Thanksgiving Pt II--Weehawken

After a delightful pre-Thanksgiving week in Santa Cruz, we were also looking forward to a delightful Thanksgiving weekend in Weehawken, NJ.  We were not disappointed.

It started with an early morning Turkey Trot, in Butler.  Here is the intrepid crowd that showed up for the 5K.

It was a bracing morning, but sunny and bright. Kit started out at a strong pace, and finished 4th.  Note Terisa in the background.  She had a little cowbell (a little bell or a bell from little cows?  We report, you decide) that she rang in support of all of the participants.  Disappointingly, we could not find a vuvuzela for her to blow.

 Lynne ran a measured pace and finished exactly as she had hoped: upright and smiling.

 Then Kit and Gabe went to a gigantic grassy park in Jersey city to play in the annual Turkey bowl.  There were at least a dozen games going on all over the park.  Very inspirational.  I forgot to take pictures, but our game looked something like this.  This is what Kit looked like on the first play from scrimmage:

Here I am making my one and only interception.

 The guys we played against were young and big and strong and fast.

But the old adage about age and cunning winning out over youth and vigor proved true.  Again.

 Anyway, much to the chagrin of the ambulance trolling in the park, nothing got sprained.  For the next two days, however, I kept feeling muscles I didn't remember I had...

Lynne's first turkey was a spectacularly delicious success,

and the feast was beautiful and delicious, in that order.

After, we went on the traditional waddle, er, walk, to look at the Manhattan skyline.  Never get tired of this view across the Hudson.

For dinner-dessert, there was pie, tastefully provided by the Weehawken Pie Cabal.

A James Bond movie rounded out turkey-day festivities.  Can anyone shoot his cuffs with as much class as Bond?

Yes, we went into Manhattan on Black Friday.  Kit's driving and parking skills are epic.

But rather than shop, we went to the Museum of Natural History.  It was mobbed. 

The dinosaurs were cool.

The meteorites were coolest.

Then  we took the subway downtown.  The subways are full of local thugs and bearded tough guys (yes, Kit has a beard--looks pretty good, too.)

We tried and failed to win lottery tickets to Newsies on Friday, so we went home and played Pit, the action-filled trading floor game.

True to form, in anything that verges on investments, stocks, bonds or wealth-building, I can unerringly pick the absolute loser.

 On Saturday, we went back to the Newsies lottery for the matinee.  We had six people, and drew out six seats! How lucky is that?  Well, someone had to win them, why not us?  We think it was a turkey miracle.

We had pizza at John's (thanks, Eric!),

 

and then crowd-wrestled our way around Times Square for a while.

The excitement of New York is narcotic, but especially at holiday time. And what says happy holidays better than naked cowboy?

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 Made you look! (but we did see naked cowboy at Times Square.  New York is a whale of a town!)

Thanksgiving Pt I: Charlie and Santa Cruz

Paul and Bethany and family have moved to Santa Cruz, Cali, for what they hope is their LAST year of school: Science Communications at the granddaddy of them all.

 

Santa Cruz is widely regarded as an epicenter of hippie-ness.  This is not totally without merit.

But the campus is amazing: a student union building in the middle of a primeval forest of Redwoods, Cedars, and sasquatch habitat?

 

We had two reasons to visit at this time: Reason 1, the advent of Charlie Paul Gabrielsen, the university's newest fighting banana slug.

Charlie--or "Tarlie," as Alice says, is a bouncing baby bruiser, who came into the world at 9lbs, 10ozs.   The Oakland Raiders talent scout keeps calling for an appointment.

But he is a sweet-tempered kid who does all of the basic stuff that babies do: eat, sleep, coo, cuddle, and fill diapers.

 

 We also got to spend a quantity of quality time with Grace and Alice.

 

Grandpa got his hair done.

 While Grace was at school we had shapes practice.

 

When we had the chance, we went to the beach.

 

On a sunny day, we took Alice to see the sea lions.  She was quite captivated by them.

 

 

What does a sea lion say?  "Oort! Oooort!"

They lazed about in the sun and griped at each other a lot.  Some of them went for a swim; very large and furry banana slugs of the sea.

 

We later took Grace to see tide pools at Natural Bridges State Park

 

 

The tide was ebbing, so we got to see lots of wild life, friends, anenomes.

 Also, those rock stars of the fishy world.

 

 One night we had a sleepover at our motel.  We watched a Barbie movie, the Princess and the Pop Star!  And ate popcorn.

A watched pot may never boil, but it turns out that a watched bag of popcorn pops very satisfactorily.

There was another reason why we came to Santa Cruz, but we couldn't stay for Thanksgiving, so we had a thanksgiving meal a few days early.  I forgot to take a picture of it, but here is a very near facsimile thereof.

 We had to leave way too early, but had a fun time.  As a parting shot, here is Alice, always in motion, running in from her hair-tousling nap, saying,  "I coming!"

PS: There is a Thanksgiving Pt II: Weehawken still to come...