We received an offer on our little old house this week. It was from the young couple that walked through in the first few days we hit the market last month. We countered the offer, and it was accepted. It was accepted!! Assuming that all goes smoothly, we should close by the end of next month.
My dear friend Bree and her husband Luke? Are joining our family in the Parents Outnumbered By Children Club. I cannot express how much our excited, blissful conversations about this beautiful new baby have brightened my week.
I am so blessed with people in my life who are beyond supportive-- whatever the term is for people with whom you can be so unapologetically honest, who feel so safe and are without hesitation willing to scrape you up from the proverbial puddle you've melted into on the floor before their feet, suddenly and without warning. These are the friends we all need in our lives, and I am so grateful for mine. And for you guys.
Today Kevin and I officially reached ten years of marriage. Before our trip, before bad news and laundry and before Halloween festivities with the kids, I thought I would do some sort of video something for our ten years. Or write something thoughtful. Or shower before five p.m. or have a sitter lined up for us to go out to dinner together. But as things stand, year ten finds us in a place that is perfect. The kids and I shared a quiet day and eventually managed showers and non-pajamas before the five of us converged on a (thankfully) noisy Mexican joint for what turned out to be a celebration of the beginning of our family, as per my eight year old.
I was finally able to go through our vacation pictures today. All thirty-eight hundred of them, which sort of works out since we drove thirty-three hundred miles this time (a whopping four hundred less than our last big road trip). That's about a shot a mile.

Making our way through the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia
I was thinking on this trip that we are finally safe to consider ourselves travelers. We have now been through thirty-seven states together, and even a couple months ago when travel could have been the easy martyr for the unexpected financial hit we took with the old house, I stuck my neck out and pledged to save money in any way except for sacrificing this understood priority of ours. We live for the chance to be out on the open roads, and have already discussed which countries we move onto after we finish with the nifty fifty. (Beyond Ethiopia next year, that is.) This is an education and life experience that can happen in no other way, and we love it.

Connecticut, Oh My God
While my family took road trips to many parts of the country as I was growing up, we never made it out to the East Coast. This was my very first time heading in that direction, and Kevin had only been to certain parts as a kid. We were determined to see as much as humanly possible, and this journey did not disappoint.

As a family of crazed history lovers, getting into Washington DC that first night held nothing short of an excitement comparable to our first Tour de Disney. I couldn't believe that everything I had ever read in books or only seen in pictures was right there in front of me.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial: I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Visiting the enormous Lincoln Memorial was every bit as awe-inspiring as I thought it would be, but just in the few minutes before we climbed the stairs to go inside, I turned and realized that we were standing in the exact spot Martin Luther King stood in when he gave his I Have a Dream speech in 1963, and right in the middle of all those tourists and my energetic children, I burst into tears. (I know, you guys, I am not even a crier. Apparently this time in my life is a bit overwhelming on multiple unexpected levels.)

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
Wow, right?

There was really no question, that our nation's entire capitol city was built with greatness in mind. It was surreal. We walked our kids' little feet off in the days we stayed there, and we could have easily spent the entire trip there, just exploring. We will most certainly be back.

Also surreal, though in a completely different way from DC, was Philadelphia. Our initial reaction as we rolled into downtown Philly at lunchtime on a weekday, was one of Holy Shit-- it's History, Cheese and Onions!

Chicago has got to catch onto this cart thing.

In Philly we explored central historic places such as this,

as well as places like this, which in some ways didn't even feel like 2010 America. This was the 9th Street Italian Market, with tightly laid out streets lined with awnings, tables and storefronts selling fresh fruits and vegetables and meats of all sorts. It was block after block of this, and just really, really neat.
Also indescribable was the diversity in Philadelphia. Kevin and I would point out to each other, Oh look at the Jewish market! Next to the Mexican restaurant! Across from a crowd of white collar black, white, Asian and Indian folks with a few noisy construction workers thrown in, all waiting to cross the street for the nearest Cheese Steak Cart, obviously. And then down the very next block a crazy man with a knife who might kill you if the light doesn't change fast enough. It was really cool, and also a bit chaotic. Half of me wanted to live there while the other half wanted to floor it to the expressway before we even got a glimpse of the crack in the Liberty Bell. I've never had quite that experience before.

