Birthdays and Beaches

Hello everybody!

Hope that you are all well and had a great August. We did! The hot weather has continued and we have been making the most of New York's beaches. When we moved here I had no idea that there were so many really nice beaches. Earlier in the summer we had been to Coney Island a couple of times, Lyn and the boys had been to Rockaway beach, also on the tube, and we'd taken the boat to Sandy Hook on the Jersey Shore.

For my birthday (in case you hadn't guessed this is Tom typing) we had already decided to go back to Sandy Hook on the Sunday. We then had an invitation to go out to Long Island on the Saturday. Lyn's friend Ayako was staying at her parents-in-laws for the weekend and we went and met them there. After a train journey to Bay Shore we went to a splash park (a water park for little kids) where Sam and Max played with Brigid and Oscar. Then after lunch we drove out to Fire Island, which was an incredible beach with really lovely sea. The boys love the beach and like jumping the waves and building sandcastles. As the tide came in we had to build defences to protect our things from rogue waves, which was really fun.

The experience of Fire Island inspired us to try out the other beaches that are close to New York on Long Island. The next weekend we went to Long Beach, which is only just outside of the city. Closer to New York it was a bit busier, but also really nice. Then last weekend for Sam's birthday we went to Jones Beach, which is a State Park and equally beautiful. The south coast of Long Island has spit-like islands just off the coast which are connected at various places by bridges or bits of land. These beaches are on the spits. They are all about an hour and a half away on various train/bus/ferry combinations. Here is a map if I haven't described it very well.

On my birthday we got up slowly and after a delicious pancake breakfast Lyn and I dropped the kids off at the nursery. We then went to a French restaurant called Artisenal where they do a very good fondue. After lunch we went and played mini golf on Randall's Island and then went to Central Park with the boys. It was a fun day.

Sam's birthday was this weekend and after the beach on Saturday he had a great day on Sunday. We spent the morning opening and playing with his presents and then Paul came round. We had pizza, cake and ice cream for lunch and then went to Liberty Park, which is probably Sam's favourite place in New York. He did a lot of cycling on his brand new bike, played on the disused trains and went to the playground. We had a picnic in the park and then got the boat home at sunset.

Last night I went to the US Open tennis. They have floodlights and so have an evening session on the Arthur Ashe court. It's the biggest court in tennis, seating almost 24,000, bigger than a few grounds of recent Premier League teams and 50% bigger than Blackpool! Last night local favourite Andy Roddick went out in the second round to Janko Tipsarevic. It was quite an upset and a really good match. There were some cracking rallies and amazing shots. The surface is slower than Wimbledon's grass, so the points tend to last longer. Lyn is there tonight, watching Sharapova and Djokovic, which I'm currently watching on tv. People sitting near Lyn have just been kicked out for fighting in the stands! It couldn't really be more different from Wimbledon.

We've put some new photos of the the beaches and birthdays on our flickr site.

On Saturday we're off to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons for a week's holiday. Check back in a couple of weeks and we should have some photos of volcanic pools, geysers, mountains and wildlife.

Lots of love,

Tom, Lyn, Sam and Max