The Statue of Liberty

{August 7th} We left Washington DC this morning and our next hotel destination was in New Jersey.  Since we were only 20 minutes from Baltimore, we decided to detour and find Charm City Cakes.  If any of you used to watch Ace of Cakes, then you know right where we are.  The GPS said it was only 20 minutes from our hotel....ha!  Little did we know we would be driving and hitting EVERY single red light in the city of Balitmore.  After about 40 minutes, we finally found it, long enough to jump out of the car and take a picture.  That was it.  

We had planned to stop in Philedelphia to visit the Liberty Bell and such, but we decided to skip it and just get to the hotel.  We were glad we did.  It ended up really raining that afternoon.  Here we are waiting for dad to check in.  This was the BEST car seat arrangement ever.  Andie could help with Caleb and pass back things to the girls.  Thanks Andie!

That night we hung out in the hotel.  To say it was a bit stressful to find, we didn't dare venture out at night in Newark, NJ.  Fortunately, they had a fairly priced restaurant in the hotel and guess what we ordered....PIZZA!  Yep - that's 3 nights in a row, are you seeing a trend?  I'm assuming is was a New York style pizza, because it had a semi-thin crust and thin on the sauce - but it was seriously, one of the best pizzas I've ever had!  Delicious!  We also ordered a bowl of cream of broccoli soup and the kids and I slurped that right up!  It was so good.

{August 8, 2013}  The next morning, we headed from Liberty Park in NJ on a ferry boat to the Statue of Liberty!  It was AWESOME.  Above, is a picture of Andie and Adalyn and Ellis Island (below as well).

Here are a million other pictures for our family to remember this fun adventure.  When I was little, I would have never thought I would be able to see the statue of liberty.  Now, my kids have seen it, and the little ones won't remember it, but we have pictures to prove it!  So cool.  If you are ever in NYC, I highly recommend it!

It was so neat to see the city across the river.  If I didn't have 4 little ones, I would have been willing to venture in.

They all loved the ferry ride.

Lady Liberty.

We got to the island and they had a free listening tour.  Everyone got their own device, which was great.  They had a kids tour starting on channel 200 and adult tour on channel 400 (or something like that.)

I believe they said this was the original torch that is now in the bottom museum part.

We had tickets to take us up on the pedestal.  You could take stairs all the way up to the crown, but no, not with 4 little kids.  It was 200 stairs up to where we were standing and that was tall enough.  We took the elevator!

The Brooklyn Bridge

Looking down at the star level and then further down at the ground level.  We were HIGH up!

Shawn and Caleb and NYC

This was inside the museum.  A replica of Lady Liberty's face.

We walked around front and took a picture.  The girls loved listening to the tour!

Pretty neat, to have your family in front of the Statue of Liberty. 

Here we are on the boat ride home.  We had thought, if we had time, that we would ride over to battery park and walk up to the 9/11 memorial, but as you can see, the kids were done for the day.  My watch said it was 3:00pm (we got there at 10:30) so we were anxious too, to not be stuck in rush hour traffic in NYC.

There she is one our way back.

Well, we had about 4 hours to finish our trip and arrive at our final destination...Keene, NH.  We plugged it into the GPS and had a small tour of New York, crossing the longest tunnel ever from NJ to NY for only $18 (yeah, take lots of cash for toll roads)

Shawn tried to get a picture of this cool air force ship.

We ended up taking the 91 up North.  Shawn and his parents took the 95, but this road was SO pretty.  They couldn't have taken it with the moving truck, because the bridge clearance was only about 9ft.  I think that's what made the drive nice too - no semi's. 

We thought about all the pictures we should have taken.  Like the Welcome signs to each state.  We saw and pointed out Welcome to South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire.  It seems like there was one other - but you get the picture.  11 states in a 17 hour drive - not bad. 

Welcome to New Hampshire!

Here we are.  We made it!!  It was nice to get in, around 5:30 and still have some daylight.  It was also nice to walk into a house full of boxes - we didn't have to unload, which was great.  Thank you again, to all who did!

Since we had just got into town, we decided we would go out one more time to celebrate our new home.  We let the kids decide and they choose Pizza Hut.  That is pizza 4 nights in a row - all from different places and all delicious!  Good thing we all love pizza.

We were glad that we were able to travel safe and arrive safe.  We did have a small issue with the rain driving up to New Jeresy and then driving up to New Hampshire - the passenger floor was flooding - and we didn't know where it was coming from, but we now got it fixed (we think!)  We sure did love this family vacation and look forward to the many other places we can visit while we are here in the North East!  Happy Traveling!