Summer Vacation - Part III

Our third and last vacation of the summer was also spent here in Jersey. My birthday was last month and my parents and youngest brother Tanner flew out to spend a few days with us. We went to Six Flags, the beach, and the Statue of Liberty.

I forgot the camera on Six Flags day :(

We hit the beach on Saturday. I have never seen the beach so busy!! There were so many people and the only open parking lots were the $40 ones. We only stayed for about 3 1/2 hours and paid $40 to park. Crazy! Plus you have to pay to get on the beach. That's New Jersey for ya. I swear they charge you to breathe the air here - everything costs money and it's expensive. But we had a great time! The kids had a blast. We have been to the beach many times, but we have never buried the children in the sand before. We kind of thought they would freak out over being buried, especially Clark. But he's the one that loved it the most. He would come lay down in the sand by us and start burying himself and look at us like - "Come on cover me up!" I lost track of how many times we buried him! The only thing is that we couldn't get him to keep his mouth closed while we were covering him up. So he kept getting sand in his mouth. It was so funny! He would just lay there and chomp on it. We were laughing so hard! This video was of the second time he did it. The first time was funnier, but here's the video of it:


Craig and Tanner rode the waves a lot.

This is my parents re-enacting the opening sequence to the show Baywatch. :)
Lookin' good Mamma and Big Daddy-O!!

Mally

Grandma and Clark (he was exhausted!)

Beach day was a lot of fun!

We celebrated my 27th birthday. Would you look at the amount of heat and flames my candles put off! I know 27 is not very old, but that's quite a fire :)

We went to the Statue of Liberty. Wow, she's amazing. We actually visited Ellis Island first, which is where all of the immigrants coming into the United States had to go to gain their American citizenship status.

Walking to get on the ferry to Ellis Island. Chase is always a caretaker and looking our for his siblings. I love that he just took Clark's hand and showed him where to go.


All of us on the ferry. Someone was nice enough to take our picture, but they cut Mallory's head off.


My mom and the Manhattan skyline.


The building on Ellis Island where the immigrants were screened for admittance into America.


I was very impressed with the tour. It's crazy what those people had to go through to get here - being separated from their families, health screenings, language barriers, sitting on a ship in the Hudson River for days just waiting their turn to get off. Some were denied admittance into the country and were sent back to their native land while other family members stayed and made a new life for themselves in America. It was a little saddening to hear some of the stories.

Ellis Island and Liberty Island are next to each other. We sailed from Ellis Island over to Liberty Island where the statue is.


Our Lady Liberty.

She is actually hollowed out on the inside - which I did not realize. She has a large metal frame that goes straight up with support beams. And the actual "Lady" is a mold that was poured and then placed over the support frame. She is made of copper and when it rains the greenish colored copper runs down the side of the pedestal she sits on top of. I also didn't realize just how big she really is. The statue is amazing! If you are ever in the NY area - don't miss this!!

It was a hot day and while we were waiting for the ferry to come pick us up and take us back to Jersey, we decided to get a couple of ice creams. Bad idea. They melted before we could eat them and ice cream was ALL OVER the decking! Everyone was staring at us because we had made such a mess! I'm a firm believer in cleaning up after myself - and after my children, but there was nothing we could do but leave the mess there. Oh well. . . .

I think we squeezed it all in this summer! It was a lot of fun and we had a lot of good memories made with our families!