New York Trip Days 1-5

Tinton Falls, NJ

This New York Trip is actually a working trip...with New York sandwiched in between the free days that we have. At first the girls were really disappointed we didn't go to New York the first day we were here. But once I explained it to them...that we had to think of this as our home-away-from-home, and that we needed to do things during the week that were close-by.

The girls have taken that to heart literally. They have spent many of their days down in the lobby (we're at the Residence Inn, where they specialize in long-term stay) and have made friends with many of the office staff and guests. They know many of them by first name and frequently share stories with me like, "Oh! Kelly let us use the postage machine and help make key cards", or "Larry, the owner, is going to renovate the office upstairs cuz they don't use it anymore". Every time we come down to breakfast, or just to the fireplace/couch area, the hotel personnel are greeting us, giving money to the girls for their birthday and serving us drinks. They are so sweet here and love to entertain the girls while I'm upstairs in the room.

We're in a town called Tinton Falls, New Jersey. Isn't that such a fun name? The pictures above depict many of the "smaller" homes that we see quite frequently along the road and around town. It's right on the East Coast, very close to the ocean. The front desk guy we so lovingly call "Mr. Hobbs" gave us a map today to drive to the coast. It's only about a 7 minute drive, through the ritzy part of New Jersey (where all the big houses are and celebrities live) to the "Boardwalk", equipped with on-the-ocean restaurants, outlet stores and fun little beachfront stores. How much better can that be?

We're going to make our way over there soon since it's in the 50's today. It's the warmest it's been for awhile. All the snow is melted and I'm in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. It feels like home and I have embraced it. The girls have played basketball outside, worked out with one of the guests named "Carlos" who is a Colombian anesthesiologist who has been here 8 months and made a picnic for us to enjoy outside.

Some of the things we have done this past week is celebrate the day of their birthday (see post below), go shopping in Eatontown (how cute of a name is that?), frequented the mall (Sweet Factory, Disney Store, Macy's and every shoe stores there) and gone walking up and down all the little side streets of quaint little New England storefront shops, one of which was a very cute little organic baby clothes/toys shop where we had to buy our second Ergo Baby Carrier. :)

I'll post tomorrow about our day trip (finally!) to New York yesterday.