five months *almost

wow I cannot believe how time has flown by! Walter is growing up so fast. I am so excited for the next stage but at the same time I miss the cute stages he has been in and is in now. Can you believe this was my cute cuddly baby boy just five months ago?

Well this is what we have been up to lately....

The Museum of Natural History. You will notice that I am standing in front of the largest meteorite on display in the whole world. My favorite part of the day was going to the rock exhibit...that's where the diamonds and jewels were!!! We also saw some glow in the dark rocks it was pretty cool! 

 After the Chenns left New York, Seth and I went on our first adventure by ourselves to the 9/11 memorial. It was really amazing to see the pools and the new building that is going up. Unfortunately, it was super hot that day so all I wanted to do was go into the air conditioned museum....which was closed :( So we did not stay for too long but we stayed until we found the tree in the following picture.

 This is called the "survivor tree" it was originally on the top of one of the twin towers and they found it in the rubble and it now sits right next to the empty holes of where the twin towers once stood.

 Right after the memorial, we were in the mood for some chocolate at Max Brenners!! So we walked to the subway got out at the stop we thought it was at, walked down a few blocks, realized we were lost so we called Doreen. She told me two addresses and I told her to give me one of them so we backtracked then went up a few blocks and over four long blocks and realized we were lost again. So we called Theresa and luckily she was able to give us the address that I told Doreen not to give me (haha) After a forty minute detour in the 90+ weather we were tired and sweaty so of course warm chocolate did not sound very good...nothing really sounded good except water. so we ordered lots of water. After we had two glasses of water and had been sitting in the air conditioned room for twenty minutes we were ready for the chocolate. We ordered a chocolate fondue, a special chocolate shake, and some frozen hot chocolate (we love chocolate!!) You cannot tell very well from this picture but in the background they had jars lining the walls full of CHOCOLATE!! To be quite honest I was a little disappointed, I was expecting willy wonka...with treats that would be so sublime we would feel like we were in a magically land :) The only thing that made us feel like we were at the doors of the willy wonka factory was the shake. It was delicious we wish we had only ordered that and four times as much. Sadly drinks here in New York cost almost as much as getting small meal. Needless to say we enjoyed our night out. I think Walter liked it to especially when dad let him grab the fondue stick and almost stab himself.

On one of our Sundays here we decided to go up to the Sun Terrace here at the apartment it has an amazing view! We went up for the sunset, it was great to get out and see the city from a higher vantage point.

The 4th of July!! Seth had work off and the Bronx zoo had a suggested donation day on that day so we made the long trip up to the Bronx and Seth got to see many amazing things for the first time (this was my second time to the zoo). Seth did not know that this animal existed. if you can tell there is an Okupi in the background. pretty sweet! 

 This is daddy and Walter in front of two grizzly bears (that are playing in a pond of water to the right of them) and yes, Walter is asleep in this picture

 This is Walter on his first carousel ride EVER! He loved it, or he loved the gold shiny pole in front of him. This carousel was a bug themed carousel so he is sitting on a preying mantis.

 Later we toured Asia and got this sweet picture with a jaguar napping in the background. The Bronx Zoo is really amazing! It sits in a scary part of town but is truly spectacular in how much space they give their animals and the beautiful scenery they put their animals in as well.  This was the same area where we saw BATS in an open exhibit (meaning they could swoop down and attack us if they wanted, luckily they didn't want to)

This picture was taken at the station right before we got on the train to take us back to Manhattan. A lot of the Bronx stations had these beautiful stained glass windows, I thought they were amazing what a cool little treasure to be found amongst all the spray painted buildings.

 Later that night I made a very patriotic fruit pizza. Very delicious!

 We went up to our Sun terrace to watch some fireworks. There were fireworks going off all around the island. We were hoping to see THE new york fireworks but they were too far away so we went back to our apartment and watched them on TV. They were just as small as they were from our sun terrace so we didn't feel like we missed out on them.

 We have had a blast so far in New York there is so much to do and to see. I wish I had more energy to go out  and be outside all day to see things but it is so hot and Walter is a pretty heavy guy so we enjoy an occasionally site seeing trip but mostly short walks around the area. luckily there is a ton of stuff to do just right around here.