Leah had a blast racing these boats and when it was time to go she said, "I need my boat, I need my blue boat!" Grandma spoiled her and bought her a little boat in the gift shop. Oliver now uses it at bath time.
Oops I just deleted the last picture and it's too hard to post them lately, must do them one at a time, so I'll just describe it to you - my Mom and Dad on the deck of the ship. :)
Levin gave his brother Oliver a lasso for Christmas. My brother picked it out for us and then Christmas afternoon my dad, my brother Jim, Levin, Oliver, and Jared went out to practice. You can see from this picture here that obviously at some point they caught Milky Way.
Milky Way "went to live with another man." That's what I told Leah when Milky Way went to the butcher. It's not a lie, he went to the butcher's house to live for about one day, and then maybe if all dogs go to heaven so do all steers. Either way, we have had a couple of meals from old Milky Way, or the moo-cow as Leah called him and he tastes pretty fine if I do say so. I am now looking for any yummy beef recipes as we have a freezer full and need variety from pot-roasts, hamburgers, and grilled steak. I can't buy chicken when I have free beef in the freezer and we only have until May before we have to unplug the freezer.
Here are Leah and Oliver in my Christmas present from Levin - a double jogging stroller. Not that I jog . . .
What a cute boy!!
Grandpa and Leah on the cannons.
Grandpa and Oliver
Leah helping Oliver open his present.
Yea! It's a book!!! Leah was so excited for the presents and not just her own. She's a true Flake in that regard.
When we asked Leah what she wanted from Santa she always said candy. Well, she got her wish and ate plenty of it.
We hope he's athletic. I think this toy was the overall favorite as Leah loves it too.
Oliver sporting his new clothes. 
My parents arrived on Christmas Eve. While we waited for Jim's Prime Rib to cook we let Leah open one of her presents. She loves the Fisher Price Little People so we bought her their little Nativity. She had such a fun time playing with it. Note: It is not a sheep, it is a little lamb. I think Leah got the Nativity story and Mary had a little lamb combined. Any time we talked about baby Jesus and I mentioned a sheep I was corrected that he is a little lamb.
Grandma and Oliver.
Jumping on the bed at the hotel. Luckily she hasn't asked to jump on the bed at our house.
Central Park ice skating - we were there too early so we couldn't go. Do we look like we ready for Moscow winter next year?? 
The funnest part of the entire trip! We three went out and left Levin at the hotel with the kids. He called because Oliver was going crazy and we needed to get home ASAP. We could not find a cab for the life of us so finally jumped on a rick-shaw. We went cruising through Time Square this way. Someone actually took a picture of us. So maybe somewhere in the blogging universe you could see a similar picture on someone else's blog. Don't you feel sorry for the poor bicyclist hauling us around! I think it was more expensive than a cab, but a taxi wouldn't have been so exciting right??
Does she look warm?? We don't have any pictures of Oliver, but he is in a similar cozy situation but with two sunshades pulled over him. He didn't see much of New York.
The Statue of Liberty.
Oliver was a pretty good little traveler. I have discovered I would hate to live in New York City. Having two little kids is not exactly easy to travel around there. We hefted double strollers down stairs and escalators - the escalator sucking my pants up into it too. We were quite the nuisance to other travellers I am sure. Oh and did I mention you have to go out the emergency exit every time you leave the subway? No one ever answers the call so we got to where we didn't mind just setting off the alarm and taking off. We did swipe our cards though so we at least paid. 
Here they are at the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. That place was a madhouse of people.
Here we are at the Macy's on 34th Street.
Here we are at the Jack Dempsey Restaurant. He was "The Manassa Mauler" and we are from Manassa. I guess way back when Jack actually owned the place anyone from Manassa got to eat free. As we were paying we noticed one problem . . Dempsey is spelled Demsey. Is this a 419?? (You have to have lived in Nigeria to get that joke.) But seriously?? His picture was on the wall and they had some boxing gloves. I asked someone cleaning the table next to ours and she said they changed the name when they moved locations. Probably not an interesting story if you're not from Manassa, but hey I've been in Jack Dempsey's cabin he was born in. It's the only thing my town is famous for.
On the drive up. I bought Leah a new Dora hat . . which she LOVES of course. We made her wear the gloves on top the entire ride up.
At Wall Street. As Jim loves CNBC I think this was his favorite part and he said we could go home after we saw the bull. We'd only been in New York a couple of hours so we stayed.
Did I mention it was cold? Dani and i bought hats from a street vendor. Not sure if it was them or the scarves we bought later, but something made us sick. I was stupid and swapped hats with Dani since the guy only had two that weren't crazy colors. The stupid patch of fur caused me to be ridiculed the rest of the trip.