Felice and Henry's Big Adventure in New York

Last week I took our 6 year old son on a trip to Long Island, New York to visit my brother Steve and his family and celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary.
We had a little journey through United Airlines circles of hell in which our first flight from Eugene was delayed due to "weather conditions" in San Francisco that looked sunny and delightful when we finally arrived with 5 minutes to spare to make our next flight. Apparently those 5 mintues where not enough to keep them holding their own flight and so they gave away our seats. We then stood on the customer "Service" line for about an hour and half with about 75 other disgruntled passengers with their own tales of airline woe while watching the plane we should have been on sit on the runway delayed for an hour. Henry behaved impeccably (I must be a great parent) the whole time on line. We managed to get stand by on the next flight and screw the next slightly late passengers out of their seats. I assume this process goes on infinitely as each flight takes seats away from those slightly late in a sort of Pay It Backward process of airline karma.We arrived at 1:30am in the morning at JFK and my loving brother and mom and dad were there to greet us.
The next day began with this lovely NY breakfast-the bagel and cream cheese with lox.

It had been about 6 years since I last saw my brother and 12 years since I was last In NY.

Now that's a pizza! Finally the pizza you just can't get in Oregon. It has the light thin crust and the oil dripping down your hand.

Sibling love

It was so great to meet my wonderful niece Jamie!

The next night was my nephew Matt's 12th birthday party that he shared with his good friend Jason. It involved 50 12 year olds and a large lovely swimming pool with a hot tub. There was an air brush artist making t shirts and hats and a movie screen set up outside and the grand finale of the Mr Softee truck in the driveway with free ice cream cones for all.Henry got to go in the truck with his cousin and play ice cream man. Unfortunately my little 6 year old thinks he can actually swim. So there he was on his little floaty noodle thing kicking out to the deep end constantly to join in with the all the big kids. I was left with the only reponsible parenting option of putting on my bathing suit and going in there too. So I was the only adult at the party baring it all in a bathing suit amongst all the kids.

Here I am in the hot tub with a bunch of 12 year old boys. Need I say more?

The next day we drove into NY and went to the Museum of Natural History.

Henry , Matt and Jamie taking it all in.

While sitting in traffic this just cracked me up for some reason. I guess I am just easily amused.

Henry and Jamie

The next day was my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. My brilliant sister-in-law came up with the plan of stealing Mom's photo album and having this board made for everyone to sign.


I got to see my Great Aunt Phylis. So this is Felice, Phyliss and Fran. Try saying that 5 times fast.We had lots of old family friends show up and a good time was had by all.

We all went out to dinner at Mario's for excellent Italian food the last night we were there.

Aunt Michelle getting some good hugging in with Henry.

Henry fell asleep on the last plane ride home. He never napped on any of the other plane rides. He later woke up screaming as we were landing with a bad dream and a headache but quickly recovered upon landing.

It was a great trip.

My Own Personal Gem Show

On Saturday we were lucky to be visited by our favorite old pal traveling bead salesmen-Peter. He is perhaps the most unique and free person I know. He is unbeholden to any society or culture and truly follows his own path. We met over 25 years ago in Hawaii when I was a young carefree traveler. (Well maybe not so carefree. )He continued to make traveling his lifestyle and calls whatever piece of earth his feet are standing on his home. He has been spending a lot of time traveling around rural China and Thailand lately and has developed close relationships with bead wholesalers in Hong Kong. He comes by every couple of years with his treasures and I get to go through and pick out new goodies while he entertains us with his traveling tales and philosophizes. He brought some fun gifts for the boys too.

These are some lovely African turqoise diamond shaped beads. It was so hard to not go completely crazy and over budget and I had to say goodbye to many of these lovelies.

Big gorgeous amazonite.

Chinese azurite "gogos"- their name for off centerd beads. I loved the shape and color but had to pass on these too:(

Astounding fossilized bamboo big chunky beads.I said goodbye to them also.

Peter and Henry entertained each other while I took hours to look at everything as he set up my personal gem fair in our driveway.

These are stunning British Columbia nephrite jade large rondells.

Alas I had to say goodbye to these too.
They will probably haunt me.

Some beautiful rainbow labradorite polished giant nugget beads. They got put back in his van too.

"For you number one quality special price"

This is some of what I did buy as I became more practical and had to put back about a third of what I wanted. These were a great deal on lapis and beautiful BC nephrite jade that will make stunning earrings.

Pink Lustery moonstone.

More of my picks-rain forest jasper aka rhyolite, azurite diamonds,african turquoise long thin ovals,sodalite,crazy lace agate and tons more.

These are astoundingly tacky and the fact that they are made from dyed howlite makes them even more so but I know they will sell really well as groovy pendants at the Eugene Saturday Market.

These were really tempting tiger eye buddha beads.
It was a really fun day. Now to find the time to make lots of new things with my new beads!