Mama Mia! A Wee Bairn on the Way: The Big Apple (and one Big Pretzel)

Angus got his first REAL taste of the great American classic, the Road Trip. My brother and I spent MANY hours in the back of several quite uncomfortable cars growing up. I didn't so much recognize the discomfort at the time, only because I was not aware that in the future, there would be a revolt against making kids actually entertaining themselves on car trips. So, while my brother and I were forced to read, listen to "Phantom of the Opera" for the 96th time, or indulge in the ever-so-popular license plate by state game, kids today have it far cushier.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Christopher, Angus and I drove up to NY on Friday to meet my brother and his family. Well, Christopher drove and I, on the way up, entertained everyone with my singing and, on the way back, distracted Angus from melt-down. Because it was the weekend after Thanksgiving, we thought we might get lucky with traffic. And the way up was great - very little traffic and a smooth trip, including Angus sleeping for a solid 3.5 hours. The way back? Not so lovely, given that a fairly major snow and ice storm whipped through about an hour into our trip. So a normally 5-hour trip took more than 8, with poor Christopher driving the entire way. But, since he'd smartly had winter tires put on before we embarked on the trip, we were ok. I can't begin to count how many stalled cars and accidents we saw, though...brought back lovely memories of the drive back from Deep Creek Lake the previous Christmas (when I, yet again, avoided driving myself).

But the trip itself was great - NYC itself was of mixed success, simply because trying to navigate 5th Avenue on a Saturday morning near Christmas was, apparently, akin to wading upstream through a crowd of World Cup fans post-victory. We finally arrived at a café near Rockefeller Center, a bit worse for the wear, and Angus met his cousins, Nathan and Olivia, and my brother and his wife, of course. His only cousins on my side. Nathan and Angus got along quite well, though Olivia didn't seem to be as sure of this new face in her life. :) It was great to see them, and we walked around NY after indulging in some major slices of pizza. We did try to get into FAO Schwartz, but there was a longer line there than there was at Studio 54 in its heyday. We soldiered on in the cold, and Christopher and I warmed ourselves up with some large street vendor pretzels. Completely worth the overly-full feeling.

We then met again the following morning in Greenwich, where we were staying, for breakfast. The service at the restaurant left a little to be desired, but it was kid-friendly, and we were able to almost get a picture of the 7 of us as requested by Grandpa. Of course, we stayed with Christopher's brother and wife in Greenwich, which was great.

I somehow knew my brother would beat me to the punch blogging about our weekend. My excuse is that our trip back was longer ;).