New York

What have we been up to?  That is a good question.  It seems like we have been doing a little bit of everything in the past few weeks.  My sister-in-law and her family came out to tour a bit of the east coast and stayed with us for a few days.  Lauren's good friend Emily came from California for a visit.  Ralph and Steven spent a damp week at scout camp.  And we all met back together on the fourth to celebrate another year in our country's history.  We have been busy but everyone has been happy.

While Emily visited we took a quick trip up to NJ so that we could take her into NYC for a day and check it out.  To make the day easier we hopped on a tour bus that gave us a good overview of the city and allowed us to get on and off as we wished to see things closer.  The girls started out with smiles and were eager to see what the city had to offer.

While the girls found the city to be interesting they were not enthralled by it.  They thought that it was loud and dirty.  Initially, they were interested in doing some shopping along Canal St. but were turned off by how pushy the vendors were.  It is hard to browse and window shop when they are constantly trying to make a deal with you.  The girls quickly tired of the hassle.  One thing that did bring great amusement were the seats on the tour bus.  Every surface is an ad and the seats were an ad for toilet paper.  We thought they were a little disturbing but very funny!  I don't know if the advertising worked though, we were more inclined to want to buy disinfectant than Charmin. 
Who knows, it may be a genius ad.  Thanks to the ick factor, I just put the ad up where a whole new crowd of people will see it, and that is without the trip to NY.