An End of Summer Trip to Quito

After a year in New York, we had about a month before needing to be back in Knoxville. We decided to ease the transition by taking a trip to Quito, Ecuador. The purpose of the trip was, first and foremost, to catch up with some friends who had been living in Knoxville before we left for New York and are now back in Ecuador. Their son and our Little Lady are good friends and they were both excited to see each other. The time in Ecuador would also give the LL a chance to be immersed in a Spanish language environment for a few weeks to bolster her bilingualism. It was also a chance for another adventure.

Holiday Season NYC, Part 5 - Holiday Windows

New York is justifiably famous for its flagship department stores. And one of the annual events is the windows that they unveil during the holiday season. On the busy streets of Manhattan, an attention-grabbing window is seen by thousands upon thousands of people each day. Windows are very valuable marketing space. And the stores use this space to maximum advantage. And we used their efforts to our maximum advantage by taking a look at pretty much all the major stores this year.

Holiday Season NYC, Part 4 - Santas!

The Little Lady is 5. Surprisingly, she really does not care all that much about Santa Claus. She knows who he is, of course, but it's not like she was just dying to meet him this year. But we are in New York, and I would have been surprised if some of the best Santas cannot be found here. I mean it seems like there is this little under-the-radar movie about a little girl and the Macy's down on 34th Street. So it would have been just a little wrong not to check out some of the options, right? We did. And we found the real Santa Claus.