New York, New York -- Happy Birthday Kate!

Kate's birthday dinner at Le Bernardin

We celebrated Kate's birthday with a weekend holiday in New York City.  We jammed museums, theater, great restaurants, shopping and sight-seeing into three days in the city.  The first day we walked through Central Park and visited the Museum of Natural History.  On the way back the girls peeled off and did some shopping while the boys went back to the hotel to rest.

It was also Easter weekend, so FAO Schwartz had the biggest Peep display ever.  

More FAO Schwartz fun.  

The Dark Knight

Central Park

The model of a blue whale at the Museum of Natural History.  At 100 feet long they are the largest living animal -- and the loudest.  They can be heard 600 miles away.    

Cross section of a Giant Sequoia

Can you tell which person has had enough museum?  Or perhaps it's the fact that he and I flew in from Europe the night before so we were a little jet-lagged.  

Right out of Night at the Museum

Recently renovated entrance hall.  

Spotted on our walk through Central Park

Kate had Happy Birthday desserts both nights.  

The second Happy Birthday dessert. 

This is what happens when you ask the hotel desk clerk to take a family photo.  You get a great shot of their flower arrangement with a family in the distant background.  

Blooms in Central Park

The Empire State Building

On the second day the girls headed out for more shopping.  Grant & I went to the Empire State Building.  Fearing long lines, I went on line and bought "Fast Pass" tickets.  For a small fortune, we bypassed the security line, the ticket purchase line and the elevator line.  The only way to be faster would to be Superman and fly to the top.  These tickets were amazing -- they easily saved us 2 hours of waiting. The only downside was that we had to walk past all these other people who were waiting and waiting and waiting in line.  Luckily none of them knifed us.  I highly recommend the fast pass.

View from the top.  Freedom Tower in the background. 

The last elevator tells you your elevation as you ascend. 

The ice rink was still active at Rockefeller Center

There was a display of "eggs" around Rockefeller Center, all with a different design. This one was made of money.  

Kate's Happy Birthday cupcake from Magnolia Bakery

On Saturday night we saw Kinky Boots, a musical comedy.  Packed house.  Great show.

Grand Central Station is a beautiful building.  Especially at 7:30 Easter Morning when it was practically empty.  

On Sunday we drove out to Lori's sister Carol's house for Easter lunch. Or at least we tried.  The hotel valet brought Kate's car around from the parking garage.  We loaded up and went to leave --- and the car wouldn't start.  Long story short, the battery was low.  After sitting idle for three days, it had enough juice to start for the valet, but that was it.  It wouldn't start for us.

So there we were.  Stuck in NYC on Easter Sunday with a dead car.  So what did we do?  We called our trusty GEICO hotline, they sent a tow truck who jumped us off and we were good to go.  Needless to say it was a nervous hour waiting for him to come.  So on Monday we got Kate her final birthday present.  A new battery.

Visitors from Washington

President Obama and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in front of Rembrandt's Nightwatch. FYI,  the painting is about 10 ft x 12 ft.  

Den Haag recently hosted the Nuclear Security Summit, a gathering of heads of state to discuss the security of nuclear material.  NSS was founded by President Obama during his first term, so I think he felt obliged to come.  Many other high level diplomats attended as well, so it was quite a logistical challenge for The Netherlands.   FYI, North Korea and Iran did not attend.

Access to the highway was blocked……really blocked.  

The primary road between the airport and Den Haag is the highway that goes through our village.  So for three days the road was closed to all traffic except diplomats or police.  Everyone was warned to find alternate modes of transportation to work.  Grant's school was closed; they used their "distant learning" program, which consisted primarily of extra homework that was assigned via the computer.

I rode my bike the 10 km to work and back those days.  The weather was sunny and clear, albeit a little chilly.  On the first day I passed several people scraping ice off their car windshields.

It would have been a good time to rob a bank, because every policeman in the country was managing traffic.  There were four times the number of police in service as there had been at the King's inauguration last year.  Total cost was expected to be 24 million Euros.  

Scenes from my bike ride.  With our early spring, the trees were beautiful. 

A lady who lives along the route keeps snow owls (and other varieties as well).  She has at least four snow owls in a pen along the road.  We knew she kept owls because we met her walking on the path one time….with an owl on her shoulder.  I also noticed that she has a motorcycle in her living room, so maybe she's a bit of a free spirit.  

This guy was doing some early morning fishing.  Notice the long pole.  Very typical for fishing in the Dutch canals.  

A typical Dutch drawbridge design. The counterweight on the left helps lift the bridge.  

On the way home from work one day, there were a number of people waiting by the side of the road. Obviously  someone important was about the go by so I stopped as well.  

These folks were waiting across the road.  I waited for 10 minutes but no one went by so I left. 

I think the entire Dutch army was also mobilized.  

The helicopters flew day and night.  

Northern ExposureOne

Grant & I headed to northern Finland for February break.  We both enjoy the cold weather and when you're 250 km above the Arctic Circle, you're pretty much guaranteed to have cold weather.  We flew to Helsinki then on to Ivalo which is the northernmost city where FinnAir flies.  It's a vacation area, but don't worry, it wasn't packed with people.  Finland has lots of land and not many people.

The first day of cross country skiing

You can see the two grooves that they groom into the trails for  cross country skiing.  The area we stayed had over 250 km of cross country ski trails.  We didn't use them all.    

A view of the ski trail through the forest.

The Finns take their skiing seriously and make it very enjoyable.  There are warming huts and bathrooms at different points along the trails   Some of the trails are lit to allow skiing during the winter days when the sun never comes up.   Our inn was right on the main trail.  It would host "snowshoe dancing" from 2-5 every afternoon.  People would ski to the inn, have lunch and then dance to a live band for a few hours before skiing home.  

This was one of the tougher sections of the trail.  Downhill with a curve.  We both did it four times with a 75% success factor for each of us.  

The other hazard on the trail was the dogsled crossing. ….

…...which we actually had to wait for one time.  

We skied all week and only saw one reindeer.  And he wouldn't even give me a good picture; all I  got was his butt. 

Even skiing in the deep forest can't keep a teenager from his phone.  

Note the depth of the snow when you went off the trail.  And this was a year of well below average snow fall.  

One of our favorite activities was the town's toboggan hill.    It was 1.2 km long and very icy and fast.  The sign at the top warns you that " The slope is long and demands concentration".  It also demanded a lot of stamina to climb 1.2 km back up the hill to go down again.  

The "toboggans" were not built for full sized people.  They also suffered from a lack of  padding. Your rear end felt every single bump in the run.  

Grant demonstrates the hand steering technique.  

A view of the top half of the hill

We also went ice fishing one afternoon.  Here Grant's drilling the hole -- the ice was almost 2 feet thick.  

But even at that thickness it only took about a minute to drill the hole.  

Fishing can be boring if the fish aren't biting…..and ice fishing is no exception to that rule.  No fish were harmed in our expedition.  

Grant tried a variety of position to stay comfortable 

I don't think he was actually sleeping, but...

At the end of the afternoon, the guide encouraged us to splash water on our faces.  He said it would feel warm.  

We took a snowmobile expedition one evening to see the Northern Lights.  It was a beautiful, clear sky.  We could see satellites crossing, millions of stars and the Milky Way galaxy, but the Northern Lights never came.  Every other nights were cloudy so we'll have to go back next year.  All the locals had an app on their phone that predicted the chances of seeing the Northern Lights -- it would even send a text message when there was a spectacular display.  

We also did all the typical snow stuff like snow angels,  

snowman

and burying Grant in the snow

They tried to mine gold in the 1800's but the quantities were too small.