NY Part 2; Aurora Adventures

Who is excited? As promised, the NY vacation series continues.
Our first official night there we went out to eat at a restaurant called Pumpkin Hill. It is a great bistro in a rustic farmhouse with amazing food and an even more amazing cook; cousin Alex. He hooked us up with some awesome appetizers and all of the food was delicious.

Friday we headed to Grisamore Farms to pick raspberries and cherries. I think I ate more than I picked!

Before

After

It was really hot and humid but we had to get cherries so we headed over to the cherry orchard.

And I might have had to climb the tree to get the best cherries...

We picked $50 worth of cherries, this translates directly into stomach aches and cherries for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the remainer of the trip. Later that afternoon we shopped at my all time favorite; Mackenzie Childs where I spent my summer school paycheck on these beauties...Thanks Julie!

The grounds at Mackenzie Childs are gorgeous, we enjoyed the flowers and baby gosling who followed the gardener around :)

That night we grilled out and ate at the picnic table. Here is my cousin (and fellow teacher!) Peter and his son/Andrew Rios' doppleganger; Harris.

We all rested up that night because Saturday was Aurorafest and most of us planned to run in either the 1 mile or 2.5 mile run. Guess which one I picked?

Photo finish for my mom and I completing the 1 mile run in 12 minutes! I am NOT a runner, you know this if you read about Pat's Run. There I finished about 17,000th. In the Aurora Run, I finished 6th...not too shabby (hey, I finished without stopping!) The rest of the running family placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd in their respective age groups...here we are with our ribbons/trophy. There is no ribbon for 6th place...19-29 was a popular age group ;)

After the run we had a nice picnic at Aunt Trudy and Uncle Ron's.

Harris read a magazine in the hammock and Platt and I played with play-doh. Plenty of fresh fruit, veggies and lemonade made the afternoon perfect.

We went back down to the village for the parade and I picked out my future home...

The parade was brief but there was plenty of candy for Harris to catch as well as local celebrities to see :)

After the parade we watched a jousting match and Harris and I sorted his candy (the teacher in me couldn't resist!).

We had Chinese takeout for dinner and went for dessert at the quintessential ice cream stand; Cream at the Top. Platt and I took equal amounts of time finishing our ice cream :)

Aurorafest 2011 was a success! Stay tuned for the afternoon at the lake, Dorie's, mango salsa take 2 and other exciting events.