Breakfast in Central Park

 Got up super early, picked up some bagels and headed over to the park for breakfast on the benches while watching the dogs walk by! Before 9am, dogs get to be off leash in Central Park, so it's a bit of a circus with them roaming free all around the park. Grahammy totally digs it. He prefers being off leash as well. 

  

  

After climbing on the rocks, we always head down to the pond to say hello to the ducks before cruising back home. As G gets more and more brave, the more closely we have to watch him to avoid anyone plunging into the water.

Finger Pickin' Good

Careful y'all. We've got a budding musician in the family...

W is for Wedding

My friend Nicole from back home got married this weekend - and it was actually here in NY, so it was fun to have lots of folks from CA out in our neck of the woods. It was also exciting to explore a new part of NY that I'd never visited before - Flushing! The ceremony was at 3pm - right in the middle of naptime - so the plan was for my mom and I to head over first and actually watch them get hitched, then the boys to meet up with us later at the reception whenever G awoke. We had planned to take the train out to Flushing but was blazing hot, so we lazed out and took a cab instead. Plus we're fancy like that.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

Once G woke from his nap and both boys got dapper dandy (good job DVC!), they held a quick photo shoot and met us at the reception. There were quite a few little kids there, which made for a sweet cocktail hour watching them chase each other around the garden. The food was both amazing and plentiful; there was so much that at first we assumed that was the dinner! Gotta love a wedding with an abundance of chow and cheerful children.

Once the DJ invited us inside and turned up the tunes, the party really got started...

And Graham danced, oh how he danced. He twirled around that sparkly ballroom with friends and strangers alike. He waved his glowstick with wild abandon, he jumped and stomped and shimmied between people's legs. He had a marvelous time. And ever since the wedding, whenever you ask what he did last weekend, he gleefully replies, "I daaaanced!!" with eyes shining. (Naturally we ask him several hundred times per day because HELLO it's freakin' adorbs.)

 

First photo of Graham and several others below (it's quite obvious which - the good ones!) 

from my very talented friend Marco. See the rest of his amazing photos here.

Too bad we didn't ask him to take our family photo...

How do you make holy water?

You boil the hell out of it. 

Definitely ready for Friday. Happy weekend folks!

Jamma to the Rescue

Monday was going pretty well. And then G got sick. Oh lawdy did he get sick. Got a call from Jellybean on Monday afternoon to come pick him up as he'd been whiney and not eating and generally not himself. By the time I got there to pick him up, he had the telltale bright red cheeks of a fever and seemed just miserable. 

Luckily, I was able to stay home with him on Tuesday. Poor bub was too sad and exhausted to do much of anything other than lay around and watch Thomas videos. So. Much. Thomas. 

He refused to go down for a nap, but then a few minutes later I looked over and saw this... 

And boy was he zonked out...stayed sound asleep through a move back to the bedroom!

And just when it seemed all hope was lost for ever feeling healthy again...

Jamma arrived to nurse us back to health!

B is for Baby

  But we're not talking about G...

Graham got a baby doll this week! He wasn't too sure about it initially, eyeing it skeptically when it first came out of the box and leaving it sitting on the couch where he could glance at it suspiciously from time to time; but soon they became very best friends and "Baby" started going everywhere he did. Now they are inseparable. Baby came with a magnetic pacifier, which Graham finds fascinating; he likes to hide it in the couch and then spend lots of time "searching" for it saying "paci paci?" At first he dragged Baby around by the ankle, like a mini caveman trudging along with his hard-earned treasure, but he's learned to be a bit more loving in his caretaking.

Other items of interest this week - more new words than we can count, as well as putting together a few new sentences, including "I want it." and "I don't want." Pretty much anything Graham wishes to accomplish can be communicated with one of those two sentences.

New bucket has been a source of great joy. We haven't actually done a lot of digging yet, but sure carried it around with gusto. Best three bucks I've ever spent.  

 

Been trying to make the most of the last days of summer by having dinner up on our roofdeck whenever we can manage. Watching the sun set from up where there's an actual breeze flowing makes for a really pleasant close to a sweltering hot day. 

Zip To It

Are you tired of Costa Rica pictures yet? Hope not, because there are quite a few more to see...

A visit to CR wouldn't be complete for us without popping out to Pura Aventura for some ziplining!

When we first went quite a few years ago, there wasn't much out there in the way of an "office" or anything like that. But now they have a beautiful facility with a big deck and a little cafe where you can enjoy some fruit and a beer after your adventure.

  

Getting properly geared up is always awkward.

  

And the ride up the mountain is an adventure in and of itself!

Once at the top, we all paid very close attention to the safety demonstration and no goofing around.

Step right up to the very first run. Bombs away!

No pics from actual ziplining, as we left our cameras in the truck. Sorry folks.

But lots of snaps of the crazy tree at the very end!

As always, we'll be back....