Week 8 of Summer! (Just a little late.)

4th week of August...

The boys have wanted to go to a dinosaur museum forever. But the American Museum of Natural History is an hour away by train. Not something Adi would put up with. And imagine all the tantrumming opportunities in the museum!
But this Sunday, we left Adi home with Hillel and went on the biggest adventure of the summer.

Adi wasn't with us, but she wasn't forgotten! We got her an Argentinosaurus necklace. We have a joke in our family that Adi is an Argentinosaurus (both start with A.)

 Monday: Library and park.

Tuesday... the weirdest day of my life. We experienced an earthquake. An earthquake! In New York! We were all at home. I felt the house shake, but to be honest, this ancient house shakes all the time. It shakes when the freight train passes by, and it shakes when the upstairs neighbors use their washing machine. But this was different. It wasn't vibrating, it was rocking slowly. The doors of our closets swayed.

I happened to be on the phone with my mother, and she asked me if I just felt an earthquake. Hillel came up from the basement and asked why the house is shaking. I Googled, but nothing came up. Weird. I posted on Facebook, and no one was talking about it there, either. Was I hallucinating? Was my husband, my mother and I having some odd dream?
I refreshed the Google page five minutes later, and the entire first page was filled with news about the earthquake.

I wasn't sure about going out, in case of aftershocks, especially since the cell phone network was down. But we took the chance. :) We went to the park.

 Thursday was a rainy day. We didn't plan on going out, but when the rain stopped in the afternoon, we went out for a walk. Then I asked the boys if they wanted to go to the bay, and guess what the answer was?? We took the regular bus instead of the Jewish van that takes us right there. The city bus takes us about a mile away from the stores, and we get to walk over a bridge over the highway.
And the park that's near there is a great bonus. :)

Hurricane Irene was coming that weekend, and the waters were rougher than usual. Add in the high tide, and we got splashed in the face by the waves!

We stayed till sunset.

And Adi danced for us.

On Friday we did some epic shopping. Hurricane and all that, you know. Besides, we were planning on making emergency kits for a long time, and now was the chance.

We came home and I spent time taking things in from the yard. That's when we discovered a baby snail...

...and another ...and another.  Look how tiny!

Mama and baby. Cute, huh?

On Shabbos we plugged in a radio in the basement and left it on all Shabbos. We covered it with clothes to muffle the sound. There were mandatory evacuations all around us, and it was important to be up to date with any news.

In the end, all we got was a flooded kitchen. But that's a post for another time. :)