Paterson, New Jersey

Great Falls waterfall in Paterson

Compare and contrast: Sam's last visit to the same waterfall - November 2008

A stone's throw away

Historical trains outside of Paterson Museum

And Sam's favorite part - model rail road!

New Year's Festivities in Russian School

New Year's concert at Sam's Russian school.

The kids were visited by Ded Moroz, the Russian Santa

Checking out the gift from Ded Moroz

Winter concert in school

Surprise for Daddy

Sam is very proud of the surprises he and mom made for daddy. Sticky business!

"Please Touch" Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Sam is a libertarian

 

Hmmm. I see now what mommy meant when she said the front month gasoline futures are overpriced...

Kid-size supermarket

 
Would that be debit or credit?

Loading "coal" into the steam train engine

Thanksgiving in Washington DC, Part 3

Mount Vernon (George Washington's house)

Washington retired here after finishing his presidency. Sam is checking out a kids activity map of the property.

The view from the house's back yard... Washington knew how to choose his real estate!

Gingerbread houses

Front lawn of the house

Woodlawn Plantation, near Washington, DC

Some of Washington's family members lived here over generations. It's a few miles from Mount Vernon

Going back to our roots - a Russian feast

Thanksgiving Break in Washington, DC - Part 2

National Postal Museum

This museum tells about the mail service, how it works and its history. Sorting out packages was really fun. You sort them by throwing them in the correct basket and a light goes up if you hit the right one!

  

Canceling out stamps while daddy is checking out the bar code scanning machine

Trucks that move mail between post office distribution centers


and a slightly older model of that mail truck...

Thanksgiving in Washington, DC: Part 1

Hillwood Estate, near Washington DC

 This was an estate of Mrs. Post, who inherited a large fortune from a cereal business. She was really into Russian imperial antiques (paintings of tsars, Faberge eggs, etc).

 

 

 On the staircase, that's a portrait of Catherine the Great.

This clock in the shape of an African woman shows time with her eyes (the digits for hour and minute are in each of the eyes)

On the grand staircase of the house, behind a wall of Russian tsar portraits

 

Air and Space Museum - Udvar-Hazy Center (near the Washington Dulles airport)

 Amazingly, this was open on Thanksgiving day (for which we give many thanks!).

Dress code: airplane-casual.

Shuttle Discovery

Space essentials, like coffee, M&M's chocolates, borscht soup and makeup

The museum staff gave Sam an activity worksheet with pictures of airplanes. He had to find those planes in the museum and then read the name of the plane on the description plaque, and find out if it contained a name of an animal or bird (for example, black hawk). He then had to write those down on this sheet and hand in the completed sheet at the museum reception desk, for which he proudly received stamps and stickers.

A recreation of an traffic-control tower, where you can watch airplanes land and hear the communications between the planes and air traffic controllers at Dulles Airport nearby

Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey

Marshmallow science - that's Sam and Noa's kind of science.  Making stuff with marshmallows and toothpicks.

 

Climbing tower

Marine animals touch tank. You can touch crabs, snails and other river and sea animals.

With Sam's new nail hammering skills, maybe he can be put to use to hang one of his parents' framed pictures which they never seem to get around to hang...

Noa and Sam in a "touch tunnel" - you walk/crawl through it in complete pitch darkness. This is the night vision camera's view of them inside of the tunnel.