We're packing up this morning in Syracuse, NY to begin the long drive home--something like 2200 miles if we go straight there, but it will be closer to 2500 for us.  So man, am I glad that we had both Emma and Adam get their drivers licenses before we headed out--the fact that they can both drive now has really been a relief for me. 

So a few highlights of the trip that come to mind so far:
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Uncle Jeff's house, July 17-18

We went to our uncle's house in Buffalo yesterday. Adam was over the top-ly excited to ride in his boat and when they informed him that they also had a knee-board he couldn't stop thinking of alternative options to what we were doing that included the boat. Instead, we went swimming in the pool at the launch club and ate Bocce's for the second time this trip. Only the second time, which is pretty impressive.
Wednesday morning I was woken up much much too early by Adam, jumping on the air mattress. Of course, that made me want to get up even more than I had wanted to before he attacked me. We took our time trying every single type of jam/jelly that we sent them for Christmas a few years ago, and then (FINALLY!) we set out. Aunt Sue showed us how to knee-board, and then Dad, Adam, and I took turns flopping against the hard board on our bellies and having our arms ripped out of their sockets. Dad wasn't even laughing as he was bombarded with water from the wake. We took a quick turn down the Erie canal, and then we headed back home for lunch of re-heated pizza or hotdogs. We went to the pool again, and then came home and ate psketti and meatballs for dinner. Adam watched The Middle and Malcolm in the Middle while I watched My Cousin Vinnie with Grampa and Dad, and then we all went to bed. This morning we woke up and re-packed our things, forgetting my irreplaceable rice-bag pillow, of course; which we didn't find out until we were well on our way. Lunch at Ted's Hotdogs and Sundae's at Antoinettes, and then home again, home again. (:.
Miss you, mom.

Okay... I'm sorry I should write more.

DC is beautiful. Much much cleaner than NYC. My shoes are still black from walking around all these three cities, but I wasn't stupid enough to wear whit shoes this time, thank goodness. We're staying with one of my dad's best friends from a while ago. They like good food, which was not something that we were too sad about. We went to the Lincoln memorial, the holocaust museum, the native American museum, the hirshorn museum, the national gallery, the Vietnam memorial, and the big obelisk thingy. Not in that order, exactly. Afterwards we stopped inside a building to wait for her so that we could go out for dinner. I the half an hour that we were inside the worst rain storm I've been in for a long long time came upon us. We went to a delicious Ethiopian restaurant, where you eat all the food with your hands and this spongy kind of pita sort of sour-doughy thin bread. Yum. We swim in the pool every day, and the temperature of the water is almost ninety or eighty-five degrees!

New York and Boston

I'm in New York City, in an apartment on the seventeenth floor of a building looking out over the Bronx. It's a beautiful view of four or five different buildings to the main island, and thank goodness it's the nice part of the Bronx.
Today we went to the Breakers, a house you wish you could live in: solid alabaster columns, gold-leafed floors and ceilings and walls and bathtubs and anything else you can possibly imagine, grand staircases specially designed so that ladies gliding down them would not trip on the hems of their ballgowns imported from Paris, platinum plated walls so that they wouldn't fade, etc. etc. etc. Oh! And secret passageways and views of some of the best surfing around. Sounds cool? Yep.
Day before that, Friday, we had tons of fun in Boston. We woke up and walked around Harvard, including gaining admittance to the Museum to see a Gutenberg bible that's worth more than the mortgage on your house, the first printing shop that's now a delicious restaurant, and finally the swan boats. After checking on times for Tea at the Ritz (that is no longer the Ritz, although the new hotel is just as high-end -- you walk in and the first thing you see is a Prada outlet), we headed to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. For those of you who aren't art freekos, that is the place where something like $50 million (
or was it $500 million?) dollars worth of paintings were stolen in one night by two people who had disguised themselves as cops (more info: The Gardner Heist book, by some guy who doesn't look that good in his profile photo on the back cover). After that, a quick break at the park across the road while eating hummus and watching some guy who had strung a rope between two trees and was doing handstands and jumping up and down on the rope, before we headed to see the MFA. The MFA is humongolicious. We spent three hours there looking at modern, American, European, etc., art and only made it through a third of the museum. We went to eat at the Border Cafe, and then went back for bed. Or at least I did. Dad didn't end up going to sleep until around three o'clock in the morning.
And no, we didn't get in any life-threatening car crashes today on our way. Why do you ask?
Did I write the day before? I can't remember.
The day before we did the Italian section of town, and then wandered around there. We also saw the Old North chapel (one if by land, two if by sea... thank you granny Ruth) and Paul Revere's house where he actually lived. At the MFA we saw a bunch of his and his father's silverwork, and it was pretty cool.

(:!