Our new Graduate. Halley graduated on June 6th. The years have gone by so fast. Only yesterday she was a baby and now she is out on her own. Amazing.

We went to New York after Halley graduated from High School as sort-of a present to her. We took the trip from June 7th through the 10th. When we moved to DC everything we saw there seemed bigger than I thought it would be. In New York just the opposite was true. Everything I saw seemed smaller than I thought it would be. I thought the buildings would be taller, the Statue of Liberty bigger, etc.

This is time square in NYC. It was amazing to me to see all the taxi cabs. They use their horns to communicate to let each other know when they are merging into traffic or turning. There is a constant beep beeping going on and it is a courtesy it seems like. Every where else I've been, a horn means that someone behind you is impatient, mad, or having an attack of road rage.

The next picture is more of time square, up in the top portion of the picture you can see a billboard for Phantom of the Opera which we went to see. We also went to see Beauty and the Beast. I have to say I enjoyed Beauty and the Beast better. Phantom was good, but I think the movie on DVD is much better. I could see more Broadway shows . . . . . I quite liked the ones we saw.

Our first tour in NYC was the UN building. It was very interesting to see the different rooms where the different committees meet. Peace keeping, policy making, sanctions and enforcing all those aforementioned items. Each room was decorated by a different country and it was interesting to see how seating arrangements are shuffled around constantly so that everyone feels like they are being treated the same blah blah blah. To me this is all really idealistic and not realistic but more power to them . . . . . .

Grandma Stevens and McKay are standing by "the bull" in the financial district of NYC. And Halley, McKay, Chancy and Lincoln standing in China town on the street where we ate lunch one day.

It rained, and rained the first couple of days we were in NYC. It is quite amazing how thousands of umbrellas can be navigated down the streets and hardly a mishap. The Statue of Liberty was very interesting to visit. We had a guide who knew his stuff and was fun to listen to. We didn't realize you had to go on-line to get ticket to go inside to the top of the base. So far, that is as far as you can go. They are making changes to make the statue safer since 9/11.

We met King Kong at the top of the Empire State Building. Getting into this building was more like riding a Disneyland Ride than I thought it would be. Lines, lines, security checks and more lines. Can you go to New York and not go up the Empire State Building???? We stayed a while since it took a while to finally get there:)

Lincoln wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, so we took the subway under the River and walked back across it. When we were on another tour, our ferry went under the bridge and they told a story of how when it was built noone dared use it because they didn't think it was stable enough to hold any weight. If anyone used it and felt any vibrations they would stampede off it. Well, Barnum and Bailey Circus decided that they would take their elephants across the bridge and prove that it could hold up under a bunch of weight. It solved the problem. Not only is the bridge very busy with cars but has a pedestrian and cycling path above the the car traffic.

Here is Lincoln, McKay, Halley and Chancy on a tire swing in Central Park. We didn't venture very far into Central Park, but we did have fun and did see some pretty interestingly disgusting things while there, but overall it was a pretty neat place. People watching is always fun.

Everyone who knows us knows that we try to do things as cheaply as possible . . . . . so we stayed at this place in NYC. It is a military hotel and we stayed for 35 dollars a night for an adult and 10 dollars for our McKay. We had two rooms. Boys in one, girls in the other, 3 single beds in each. The bathroom was down one hall and the shower down the other. There was also a common room available on each floor with a TV and there were even a couple of pianos that Halley and I tried our hand at. We were on the 4th floor and there were NO elevators. Once you got to the top floor, you wanted to stay there. This was in a very good location . . . very close to the theatre district, UN building, Chrysler building and empire state building. We walked a lot.

We are waiting for our bus from NYC back to DC. We got to the street that the bus was picking us up 30 minutes early and decided to sit and wait instead of stand and wait. We got a feel for how homeless people must feel. People kept looking at us, and one man asked us if we were hungry and offered us the change he had in his pockets. I didn't know we looked that down and out!!! We should have put out a hat and collected a few bucks.

July 5th through the 8th, Lincoln, Chancy(16), McKay(10) and I went on a bike trip. The trip started in the pan handle of Maryland in Cumberland and proceeded down the C&O canal towards DC. The trip was 180 miles long and ended just before the DC beltway at Carder Rock. For the most part the trail is packed gravel, with some pavement as an added bonus along the way. It is a beautiful bike ride. Very hard, but we all had a feeling of accomplishment at the end. Lincoln and Chancy are already talking about next year, but McKay and I feel the ride is a little extreme. Love to ride, love shorter rides . . . . . . Ha!