Um, not that it stopped us from partaking in the famous local cuisine, you understand.

Geno's and Pat's are kiddie corner to each other, and fierce competitors. And we were equal opportunity taste testers. We had to be fair.
For the record, we preferred Geno's for the straight-up sandwich, but liked Pat's for the variety of choices. You can put practically anything on a steak sandwich. Who knew?

Life List #76: Brooklyn Bridge
The really neat thing about driving across the eastern states is that so many of them are incredibly small, and if you doze off for even a few minutes (heh, not while manning the steering wheel, preferably) you might miss one. My kids are used to driving across places like Georgia or Wyoming where you can navigate on the same unrelenting highway in one gigantic state for something like fifteen hours and you swear you've seen that same town or tumbleweed at least nine times. Not on the East Coast, though. Three pages of Mad Libs and you've gotten yourself from Washington DC all the way through Wilmington, DE, Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA and straight into the heart of New York City. Now look who's not even stopped to pee!

Growing up a Chicago girl I have always wondered about New York. Could it really be that different from Chicago, with the skyscrapers and the traffic and the crowds? We drove across Staten Island on our way in, onto Long Island and then right into Manhattan at exactly five o'clock. It happened this way completely by accident, of course, but the traffic was both completely expected and actually not that unusual for a big city. Driving to all of the different major NYC sites I was surprised by two things: one, Manhattan went on forever. Forever! I've always known Chicago to be the third largest city in the US, but Ohhhhh Riiiiiight...Our two point nine million people compared to New York's EIGHT million. Well. That changes things.

The second thing that got me was the realization that my city? Is not feeding me half as well as some of these East Coast cities. New York has everything from Halal Carts on every corner offering every cuisine imaginable, to Mom and Pop diners to coffee shops and upscale deli's. That, and boutiques. Boutiques for art, boutiques for clothing, for furniture, for jewelery, for baby gear. If you name it, someone is selling it in their own little original shop. Hear this, Oh Walmarts.

There were a few biggies we planned visits for in New York City itself, as we walked and walked and walked. The most important to our kids, of course, and the one reason they were so willing to tread miles on foot, was for their long awaited visit with what we knew to be The Big Toy Store. From even before our trip we had promised that they could pick out a toy there, and we did crazy things like show them the giant piano from the movie Big. We worked with all the cheesy pre-NYC knowledge we had.

When we were in Lexington, Kentucky, our children asked when we would be at the big toy store. When we were at the White House, they needed to know how many days until the big toy store. When we parked the car in New York wanted neither meals nor Central Park nor a thousand downpours of white granulated sugar rained down from the heavens. They wanted the big toy store.
We arrived, finally, at the long anticipated toy store at seven twenty p.m..
The big toy store had closed at seven o'clock p.m..
!!!
!!!...
!!1111!!!$*!#@!*&!!!!
Let this photographed moment be from now on understood as F-A-OH-SHIT.
On a Tuesday night!? In New York City!?
(Needle scratches across record.)
We didn't even know what to say to them. It was a massive disappointment, and the only thing we could offer was a trip back the very next morning. There was no way around the toys. And yet the night still needed some salvaging.

Ice cream before dinner right in the heart of Times Square helped a little,

until we came upon the best kept secret in Times Square, apparently. The Worlds Largest Toys R US lives there.
Note my children: KJ as the oldest, fully comprehends what a three story ferris wheel in the middle of a toy store means. Jack, a four year old partly dazed by all the blinking lights-- my God the lights-- mostly gets it but remains mildly skeptical. At first outdoor glance this appears to be the runner-up toy store of the evening and quite possibly his parents' way of squirming out of yet another day's parking fees in Manhattan. Two year old Marin's little mind is hardly on this planet, let alone in the middle of loud, flashy Times Square for toys.

Just. Mind blowing.
I crossed off Life List #1 and my children each scored a souvenir and one hell of a ride with their dad on the ferris wheel.
More to come, lest I author here some sick sequel to War and Peace. And as a side note, as I technically post this at 3:30am on October the 29th, it is no longer our tenth wedding anniversary but now my parents thirty-third wedding anniversary, so happy day for them.