uncle mervie's big time

Let's start at the very begiiiiining

a very good place to staaaaaht

When you read you begin with ...A  B  C

When you vacation with uncle merv you begin with....

Airport drinkie pooooooooos

We took a trip back east! It was a whirlwind of activity, we checked so many things off of so many lists. It was the greatest, and now that we're back I think we're all still coming down from the constant movement and laughter and food and booze and fun. I love visiting with my peeps! My peeps are good peeps.

Let's begin!

I never get the good airplanes anymore. The ones with the cool consoles and personalized entertainment, you know? Look how close that dumb tv screen was to our fool heads. And they showed My Big Fat Greek Wedding Two, just to be assholes. 

But we made it to the New of Jork in the blink of six hours, and were soon being whisked off to the upper west side by this guy

Clara stage whispered to me "His taxi license is expired."  Scandal. 

 And before we knew it, our heads were hanging out of one of our very favorite windows of all.

we looked north*

and we looked south*

 *if those are not the correct directions, please reverse them or look at them in the mirror or something. It will be fine. 

We visited with the lovely MB for a while and got our bearings, then took ourselves over to Hi Life for half off sushi and marvelous mugs of rose sangria

After dinner we had a lovely walk through the neighborhood to the river basin where we enjoyed a nightcap and dessert, then we made our way back to MB's under the light of a big full moon. We went to bed like good girls and boys on a school night, and MB and I only got busted once for cracking up instead of sleeping in our shared bed. It was hard to sleep though, when the view outside the window looked like this

full moon over Gotham

 The next morning, poor Mar had to go to work while the rest of us explored Central Park and ate good things

I'm allowed to take photos of the kids now! The only rule is "one and done", no matter how much I'd like to correct the shot. Sometimes one and done resulted in me snapping the photo before my girl had time to Wipe That Look off of her face

Shakespeare garden

view from Bellvedere Castle when we finally found it after resorting to the GPS after admitting that our "which way feels castle-y" navigation wasn't working out all that well

 We had lunch at the one and only Artie's Delicatessen

love this place, love that waiter, love my peeps. One and done, baby.

loooooove that lunch

Then we missed one train but made a different one, and even had time to pick up a beverage from a cart at the top of the track. Look at my cool beer:

It cost $3.75! I heart NY

the look

We made it all the way to mom's where we inexplicably took zero photos on a lovely evening of thai chicken, cool drinks, long swims, and big laughs. We all slept well that night and then were up and out on the early side for a field trip!

Look at these two!

Look at these two!

Auntie Lill has the look too!

We won her over, though.

Our field trip was up to Rhode Island for lunch with Aunt Lill, who is lovely and poised and a very happy birthday girl. The kids and I were determined to get her talking about the old days growing up with Dad, we were aiming to hear some dirt about that guy. No one can be that perfect, right? All we got, though,  was a heartwarming story about young Joe and his dead dog, and a mildly concerning recounting of a time when Aunt Lill hit him on the head with a hairbrush. So, yeah. I guess that good kid facade was the real deal after all!

These field trip photos don't even hint at the super awesome fact that we had picked Ellie up on the way to Lill's, and by picked her up I mean we went to her house then made her drive us to Rhode Island. Let's drag this out though, shall we?

Coming up on Uncle Merv's Big Time:

Chapter Two: I went to New London for 48 hours and all I got was bonnet 
Chapter Three: Milford pitstop where laws were broken
Chapter Four: Lesbian Lovefest
Chapter Five: Ennnnn Whyyyyy Ceeeeeeeeee