hotel guests, subject to availability.  They had just enough time at 1:30 to drive us to the theater district and drop us off half a block from the Richard Theater.  I won’t gush here about the show, other than to say it was even better than my high expectations.  I’d see it again tomorrow if we could!

We liked being dropped off and then walking back. As we left the theater, I got distracted by street performers.  

Notice the guy off to the side, looking inconspicuous and wearing a t-shirt?  After all the other guys doing amazing acrobatic trips, he’s going to casually jump over 4 people lined up.  Including Daddy.  Here’s the video!

Here’s a street artist creating a NYC skyline scene with spray paint and a scraper.

Finally, I put my blinders on and we made it to Rockefeller Center.  We find an outdoor bistro and had, I kid you not, the best creamed spinach we’ve ever had.  Usually we judge a restaurant by its beet salad, and theirs was good, but we ate up all the spinach and could have had more. 

On our way to the restaurant, we had noticed a bakery and went back for dessert. 

Showing remarkable self-control, we waited until we stumbled upon the perfect restful alcove before I dove into my chocolate truffle cake.

We thought St. Patrick’s was never open, but it’s just never open at 9 or 10pm when we usually walk by.  Tonight was early enough that we finally got to go inside.  It was very reminiscent of the cathedrals in Europe, but as Daddy put it so well, was “missing the expected gravitas.”  I pointed it that it was about 1000 years younger than most of the cathedrals we had experienced before. 

Kids, I’m looking forward to showing you a cathedral.  They are magnificent works of art, mostly architectural and sculpture.  There are separate alcoves for dozens of saints, and candles to light during prayers.  St. Therese even had a relic to go with her alcove, though there were not specifics—was it a finger bone, a lock of hair?  Whatever it is, it’s surrounded by gold and a glass case.

This is the podium the priest climbs up to to speak.  And although it’s much taller than I am, it is dwarfed by the church front.

This is the church front!

So good talking to all of you tonight!  See you in four days.

Love,

Mama

PS  Happy 14th Anniversary to you, Babe!  How did you manage to top the Salish Lodge, Vienna, and all the other places you’ve taken me?  This has been the best anniversary ever, Love!