Quick Visit to Cooperstown

After being home for Mike's graduation party and some family time, I headed back east with Tricia, Krissy, and Matt. Since Matt had a baseball tournament in Cooperstown, we figured we would take some time off work and go watch some baseball, since we had never been! Little did we know it would end up being one very rainy week, some of us would be fighting a stomach bug, and we would end up finding some other crazy things to do!

Enjoying the sun and watching Matt play. 

With our baseball boy!

Cooperstown had some great views!

Well, since Kristyn and I can only take so much baseball, we found some other fun things to do in town. We dragged Amit to the Farmers' Museum. He, of course, tried to act like he wasn't going to enjoy himself, but then we happened to walk into the baby animals portion of the museum he perked up. 

These two baby goats were our best friends!

They LOVED Amit!

(And he loved them, though he'll deny it.)

While we waited to be able to feed our new friends,

we found some horses. 

Krissy tried to coax one over, but he wouldn't budge.

A cowboy at heart?

They ended up making friends with a nicer horse.

After rushing back to the babies, we were able to feed our little friends!

They were hilarious!

Amit even got in on the action - he fed one of the dairy goats.

(See! He loves them!)

Before we left the farming museum,

we rode the vintage carousel.

I rode a giant hen.

It was awesome!

What else did we do?

We stopped for ice cream, of course!

Though by this time it was starting to get chilly...

Then it rained. And rained. And rained.

So without any baseball to watch, we decided to drive to Howe Caverns for a tour.

About to go on our ride down the underground river.

It was really cool -

the rushing water kept getting louder and louder...

Then we stopped at the dam.

Our heads were way too close to the walls.

The tour stopped at the Bridal Altar. 

We were the only ones brave enough to pose on it first. 

Krissy was NOT having it.

The Winding Way was our favorite part...

It was like we were on a different planet!

Phew! That was one long blog post, but we did do quite a few things over the few days we were there! It was fun to watch Matt play his baseball (before it rained) and spend some extra time with family. Thanks again to Bruce and Tricia for letting us tag along! Hopefully the next time they visit NY, we'll get some nice sunny weather!

Florida Reunion - Part 2

We've clearly been traveling too much recently. We've done so much and I haven't even blogged about any of it! I guess I need to stop being a slacker.

This spring has just been flying by! It's been over a month since we were in Orlando to visit Jeremy and Maggie. We've been crazy busy during that time, but we definitely miss hanging out... and experiencing The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Needless to say, these Harry Potter fans were VERY excited to see it in person!

Good thing we brought our camera!

There it is!

Then we really started acting like fans...

We loved waiting to go on the ride... 

It was just like being in Hogwarts!

And while waiting in line for the Despicable Me ride, 
we learned something interesting.
Who would've thought that Minions have dentures?
It makes us love them even more!
(And yes, I know we're dental nerds.)

No trip to Florida is complete without a trip to the beach! On our last full day we headed to the coast to enjoy the sun, sand, and surf! Man, do we miss living near the beach!

We got a lot of Vitamin D, before the storm rolled in.

It was such a great weekend with some very great friends. Even though it's starting to warm up in NY, we're ready for our next trip! Grayson grows up way too much while we're gone!

Florida Reunion - Part 1

This was the third year we went down to visit Jeremy and Maggie in Florida, but the first year that they're in Orlando. Harry Potter and Florida's warm weather? How could we turn that down? We had a great time! Ray was able to come down from Chicago, so the five of us had a great time! We have been blessed with some great friends!

It was an action-packed five days, and we had such a great time! Surprisingly, Maggie and I were both having such a good time, we really didn't take as many pictures as we should have... Lucky for all of you, I got a few great ones!

We flew down on Wednesday and spent the afternoon hanging out with Maggie and Grayson while Jeremy was at work. We had an awesome BBQ dinner at Four Rivers, since all BBQ really is better in the south. 

This little one has grown so much since our last visit!

The boys had so much fun with her!

She loves to read already!

Dinner at Four Rivers was DELICIOUS!

On Thursday we hung out with our favorite toddler a little more, before heading to drop her off with her grandparents and enjoy a lazy afternoon tubing down a river. 

Isn't she seriously the cutest??

Thursday night we walked around I-Drive, the tourist strip.

Maggie and Ray went on the Human Slingshot.

They're nuts.

Check out the fear on Ray's face.

Maybe sometime I'll figure out how to post the video Amit took. 

Hilarious!

And those two days weren't even our busiest! Maggie's parents were great and watched Grayson for them, so that we could have two whole days to get a ton of sightseeing done... Up next, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Cocoa Beach!

Our First Trip to the Catskills

Since there wasn't too much else to see that close to Albany, Amit found some other hiking to check out. The Catskills were just over an hour south of Albany, so we headed that direction to see what we'd find. He chose one destination in particular, because he knows how much I love waterfalls and it wasn't too long to accomplish in our limited amount of time.

We drove to the Catskills. 
Amit decided to go one way (and not listen to me),
but we ended up going over the Rip Van Winkle Bridge.
Check that off our bucket list.

After driving through some very small towns, we finally were at our destination.
The first falls we saw - 

I love hiking all year-round,
but I think fall can make for some of the best photos!

After a nice little hike, we arrived at our destination.
Kaaterskill Falls - The highest falls in NY

 

It was a nice little weekend getaway and the weather was perfect for hiking. It looks like we'll have to plan another trip to the Catskills to explore some more!

Just a reminder - these are definitely not all of the pictures I've taken on our hikes. I upload all of my pictures to our Shutterfly Share Site - http://lifeasthepatels.shutterfly.com/. It's a private site to store our photos, so if you have a Shutterfly account, you can use that to log-in and then request to join or you can just request that I send you our password. Once you're there, you can look at all of the photos that we've uploaded; they're organized into separate albums and sorted by date.