Visits to See Family and a Happy New Year

"Santa, are you in here?"

Happy New Year to all!!  We have been spending these Christmas holiday week with our families since our big move from selling our New England home.  These past two weeks have basically been a whirl-wind of bouncing around from house to house, packing and unpacking, and late nights catching up and talking about life with family and friends.  Crazy to think that this is the first quiet time I have gotten since we've sold our house! How have your holidays been?  I hope they were filled with food and good company like ours was!

Mystic, CT Seaport

Our first out-of-state travels started near Mystic, CT.  It was fun attending the luminary lights in the evening in the coastal town.  The most entertaining for our little Keiki was hearing "Christmas carols" performed by a group of pirates.  They were dressed in amazing wool costumes, right out of The Pirates of the Caribbean and their songs were altered for a pirate theme. Toy store, window shopping, watching the water under the bridge, and seeing all the ship masts lit-up with Christmas lights were also super fun.

There are two casinos in the western part of the state of Connecticut, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.  We are not fans of the gambling/smoking parts that casinos have to offer, but anyone who has been to them knows that it's only a small part of what's available.  Foxwoods is huge, I mean HUGE!  It now includes a Tanger Outlet mall so it's fun to visit because it's almost circular so you can just walk around, and around, and around as you shop, or in our case: check out the Christmas decorations.  We also visited Mohegan Sun because there is a life-sized gingerbread house that you can walk into.  No joke!  It's all made of baked cookies made to look like bricks and icing, and the life-sized cookie Nutcrackers pretty much as tall as me!  Over the past few years, it's become a tradition to take pictures with the gingerbread house each year for Christmas time.

George Washington Bridge
NYC in fog

Traveling to New Jersey to see my parents was our next state we visited.  They actually live pretty close to Pennsylvania so most of the activities we did were there.  One of the biggest things we have noticed is different in the states that any of our parents live in scattered over the east coast, is the amount of space and breathing room there is when compared to our "old home" state of Massachusetts.  When driving around, most roads pass lots of farm or open land and traffic is nowhere near as bad as what you would find in MA.  And people talk slower and greet each other at gas stations and grocery stores with that hometown feel.  We are starting to realize just how urban our "suburban" area was.  Even though we have only traveled less than 300miles south total, it really is eye opening the lack of 'Competing-with-the-Joneses' and almost slower pace then in the Boston area.    Not to mention how much slower paced it becomes if we travel even further south to see other family.    But I could write an entire other post on this subject so I'll save it for another time.

Playhouse on the Delaware River

Stranger things have
happened in New Hope

In PA, we went to the Bucks County Children's Museum and our two-year old loved it!  I haven't been back to New Hope, PA in probably 16 years and although the artistic town has grown tremendously, it still has a few of the eccentric shops that I grew-up loving.  The town also has an old locomotive train that runs public train rides every hour which was fun to watch too.

The Children's Museum has a flat-rate of $8 per person (children and seniors included) and is an interactive and educational environment for children.  I would say the best age range for the museum was definitely from tiny tots who can walk up to school age.  It was perfect for Keiki to explore the different stations and interact with the other children, who I was impressed they all played very nicely together.  The hands-on learning experiences included weather, archeological digs, light and sound, and exploration play for areas build like a hospital, post office, or train station.  It was a blast!!

Back in NJ we visited Northlandz one morning which boasts the world's largest model railroad and I now think I believe them!  It could easily take you 3-4 hours to walk through and take it all in.  There was up to 100 trains traveling more then 8 miles of track and 40ft bridges spanning huge canyons all inside a twisting and winding trip through what I suspect was an old theatre.  And not only was there trains, but over 200 doll collection and art, antiques, and organs - that the ticket collector played as a concert for folks visiting.  And as if that wasn't enough, there was a small train ride that you could go on outside too.  I'm not a train enthusiast by any means but this place was memorizing even for adults. But my favorite part was that throughout the place, there was a step-up and handle to hold for our two-year-old to see on her own so I didn't have to lift her up the whole time. She doesn't like strollers, but I would still recommend it for others who visit because you go through so much only to come to a sign that reads, "You are now 25% through the museum" and you are shocked thinking you will need to pick up the pace if you'll ever get your toddler through the whole place.  Yes, it's that huge!

So overall it was a very entertaining and relaxing time spent with immediate family these past two weeks but now we are off again to our first rental house for January of 2016.  It is a beach house on the central Connecticut coast!  First up is collecting all our forwarded mail so we can open our Christmas cards from friends and family and hang them in our new place so it feels more like home.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!