Trip to North Carolina and NYC

This year I tried to take turns taking the kids one at a time on trips with me. Since Squish went the month before to Boston, this time it was Ruby's turn. We went to North Carolina to see Jandy! Yan and Vicki had recently moved there as well so we got to see them too. We did a festival on Saturday but it didn't turn out to be as busy as we had hoped but that was okay. Jandy's new home was beautiful and she treated us royally as usual. Ruby also did some training on balloon twisting one day.
Here is a butterfly that I painted on a cute little girl.

The kids had such a blast hanging out as you can see!

And the older girls had a great time too! 

And then at the end of our trip the stars all aligned and it just so happened that we had about a 8 hour layover in my favorite place on earth NYC and not only that but on my Birthday of all days!! It was so amazingly awesome! So what Ruby wanted to do (see the Statue of Liberty) and what I wanted to do (Always Central Park--Always!!) were on complete opposite ends of Manhattan. But I decided to oblige because Ruby had recently commented to her teacher that she went to NY every year upon which her teacher naturally asked her if she had seen Lady Liberty and Ruby said NO!! (Oops) So, we made the trek! Here we are about to board the Staten Island Ferry.

Here's Lady Liberty in all her glory! (Well that's as close as we could get anyway)

Also, on the way down to lower Manhattan, we stopped to see the 911 memorial and the new tower. That was pretty cool.

And then we finally made it to my wonderful sanctuary, Central Park.  But first we walked through Riverside Park which is another park I have always wanted to go to (see You've Got Mail). It was as lovely as ever.