The City, Central Park, and THE TRAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Warning: Photo-Heavy*)

*It would be even more photo-heavy had I included ALL the pictures my children took with the camera.  Be thankful for small mercies, folks.

   

Our lanky Bird was a plump baby the last time we visited the Big Apple as a family, so it was high time for another trip.  John, as usual, orchestrated our daytrip without one false note.

It began bright and early with a 6:30 a.m. trip to the train station, where, within seconds, the train zoomed by, and Zeke began a love affair with the Biggest Machine Yet.

  

The whole day was unbelievably fun.  You know the adage, "Children keep you young?"  Well, it's true.  Their excitement added to and fueled mine until I felt like I was ready to burst.  The train ride alone was enough to make it reach fevered pitch, but that was only the beginning.

Children can ride on the LIRR for one dollar, which makes the adventure of riding the train about as economical as driving (at least when one drives a 12-passenger van), but as if that wasn't good enough, the conductor gave Zeke a children's ticket to get punched each time a conductor strolled through.  

Zeke was over the moon. (I've since laminated the thing.)

Once we reached Penn Station, we rode up two (two!) escalators to reach ground level and then walked to Central Park.

I climbed, too, while John stayed below with the baby, and I snapped a picture of the girls inside a rustic pavilion on a rocky outcrop.  A couple had just been married there, so we enjoyed the leftover rose petals.

This picture makes me laugh.  A kind woman put me on the spot and offered to take my picture with the children because she never has pictures of herself with her son.  I look like an awkward doofus, and Piper is clearly afraid the lady's going to run off with my camera.  And then there's Luci, who put her shirt on sideways that morning and happily wore it so until I noticed it halfway through Central Park.

Our main reason for walking through Central Park is found in this book Millie read when she was five.  She came to me and excitedly said, "There's a statue of BALTO in CENTRAL PARK in NEW YORK CITY!  We can go!"

Somehow, her nearly thirteen-year old self wasn't quite as thrilled as her five-year old self would have been, but we saw it!

John took this picture with his phone so Aidan won't be jealous that he's not in any Balto pictures.

I could spend the whole day just in Central Park, but we had a mission!

Boat pond.

Picnic/sandwiches/cheesesticks/cupcakes/diaper-changing (during which Zeke and Luci took a dismaying number of pictures with the camera).

Seeing Alice.

(brief interlude of a cute child Annika took pictures of by the fountain)

The six oldest children eaten by bears.

At this point, Millie was INSIDE the bear's belly, and Ezekiel's bare-bellied twin had settled in.

Pip requested this picture, then we were off to the races!