Easter in the Woods

Kevin and I came close to completely screwing up Easter.  Luckily, it turned out only slightly disappointing.

I thought since it was a holiday weekend and we wouldn't be spending it with family, that it might be a great opportunity to get out of town.  We really loved our time up north in Columbia County over New Year's and so I hit up Airbnb again, in search of another awesome cabin in the woods.  Here's where I got it right.

Photo credit House & Garden - yes, it was featured in the magazine.

I scored this amazing glass cabin in the woods.  It felt like we were staying inside a magazine.  But before we got there, we had to actually get there.

It was our first trip in Moby.  You might remember Moby, the 22 year-old VW campervan we bought last month?  It was still too cold to try to camp out in him, so instead we stayed in this museum piece of a house and drove old Moby 2.5 hours north of Manhattan.  It was a series of getting-to-know each other mishaps, as I like to say.  First, Moby's battery was dead when Kevin went to pick him up.  Must tell parking attendant that unlike the Porsche Cayennes he's used to parking, our little Moby won't turn off his lights when you turn off the key.  Once he got Moby jumped we hit the road.  And then we needed gas.  But guess what?  None of our keys worked to get the gas cap off.  After a call to the poor old guy who sold us Moby (and who probably had a heart attack when he saw my number pop up on his phone), the problem was solved and we were back on the road.  Our little glass cabin in the woods was perched high up on a hillside, up a very steep road filled with mud from the rains.  I hit the gas as hard as I could and relied on momentum to finally get us up the long driveway, only skidding once or twice.  It wasn't until we were up at the top and I threw old Moby into Park that I realized he doesn't have an emergency brake.  No problem, Kevin rummaged around in the dark and found a couple pieces of firewood and wedged them behind Moby's rear tires.  I cranked the tires to the side as hard as I could, knowing full well how to park on hills, being the good San Franciscan that I am.

Saturday was actually, really nice.  We explored the area of Hillsdale and found our favorite new restaurant, Crossroads (ate there three times that weekend), spent a couple hours in Rodger's Book Barn (literally, a barn in the middle of nowhere with thousands of used books for sale), checked out the nearby town of Great Barrington in Massachusetts, and found several farms with amazing farm stores filled with the freshest produce and dairy.  While we were eating our feast that night the kids proclaimed our salad to be the best salad they had ever tasted.  Maybe we've been in the city too long but the vegetables really were the best I had ever tasted.

 

Sunday morning was Easter and luckily, the Easter Bunny knew where to find us.  There were eggs all over the cabin and outside in the woods.  It's really pretty amazing he was able to do such a good job hiding them in the pitch dark after many several a couple glasses of wine.

Kevin was feeling a little guilty before we left that not only were we not spending Easter with any family for the first time, but that we wouldn't at least be in the city where we could check out the Easter parade or participate in some egg hunts.  So he took it upon himself to find an egg hunt in the area.  He found what sounded to the kids like heaven - pony rides, egg hunt, and face painting on a nearby farm, starting at 11.  At 11 on the dot we pulled up to said farm and not a soul was in sight.  Maybe we're the first to arrive, he assured the kids.  After snooping around a bit, a woman came out and informed up the egg hunt was on Saturday.  We were 24 hours late.  But kindly, she offered to give the kids a tour of the farm anyway and let them pet the bunnies.

 Holden, being the Skaggs Family optimist, said, "Wow, we're SO lucky!  If we had come yesterday instead of today for the egg hunt we wouldn't have been able to pet the bunnies as long because there would have been so many other kids!"

Note to self: be more like Holden.

Our Cosmic Address

When Tuesday night rolled around I was stressed.  And tired.  And really didn't want to go out.  But we had tickets to another show at the planetarium and the kids and Kevin didn't want to miss it.  So I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and dragged myself the half mile down to the American Museum of Natural History.

And I'm so glad I did.

Photo credit: AMNH

Two witty, dry-humored astronomers talked us through our place in the universe at a show called Our Cosmic Address.  I should tell you that for many years as I was growing up I was sure I'd work in astronomy.  I had actually read Issac Asmiov (thanks, Dad) and just loved anything having to do with space.  And then I don't know what happened, probably puberty and teenagehood, and I drifted away from my passion.  So I'm loving the fact that both of my kids are now equally enthralled by all things beyond our planet because it means that I get to reengage my passion as well.  I bet a lot of us feel that way about having children.

And sitting in the reclining chair, looking up at the universe (and most of the images we were seeing were in real time, from real satellites, which is just too cool), I immediately felt all of the stress of the week (who am I kidding?  The entire winter) just melt away.  As we were flying from the sun, through each planet, off past Pluto, beyond our solar system and even the Milky Way, I remembered how unimportant and insignificant all of my worries are.  It was incredibly liberating.

