CignoliHurley.com

This past weekend we went to New Hampshire with my family. We took Charlotte to Storyland, which is an amusement park for little kids with a fairy tale theme. Charlotte was very impressed and turned out to be quite a thrill seeker on the rides.

This is Cinderella’s pumpkin and that is Charlotte’s Little Papa (what she calls my grandfather) with her.

Here’s Charlotte on the teacup ride. She loved it and afterward kept saying “we went really fast!” Luckily, she didn’t seem to feel sick to her stomach like Brian and I did! We also went on a ride later that went up and down and Charlotte kept yelling “High! Go really high! Higher!”

Here’s a view from Cinderella’s castle: 

We went to New Mexico a few weeks ago. Charlotte met her grandpa and we also met up with friends in Santa Fe. The trip was a lot of fun. We went to the zoo in Albuquerque and ate a lot of yummy food–everything had green chilis on/in it. We saw a lot of great artwork and outdoor sculptures and continued to eat a lot in Santa Fe.

The trip home was rough, though–our flight to Dallas got diverted to Oklahoma City because of bad weather, and we ended up stuck in Dallas overnight with no luggage. We finally made it back to Hartford the next day and had to rent a car to get back home. Charlotte was really good for the most part. She is full of questions these days so we heard a lot of “Why is plane not going? Where’s flight attendant going? What’s that button? Who’s that taxi driver?” (we heard that one about 15 times consecutively). She did get to see the cockpit on the plane, which was pretty exciting.

Here’s Charlotte at the Albuquerque Zoo:

This is in Old Town Albuquerque:

This is a church in Santa Fe with some cool sculptures that moved with the wind.

We went to Taos Pueblo, which is a 400-year-old Indian village:

We spent the Fourth of July visiting my friend Katie in NJ. We took the train to Philadelphia and Charlotte had fun running around Rittenhouse Square (which is where we took these pictures).

We also took Charlotte to her first parade.

Charlotte spent a lot of time pressing the buttons on the safe in our NY hotel room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usAOtMYPIW4

The train ride to New York wasn’t too bad with Charlotte on the way down. She played in her seat a lot and looked at books, and ran up and down the aisles. She was pretty worn out and cranky on the way back, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE6gt3IEh14

We went to FAO Schwarz when we were in New York and Charlotte played on the big piano.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRyAL6uc1bE

We took a trip on the train to New York City last week. We did a lot of walking around, went to the children’s museum, natural history museum, the Met, and ate lots of great food.

Charlotte watched the ice skaters.

We went to the Museum of Natural History and saw the dinosaurs.

This is the Egyptian temple at the Met.

Charlotte liked the ice cream sundae we had our last night.

We went to Chicago and Indianapolis for a long weekend to go to my friend Shalon’s baby shower and visit Brian’s mom and extended family in Indy. It was a busy weekend with lots of time in the car, and Charlotte visited two zoos! We took a lot of pictures at the Indianapolis Zoo.

The giraffes, monkeys and chickens were big hits. Charlotte was a little apprehensive about the rhinos, though.

Checking out the monkeys:

We finally have a functioning camera, and the power cord to download the pictures came in the mail today. These are from our weekend away last week–we went down to the Cape to stay at my aunt and uncle’s place for a long weekend. It was really nice, despite the bad weather the first day and a half.

Charlotte ate like a champ while we were there. Her favorite things lately are zucchini and any kind of beans. 

On our way home we stopped for a picnic.

Back in the car:

We went to Cape Cod over the weekend, to Wellfleet just for one night. We mostly escaped the effects of Hurricane Bill, since we went to the beach on the inner bay side of the Cape on Saturday. The water was pretty calm and warm and very Charlotte-friendly.

We went for a hike in the Wellfleet wildlife sanctuary in the afternoon. It was beautiful and there was a nice path to the beach through marshland and woods. We saw a lot of tiny little crabs and birds close to the shore. Parts of the trail were underwater, which is apparently normal, although tides were higher this weekend because of the tropical storm. We heard a story from a couple at dinner about RVs near the beach getting flooded by the very high tides 

We think Charlotte liked getting a taste of nature.  

Along the shore: