Eyes to the Sky

What a beautiful and unseasonally pleasant day it was today! We decided to take a drive over to Centerport with the boys, to introduce them to The Vanderbilt Estate. These sprawling historic grounds have a lot of wonderful things to see: marine, natural history, and fine arts museums, planetarium, a beautiful mansion, and breathtaking gardens (ok, not so breathtaking in late November, but gorgeous in the spring and summer). They even have a temporary collection of some pretty large dinosaurs "laying around" behind one of the buildings for public viewing. It is waiting to be moved to a more permanent location.

We started out by taking the boys to the planetarium, because they LOVE talking and learning about the planets and constellations. They know all their planets (not in order), and some of the major constellations, so we thought they would really enjoy this show. Logan LOVED the show....Tristan and Jackson, not so much. At first Jackson was fine. In fact he and Tristan were both very excited to be there. They knew that it was going to get dark, so that wasn't a surprise....but once the lights went out, Tristan got very nervous.

I was able to distract him by talking about what we were getting ready to see...then he was more comfortable, and starting to enjoy the show. Then about 1/3 of the way through the show... they showed a space shuttle taking off, and the narrarator said "Here we go." Somehow, it set Jackson off, and that set Tristan off...so the three of us left the planetarium, and Stu and Logan stayed in and enjoyed the remainder of the show.

While waiting for the show to let out, the three of us decided to take a walk, and stumbled upon the dinosaur collection that was around back...What a GREAT surprise!! The boys had a blast. They LOVE dinosaurs, and enjoy going to our local dinosaur museum periodically, and have even been into NY City to see them at The Museum of Natural History. Once the show let out, we went to find Stu and Logan. Jackson and Tristan couldn't wait to show off the dinosaurs that they "found".

We enjoyed the afternoon by exploring the rest of the grounds, then went for a late lunch. We went home to relax for about an hour, then got back into the car and headed over to The Holtsville Ecology Center for their annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. We had never been, so weren't quite sure what to expect. There were hundreds of people there standing around in the COLD...The temperature dropped considerably after the sun went down.

After standing around for 20 minutes or so, all of a sudden a helicopter flies overhead...and who is hanging out of it waving to everyone, but SANTA CLAUS!!!! He flew around and around over and over again for about 5-10 minutes, then there was a small parade of well lit fire engines...then the big tree was lit while the carolers sang. The boys LOVED it! Tristan said, Mommy...what a GREAT surprise!!"

Unfortunately I didn't get any shots of St. Nick flying around in the helicopter, but click below to see a PhotoShow of our day at The Vanderbilt Estate.

The Vanderbilt Estate