May 2009- Six Flags, Boston, Plymouth & NYC

Here we are again! It's our last trip for the school year. For the week in May we did some really fun stuff. From Friday to Friday our family walked 60 miles. How did we do it you ask?

Well, day one- Homeschool Day at Six Flags Over Georgia.

Day two- fly to Boston, MA and walk "The Freedom Trail" all over town.

Day three- finish the trail, tour the "USS Constitution", drive to Plymouth, MA and walk around the Wampanoag Village, Plimoth Plantation & the Mayflower II then drive to NYC.

Day four- Wake up in NYC and keep freaking out about meeting Phil from the "Amazing Race" and then ride the elevator with him to breakfast!!! Ok, enough about Phil. Take the subway to Battery Park and ride the ferry to Liberty Island & Ellis Island. Walking tour of "Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World" (which, we learned, is her full name). Walk back to hotel by way of Ground Zero after our moment of silence.

Day five- Walk to Central Park Zoo, FAO Schwartz and back down to Times Square.

Day six- Again...walk over to Pier 86 where the Intrepid Museum is. For lunch the girls & I walked across town to The American Girl store and the boys walked to Times Square. Back to the hotel to rest and then off to the park and back to American Girl for our SECOND exchange...Jewel's decision making skills are a work-in-progress :)

Day seven- Our last full day. We wimped out of walking 30 blocks to the American Museum of Natural History and took the subway. To make up for it we wandered all over the 4 floors of the museum for 5 hours. Following a 2 hour nap we walked up to Times Square to get our last NYC dinner. Did you know that the Olive Garden is in the median of Broadway? We literally ate in the middle of the road. Look behind us in the pic...those are people walking on the sidewalk!

We had a fabulous time and hope to go back one day. We'll be home for a while now and are looking forward to a lazy summer vacation. Yeah, right. I can dream though! I think it's about time to venture west...who's up for a trip to the Grand Canyon? Write to us or comment on our blog and let us know what you and your family is up to.

Love, The Cross Country Cochrans

PS- Sorry some of the pics are turned....the software won't let me rotate them.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Time to catch up

Hi guys! Sorry that it's taken me so long to get these pictures posted. Life is crazy hectic around here and I have a feeling that it's just going to get worse. I mean, we do have a pre-teen in our house now:) So, to catch you up-

We took a NJ trip for Jewel because she didn't want to be without her Dad on her 9th birthday. This year in school we have been studying American History and we just finished our book on the War of 1812. Since we were going to be driving through Maryland we decided to check out the most important fort of the war- Fort McHenry & the Bombardment of Baltimore. We had a facinating day there. On normal weekends they reinact the War of 1812 but the weekend we were there it was Civil War- oh well! The kids ran all over the fort looking for answers on their quiz to become National Park Junior Rangers. They learned first hand all about how Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner in the harbor.

After spending the week swimming at the pool we were ready to head home. But not so fast- we stopped off in Washington, DC to check out the American History Museum! The original Star Spangled Banner is housed there. Photographs are not allowed in the exhibit but it was well worth the stopover. Since the Natural History Museum is right next door....we checked it out too.

More pictures to come...enjoy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We weren't eliminated!!!!!

For those of you who do not know- we are HUGE Amazing Race fans. Bryan and I have been watching religiously for years and this season the kids have enjoyed our obsession with us. As we are traveling this week we are missing a couple of our favorite season finales. By chance we thought we might make it to our New York hotel in time to catch the finale of Amazing Race tonight. No luck though. The kids were bummed but cool because they know we've got it DVRed at home. As we checked into the Marriott- Times Square Lara was in the way of someone getting off the elevator pushing a large cart. I'm looking at the guy and....yeah, I recognize that guy. Yep- that's Phil. It's freaking Phil, the host of Amazing Race. He leaned over and told Lara thank you for moving out of the way. Then....we found out from the front desk that they did the finale here in NYC tonight and the host and crew are staying in the hotel!! Can you stand it??? This show is something we love to look forward to. We've even joked about signing up. :) To top it all off- Phil is staying in the room next door to us! Ahhhhhh!!!! Woo-hoo! He was coming back to his room and I just happened to be in the hall- yeah, right I just happened to be in the hall for 20 minutes waiting for him to come back to his room- and I got the guts to speak to him. I told him "we just drove down from Boston trying to get here in time to see the finale on tv and that we missed it." He goes, "Oh that sucks! You just missed it....well I won't tell you who won then." The kids came out and Bryan too...and I said, "No, please don't...we'll watch it when we get home." And Phil says..."Well, even though you were the last ones to get to the hotel...you're not eliminated because this is non-elimination round. Good luck!" Holy crap....we were all screaming when we closed the door...the kids were FREAKING out....ok, so it wasn't the kids...it was me!! We've only been in NYC for 30 minutes and how cool is that??!! We're off to the Statue of Liberty tomorrow.