we came, we screamed, we ate hot dogs

I'm in New York on a business trip this week. Because it's summer vacation and we're embracing the idea of a quiet summer (i.e., we're intentionally avoiding formal summer activities like the plague so we savor the luxury of sleeping in every day), we have ample time to take off in the middle of week and go wherever we want to go.  The first two days of our time in New York, we were in Brooklyn.  While I went to the office to work, Charlie took the children on what he referred to as the "Brooklyn Death March."  Yesterday, they walked six miles from our hotel near the La Guardia airport, all the way to the Arthur Ashe Tennis Center (home of the US Open), past Citi Field (home of the NY Mets), around Flushing Meadows, and back to our hotel via a route along Flushing Bay.

Today, I was able to wrap up my work activities early and when Charlie and the kids came to pick me up at the office, they were swooned by my co-worker who loaded them up with tinted safety glasses and ice cream.



We then ventured south to Coney Island.



Upon arriving, William instantly laid eyes on the Army booth...



While the girls instantly laid eyes on the most psychotic roller coaster I've ever seen.



I'm not sure where these children, our daughters, get their courageous sense of daring and adventure, but they were desperate to get on it.  While the boys hung back with me, and before Charlie could say "NOT IT!" I bought him a ticket and promised him a draught beer at the end of his super fun ride.



This roller coaster starts by going straight up ... STRAIGHT UP!



Before going straight down ... STRAIGHT DOWN!



After the ride, Charlie explained to me that he just closed his eyes as soon as the ride started and said, "MAKE IT STOP. PLEASE GOD, MAKE IT STOP."



Then he said after the first hill was behind him he, "screamed like a small child."





Here's my husband describing to me what it felt like to be on a roller coaster with a 90 degree vertical drop, followed by a 100-foot loop, and a zero gravity roll along with dives - hills - and a corkscrew ... in less than two minutes.





As Charlie was reliving the experience, he looked as though he wanted to lay down in a fetal position and never ride another roller coaster again. His daughters, meanwhile, were begging to ride it again.

Instead, we put the kids on some flying machine ride...



A log ride ...



This roller coaster horse race ride, which I rode along with the children because I thought it looked tame enough, but it nearly made me throw up my breakfast from two days ago....



And then Charlie earned his stripes as Best Dad Ever when he won the kids various prizes from the carnival games.  This one was very tough, flipping rubber frogs in to little lily pad bowls that were on a table that turned in circles...



But my husband is a rock star and totally sunk the entire frog body in the bowl on the last round.





We then ate hot dogs along the boardwalk ...



Rounding out our full Coney Island experience, we spent the next 30 minutes people watching and decided 30 minutes is not NEARLY enough.  We're now in a hotel room in Manhattan and at almost midnight, someone is jackhammering in the room next to us.  According to the front desk, they're actually in a DIFFERENT building that shares an adjacent wall, and there is nothing they can do about the fact that the whole room is shaking and there is plaster coming off the ceiling.  Despite that, our kids are conked out on the floor of our tiny 150 square foot hotel room (that cost twice as many dollars).



In the city that never sleeps, our children most definitely are.