This is when I hate the Internet. There’s no way to reach out and hug them, to give them a baby kitten or sit in their kitchen making a cup of tea while we cry together, to comfort them with anything besides electronic words.

Chuck and Sylvia: you are in our prayers. Someday we’ll meet– if not in this world, then in the next one to come. We’ll hug and laugh and our two kitties will run around at our feet together at last.

Maybe you’d go visit Chuck’s blog, Secondary Roads, and give Chuck and Sylvia a virtual hug. We love you guys.

We’re continuing our whirlwind tour of Everything You Wanted to Know About Alexander Hamilton And Then Some. My eldest daughter is a Hamilton FREAK (I say she should write some books and make some millions or something!) and my youngest daughter likes to “hang” with us. The boys are now wanting to go to NYC, too, so I’ll probably be returning a couple of times this year, with them.

I love NYC; I lived there for over a year as a young student. It’s so active, with so much to see and do. The place OOZES history. Some folks go for the shopping. Others go for the shows. I go for the scenery, the architecture, the history. It’s a great place.

The down side is we have to get up at 4am to arrive in NYC at 9:30. And then we have to leave about 5pm to get home about 10pm. Mmmmm.

Which reminds me….. good night!

P.S. If you want to get a “play by play” feed of all the action, please “Like” my Facebook page for my blog NewYorkTraveler.net. I’ll post photos and interesting anecdotes and tidbits there throughout our journey.

GAH!!!!

Here– I found a video of “You Are My Cheeseburger.” Listen to this and you’ll know what I mean!

*snort* Now that I have totally ruined your day……

So, this morning, the kids were “reminiscing” about a particularly funny moment in the Veggie Tales movie Jonah. In the movie, there’s a caterpillar who hails from the land of Arabs (I think so, anyway…. maybe he’s Indian?) and he talks with an Arabic lilt. His name was Kahlil. Kahlil the Caterpillar. In a “Veggie Tales” movie. Uh huh. Well, anyway, they were remembering one particular scene where Kahlil is reciting his “self-help” audio cassettes (I told you Veggie Tales is weird), and my daughter repeated the caterpillar’s voice perfectly.

The kids pealed with laughter, and said, “Remember that part, Mom?” They all stopped laughing and looked at me when I said I didn’t see Jonah.

“Yes, you did!” they objected.

“No, I only saw a few scenes when I was passing through the room, I never saw the entire movie. And I have no intention of seeing it, either.”

They stared at me, aghast at this new revelation. Since they are all older now, I figured it was best they knew the truth:

“Kids, I never liked the Veggies Tales movies! I only tolerated them because you guys liked them.”

Which led to a new conversation about vegetables and movies and Arab accents. My son, the witty kid that he is, interjected:

“Well, if Veggie Tales ever decides to make another Arabic vegetable character, I know what they should name him!”

“What?” we all replied with baited breath.

“Barach Ali!”

:blink:

…wait for it….

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A minute or two later, I heard a faint “SHHHHHHH” sound in the kitchen.

Oops.

The spaghetti slid out of the box, onto the floor. Yes, my house is THAT crooked. It’s *only* 160 years old, thank you.

So the noodles were all over the floor. I picked most of them up. Livvy, sensing unusual sounds (that is, me grunting from crawling all over the floor), raced into the kitchen, and stopped dead in her tracks.

WHAT IS THIS MONSTROSITY ALL OVER THE FLOOR??? You could almost hear her think. WHAT COULD THEY BE?!

Toys, of course!

Hey. Over here, Sherlock.

She had fun and entertained me for a good three minutes.

Game over. Back to naps.

Stuffed behind a HUGE display and assortment of stupid Halloween crap (I hate Halloween), the Thanksgiving stuff barely gets any notice. But I saw these turkey hats and nearly keeled over with laughter. The hats play “Turkey in the Straw.”

WHAT KIND of looney family would wear a TURKEY HAT?!?!?

Oh yeah. Ha. I forgot.

Maybe we’ll start a new trend.

Remember when comedy was, uh…. FAMILY FRIENDLY? What the heck ever happened? My online pal Chuck was recently lamenting the state of the entertainment culture, and how heartily I agree. It does seem that movies and music and comedy is geared toward the immature, adolescent male. (No offense to godly adolescents!). It’s disgusting.

Well, I’m happy to say that I HAVE found some very good stuff on the Internet. The kids and I LOVE Michael, Jr., and Brad Stine, and John Gray. And I just recently found out that the American Family Insurance has a whole series of comedians who are hilarious AND they promote family values, like spousal faithfulness, reverence, respect and mocking death metal rock music, lol. One of my favorite videos from the AmFam video site is Rodney Perry’s skit “Poppin’.” He is SO COOL!!! I love how he gets the audience participation. The skit reminds me a little of John Gray, who also wears a suit and can dance with absolute class. Perry’s little schpeel rings back fond memories of school cafeteria times in the 1980s, yes…. You can check out the videos by various comedians at the Stand Up For Family website.

Maybe if we all rise up to support such efforts by various companies and individuals who are promoting family values we can see change in this country. Lord knows, we need it. I am SICK of adolescent “humor,” how about you?

Olana is beautiful. It was the home of the late Frederick Church, one of my favorite painters. He was an apprentice of Thomas Cole, my most favorite painter ever. These painters were part of the Hudson River School, a group of artists that created a distinctive American romantic art movement called Luminism. I studied them in art school, and it was a real treat to see Church’s home and some of his paintings.

This is his home. It’s designed in Persian architectural style. After traveling through the Middle East, Church and his wife were smitten with the colorful designs of Persian and Arabic architecture. I love it.

At the top of the hill, the views were exquisite. This is the Rip Van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson River. We had to cross it to get to Olana. The view from the bridge was well worth the $1 toll charge.

I’ll have more photos and stuff about our trip on my travel blogs. We encountered some really quirky things in Catskill, NY, and had a blast! Stay tuned…. :D

We got to visit Patrick Henry’s home, Red Hill! We got to see the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk. And we got to see the Atlantic Ocean at Virginia Beach.

Oh my word, that was gorgeous. Walking along the beach, squishing my toes into the wet sand as the ocean waters washed over my feet was WONDERFUL. It was my favorite part of the visit.

We also drove through Roanoke and feasted on views of the glorious Appalachian Mountain Range.

And during one particularly stormy drive, we spotted a really freaky side-spinning funnel cloud in the sky. What do you think of this?

It’s a little blurry– taken on the road with my iPhone. But it was definitely some kind of twisting cloud, formed during a thunderstorm outside of Richmond, Virginia.

So we’re pooped. It’ll take me all week to get back to the normal humdrum of life and hectic pace at work… but I’m so glad I went. We are already hoping to go again soon!