Thursday, January 13, 2011

An Outing to the Aquarium

One of the positive things I mentioned about living here is the proximity to NYC. We don't get into the city much at all, but we do have zoo/aquarium passes that my parents have gotten us for Christmas this year and last year. The aquarium is in Brooklyn, and you can see Coney Island from the parking lot. For those with any knowledge of the geography of NYC, that means it's really, really far from where we live. It took us 50 minutes to drive there this morning, and much longer to drive home a) at 4 p.m. with more traffic and b) with our GPS for some reason directing us into all these neighborhoods and side streets, even though we'd arrived on only highways and major roads. Manhattan often does make our GPS wonky (where we appear to be spinning in circles on the map even though we're actually sitting still at an intersection, or when it recalculates 17 times while we're slowly driving down a street), but we weren't in Manhattan and it wasn't acting wonky; it just wanted us to take the slowest possible route, apparently!

So here are some photos of us at the New York Aquarium.

At the cafe, after peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from home. See the mess?
This is H's reflection in the tank of some really tiny jellyfish.

LL was not very impressed, but she was cute!

The sharks were H's favorite part. Did you know that sharks and rays are related?

Climbing on this walrus statue was K's favorite part.

We figured today would be the last day for awhile when we could undertake such an outing. I'm certainly not going to take all three of them by myself, and DB puts his nose back to the grindstone tomorrow, starting with three choir rehearsals, a choir trip, and then classes beginning again on Monday.

He will be working on a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) unit this semester, requiring him to be at a local hospital roughly 25 hours a week this semester, in addition to his other classes. I anticipate this semester's schedule to be quite a stressor, especially when you consider that Great Lent will be in the middle of it, bringing with it so much time required in church. Other stressors are a young infant, homeschooling H, and (of course) never quite knowing where the money to pay each months' expenses is going to come from. I know that God never gives us more than we can handle (with His help), but I have a feeling that this semester is going to push the edge of that and feel very unpleasant. Unfortunately, I'm usually right about the things I dread. Pray for me, a sinner.





1 comment:

elizabeth said...

Beautiful outing!

Take this semester one day at a time. I often fear lent too and hope that one day I can learn to really submit to God and be at peace; then I would not be afraid.

but I am still and fully relate to your struggle.

Do what you can and remember that all is in God's loving hands.