I *heart* NY

We've been home from our family reunion in New York for 3 weeks now and I think I'm finally ready to post about our trip ;)

Aiden and I flew out with Jen on Thursday, July 18th bright and early (our flight took off at 6).

Got Aiden his own headphones.

We had a little layover in Newark, NJ where I got us the most delicious spoonable smoothie from Red Mango.  I got back to our gate to switch with Jen (she'd been waiting w/ Aiden) so she could go off to the bathroom and get herself something to eat.  I was trying to get a little more organized and, not thinking, stuck the smoothie in Aiden's stroller.  Well Aiden loves to pull down on the handles and push his stroller around and I turned around to find my almost full smoothie all over the ground and his stroller.  I was so disappointed.  It was seriously one of the best smoothies (it better be for $7.50) I've ever had and I only got a few heavenly bites before the spill.  It was pretty embarrassing and Jennifer was nowhere to be seen to help me clean up.  Most of the people at the gate just kind of sat there staring at me frantically clean up.  Luckily a nice guy ran to the bathroom and grabbed a whole bunch of paper towels for me.  It was quite a mess. As frustrated as I felt inside, all I could really do was laugh.  And once I got it all cleaned up I kept giggling to myself because I'm sure people approaching thought someone had thrown up - the smoothie had mango and banana in it so it was a yellow color and there was some granola on top of it..haha.  Oh well.

Anyway, we took a tiny little jet into Rochester and made it in around 5:30.  Jill flew in from Utah at the same time.

Waiting for the car to pull around.

My grandparents have a lake house on Canandaigua Lake and it is probably my favorite place in the whole world.  Last time we were there I was pregnant with Aiden (see blog posts back in July 2011), so this was Aiden's first time actually going.  That evening (and a lot of the week actually) we could not get Aiden off the trampoline.  It was his first time on one and he loved it.

This first night he just ran all over it.  By the end of the week he got the hang of jumping.

That evening the girls and Aiden and I just took it easy.  My parents, Amy, and Amber got to participate in the Hill Cumorah Pageant this year, along with a whole bunch of my other family (aunts, uncles, cousins) so they were off performing the next few nights (blog post coming on that).

The next day, Friday, my uncle John took us out on my grandma's brand new boat.  It was so nice because it was a small group of us - just myself, Jen, Jill, Aiden, Kyle, and John.

Aiden had to drive of course ;)  You can see the lake house directly behind us - the blue one.

Kyle showing us how to wake surf.  John was so generous to let us all try it out on his wake surf board all week.

Once you're comfortable you throw the rope in.

Aiden dipping his feet.

Jill giving it a go.

And John showing us how it's done ;)

Jen got out there next.  She goes the other direction since she's left-handed.

And I went last.  This is how you start out - I feel like my feet look huge..haha.

Kyle drove :)  It was so fun to be out with him.

Haha..this is definitely not how it's supposed to look, but at least I had a smile on my face (click on any of the pics to enlarge them).

I'm so used to the technique of slaloming (water skiing with one ski) that it was hard to think about doing basically everything opposite for wake surfing.  The biggest difference is that you have to lean forward instead of back.

We headed back to the house soon after so that Kyle could head off to work.  We all got showered and then met up with all of the pageant crew for dinner at a little cafe in Palmyra - Muddy Waters Cafe.

Aiden loved, loved running down the big hill out back, along the Erie Canal.

I didn't have a chance to get pants on Aiden before Amy and cousins whisked him away!

Tori, Aiden, and Amy.

Haha, I love that he'd usually just give up on keeping up and would just drag along.

Bryn, Aiden, and Courtney.

Further away we noticed Amanda running to jump on Ian's shoulders!

Sisters (minus Amber).  Note - I got dressed first ;)

We (Jen, Jill, and I) decided to hold off on seeing Pageant until the next night.  Good thing because it ended up getting rained out.  They don't usually cancel for rain, like ever.  They had only canceled one other time in the last 15 years! This night there was lots of thunder and lightning though, so it had the potential of being very dangerous.