Philly cheesesteak

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Kimberly's 1st race

Kimberly ran her first 5k today. Wait to go. People were even running with their pets, talk about a dog friendly city. It was exciting. Someday Alexis and I will join her on one of these.

Garden

Can you believe this. We planted this a month ago. There's been so much rain here, I actually picked two zucchini today and five more will be ready in a couple of days. WOW. Can't wait to grill it. There is also a few tomatoes, YUMMY!!!

Manhattan, New York

We drove from Chinatown to Times square. There were so many people in Manhattan, more than usual because it was Nat'l Puerto Rican Day. There was a parade and booths set up and police officers everywhere. What an amazing city and it's only six hours away. YEAH!!!!

Chinatown with Maggie, Anna, and their mother, Jodi.

Jodi wanted to show us around Chinatown and take us to lunch.

She also wanted us to try some of her favorites, like chicken feet, clams, tripe, cow's stomach, fried fishballs. I guess we had real Chinese food. There was no sweet and sour chicken or orange chicken. And, yes, both of us tried everything. I had to, Jodi kept telling me to try this and try that, Very good. The chicken feet wasn't bad. It tasted like chicken skin, only not slimy and greasy. The cow's stomach, on the other hand, you really had to not think about what you were eating. It was chewy and actually not bad either. We ate so much food.

Whatever!!! Why bother. I love the road signs in the East. There is one in Pennsylvania that says, Watch out for aggressive drivers.

So driving in New York is actually kind of fun. As long as you aren't in a hurry to be somewhere.

Such a fun place to visit. This won't be our only trip to The Big Apple.

Long Island, NY

Dinner. Fishball soup, they take the head and tail off the fish and then mash the rest of the fish together. It's actually quite good. We also ate bamboo. I thought that was only for Pandas.

These are Alexis' friend, Maggie's cousins. They were such good kids. We had tons of fun playing with them.

Popsicles, Yummy.

I really wanted to take her home. Her name is Teena. So adorable, but she was actually kind of scared of me. I think she knew I wanted to bring her back to Virginia with us.

Breakfast. Seafood and shrimp for breakfast, along with eggs, rice. In the silver bowl, I'm not sure what was in the shell, but it was really good. You were supposed to suck it out, but I could never get mine out that way. I had to use a toothpick to get it out.

We spent the weekend with Maggie's family in New York. It was so much fun. We had yummy pizza and cheese steaks, too. I was able to learn more about the Chinese culture, too. Wonderful people and I can now say two words in Chinese, Hello Nee-How and Thank you, Shis-She --spelled phonetically, of course.

I was telling one of Maggie's grandparents Thank you and I said, She-She. Maggie and her sister thought that was so, so funny.