Another Year Older (and Wiser?)

Kevin and I at the "Top of the Rock" with the Empire State Building in the background.

Here we are having lunch at "Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company" in Time Square. Can you tell it is pouring buckets outside?

Yes, another birthday has come and gone - I am now halfway between fifty and sixty. I hope time will slow down a bit so that the birthdays don't come so fast! I don't really expect that to happen, though, as I look back to the beginning of this year and realize how it has flown by. Maybe because this has been a year of travelling! I don't stay in one place long enough to get bored. In fact, I am between trips right now, (I will be with friends at a women's conference at Mount Allison University in Sackville NB from the 21st to the 25th of May) and we have an exciting trip coming up at the end of the month to be with Jonathan and Miranda and their new little one who is due to arrive anytime now!

Kevin and I had the opportunity to spend a few days in New York City with Rich's parents, John and Ann from England. They are visiting in NB for five weeks, and one "side-trip" they wanted to take was to NYC. Kevin really wasn't too keen, but it was my birthday, and I would love to see New York, and when would we ever have this opportunity again? So, Kevin agreed to go along and it turned out that we all had a fabulous time! There was a real mix of weather, with one really wet day and two nicer ones. We did a lot of walking (never got on the subway), took a boat tour to see the Statue of Liberty, and an open-air bus tour of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Harlem. We saw famous bridges, TALL skyscrapers, hundreds of yellow taxis and crazy Times Square. One of Kevin's wishes was to go to Ground Zero, and we spent a lot of time in that area. We went to the Broadway play "Legally Blond, which was actually a lot of fun. It is the same story as the movie by the same name.

On Sunday we got off our tour bus at one end of Central Park then walked the length of the park and caught the bus again at the other end. It's a beautiful place for families to play and picnic, and there were all kinds of joggers and bikers. We enjoyed the huge English garden at the north end, with its lovely plants, flowers and pathways. We saw the horse and carriage rides, but didn't do that this time - maybe next!

My favorite part of the weekend was going to the top of Rockerfeller Center to the open air observation deck on Saturday. The views were spectacular. I even had an impromptu "Happy Birthday" sung to me at the "Top of the Rock" - what a memorable occasion! Then we had a lovely supper in a little Italian restaurant and Kevin surprised me with my favorite dessert, tiramisu. I have so many wonderful memories of this special Birthday/Mother's Day weekend. I would recommend it to anyone!