Sammy and I went to NYC to visit my brother Doug, and his fiance Mary over the weekend. Sammy finally got to ride a “big fat bus” (something he’d been talking about for months) and get his hair cut at a salon! He also enjoyed sushi with Mary and Doug’s friend Tricia, and cupcakes afterwards from the famous Magnolia bakery in their neighborhood. We were so wiped out after all the adventures that we both crashed hard last night. Sam JUST woke up (it’s after 9am) and I got 10 hrs of sleep. Last night we also celebrated Richie and Diane’s 26 years of marriage with a wonderful dessert spread prepared by Jen. I haven’t offloaded those pictures yet, but you can find all the photos of our time on Long Island and NYC through yesterday afternoon by clicking on the shot above. Gail and Bill are finally back from Alabama (Gail’s father passed away a week ago) and we’re going to see them later this morning. We’ll be staying at their house in Amityville through the end of the week. Sammy is excited to see his Nana and PopPop, and they are very excited to see him!

Here’s Sam cheering Stacie on at her volleyball game (which they won!). We also picked out a pumpkin this morning and some really wild colored gourds for the front stoop. It was fun to do some fall things and have the air be appropriately warm and crisp 🙂 Tonight we had awesome pizza for dinner and Sam had about three different desserts I think. He had grass on his forehead (from romping on the front lawn with Stacie, learning how to do sprawls and other cool moves) and frosting all over his chin. Happiness! He’s having a blast playing monkey with cousin Richie and soaking up all the attention from Aunt Diane and Uncle Cool. Jen and Stacie lavish lots of loving on the little guy. He is lucky! We are enjoying ourselves, and looking forward to seeing Gail and Bill soon.

Dad took us to a remote “tank farm” at Ft. Dix today where they repair tanks used in training. Above is 1Lt Johnston who graciously gave us a tour of Abrams tanks, tank recovery vehicles, personnel carriers and humvees.

We had an impromptu visit from Doug and Mary this afternoon! I thought they were traveling this weekend, but it turned out they were both in the City (a rarity these days) and were interested in coming down for a visit to the ‘country’.

We drove 30 min north to Princeton today to see my old home and high school (we moved there just before my 11th grade). Our old house seems massive compared to my recollection, and the town of Princeton was gorgeous. The weather was equally nice – warm, dry, and leaves falling.

(Click on the picture above for photos from our trip so far.) Sammy and I checked out the Historic Smithville Park today. After getting a decent rest, we were ready for some adventure. A friend of Dad and Marilou’s is in charge of all the Burlington County parks. They certainly did a nice job with this one. We ran about 5K on a series of woodland trails past a stream and around a small lake. We found some leaves turning yellow – Sam picked up a maple leaf and said “I found a star!”

It is always weird losing 6 hrs of your day! I was wondering how tough it would be to adjust to east coast time. My philosophy is don’t start shifting bedtime in advance, just exhaust yourself on the day of travel and you’ll wind up feeling tired at the right time the next day.

We made it! We’re in the same time zone as many of our family and friends! No mental math before calling 🙂 Here’s the story of our amazing adventure flying to NJ on a military plane. We had such a great time…

Sammy and I hope to catch a KC-10 to McGuire AFB tomorrow morning. We’ll be flying 12 hrs from Hawaii to NJ. I have never spent more than 6 hrs in a plane.