Today the temperatures stayed above 60 degrees all day.  You'd think it was mid-summer.  Central Park was packed, people were walking around in flip-flops (which is frankly, just gross in the city).  The kids and I blew off our regularly scheduled schoolwork this morning and headed to our "secret garden" a couple blocks away.  Ella brought her knitting and we spent a couple glorious hours getting our fill of Vitamin D.  Holden's been studying about the United Nations in his Social Studies lessons lately so I brought the autobiography of Malala Yousafzai who recently spoke at the UN, to read aloud to the kids. 

I'm not sure what Ella's headscarf is about.  I didn't ask.  Maybe she was channeling Malala.

Highlights Reel

Oops, I did it again.  I forgot to post at the end of last week.  And because this is New York City and you know that we packed a lot into the last seven days, I will try to avoid an annoyingly long post and just give you the highlights reel.

Highlight #1: Holden getting his first pair of lace-up shoes and learning to tie his shoes (yes, I know he's almost eight years old but I've been purposely avoiding having to add ten more minutes onto our leave-the-house time).

 

Highlight #2: Going on a field trip with some homeschoolers to see Flamenco dancing (and guitar and singing).  It was another educational experience put on by Community Works.  They were not just performing but teaching the kids about the history of the dance and the Spanish culture.

 

Highlight #3: Our Friday night at The Met.  The kids and I arrived a couple hours early and found an artwork that Holden's homeschool curriculum had him study this week as part of his art history.  As I've mentioned before, we generally skip art history since we spend so much time in museums but this week's artwork is right over at The Met so we decided to see the real thing - The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai.  And then Kevin and I decided to join the kids this week during their mythology class.  We had a great time in the Oceanic Art galleries.

Highlight #4: Traveling all the way to the top of The Bronx to see our good friend Maeve perform in the play Annie and then enjoying a lovely dinner with her family.

Highlight #5: Spending the entire day on Sunday in Central Park.  We spent the morning volunteering for the Central Park Conservancy, helping to spread mulch.  It was such a beautiful day that we decided to spend the rest of our day inside the park, eating lunch at Sheep Meadow, visiting Betty and Veronica, the new Grizzly bears at the Central Park Zoo, and discovering new playgrounds and areas of the park we had yet to see.

While enjoying our ramen dinner that night, I pulled out my phone and discovered that we had walked a whopping EIGHT AND A HALF MILES that day!  Believe me when I tell you that we all slept like babies last night.

Mad (Computer) Scientists, Mad Men

I've been on the mailing list of this really cool non-profit for a while now.  And finally the stars aligned so that we could make it to one of their events.

CoderDojo is a volunteer run organization that holds events to teach children web, game, and app development - all for free.  To translate that for my mom, that means that they teach the kids computer programming so that they can create their own games, web pages, and applications for an iPad or smart phone. 

 
For three hours the kids could move around between tables that were teaching Scratch, HTML and web page design, or circuitry.  Each table had 2-3 mentor volunteers to help them.  The kids have already been learning the computer language Scratch in a weekly class they take on Mondays, so they focused their time on the other tables.  Holden spent most of his time at the circuitry table using Little Bits to create electronic circuits.  He loved them and learned a lot about electronics and has been begging for a set but they're not cheap so I think we're going to have to add those to a wishlist for the grandparents.

 

Ella spent most of her time at the HTML table learning the basics of programming a website.  I think that will be their next computer class after they finish up with Scratch.  This was a nice exposure to it though, and a great way to figure out for free if they're interested in learning more.

 

But the kids weren't the only ones who enjoyed themselves this weekend.  Saturday night we left the kids with the babysitter and met some friends on a rooftop bar before saying our farewells to the cast of Mad Men.  If you're a fan, then you know that Mad Men comes to an end this year.  And since New York City is basically a character in the TV show, it is fitting that they are starting off their farewell tour right here in the Big Apple.  The Museum of the Moving Image is even exhibiting the iconic sets from the show.  I'm sure we'll make it to that soon.

 

In the meantime, we had some pretty sweet seats at the Film Society in Lincoln Center to hear the creator Matthew Weiner, and actors (Jon Hamm, January Jones, Christina Hendricks and John Slattery) talk about their favorite parts of the show, give us some backstage gossip, and see clips that each of them chose to discuss.

And since we had a sitter, we took the long way home, stopping for cocktails in true Mad Men style.

First Day of Spring?

When we moved to New York two years ago I hadn't anticipated how much our lives would now revolve around the weather.  My weather app is the first thing I check each morning.  I know down to the hour when to expect precipitation of any kind.  I now have conversations with other moms about different ways to pack up our families' clothes and rotate our closets for the next season.  Our day's plans, our wardrobe, our mindset all center on the status of the skies.  Every single day.

 

And so when the forecasters told us that this week would be sunny and hit highs in the 50s, texts started flying among all of us moms crying, "Let's meet outside!"  We've had multiple play dates this week in parks and playgrounds.  Schoolwork has gone by the wayside so much so that I think this week inadvertently became our Spring Break.

And just in time.  My phone tells me to expect snow in an hour and a half.

One of our favorite playgrounds, in the shadow of The Met

I walked past a sign this week that read:

Dear Spring,

We're ready when you are.

Love,
NYC