New York New York (week 451)

The annual trip to Long Island, New York finally arrived this past week and we were ready to go.  For the first time, we took the daytime flight out of LAX so the night before we were absolutely crazed with excitement about packing our bags and getting our ducks in a row for the 2-week trip (August 2-14)!  Last year, Grandma Dubby bought us matching suitcase sets, so we loaded up our red and blue suite cases and carry on bags, and put all our most important belongings (mainly the iPads) into the car and headed out.

For all the legs of the trip, and the roughly 10 hour that it took to get door-to-door from Long Beach to Long Island, it was an easy trip and we were very good the entire time (mainly because of the iPads).  When we hit the ground on the other end, the iPads disappeared for two weeks and Grandpa Andy was waiting for us at the JFK baggage claim.

Our first few days were filled with boating, swimming, and relaxing with our cousins at Grandma Dubby's. We had lots of bagels, coffee, cake, and pizza--everything that we had been waiting for since we left Long Island last year!  Because daddy took more time off this year (a full two weeks), we also had more time to visit with more people and more places on the East Coast.  Being older now, we have a lot better idea of what we want to do and many memories to pull from.

Our cousins are also a lot bigger now! Cousins Stephen and Nathan are huge now, and we can all navigate the pool, the house, and the yard a lot better without adults (aside from cousin Nathan) on top of us every minute of the day.  Aside from asking my dad to pitch whiffle balls to me constantly, everyone is able to relax a lot more than in past years and we have also been able to expand the things that we can do.  I even cooked breakfast (pancakes) for everyone on one of the days and Grandma Dubby was very impressed.  While I was still super excited to see the Yankees and Nationals play, this was the first week that I started to let go of my own baseball season, which, I was still mourning after our trip to the Pony World Series had been cut short in Moreno Valley and I had to hang up the cleats.