Visitors!

Well now that the Toy Fair pictures are all posted, what else have I been up to in the past few months? I'll post the most exciting thing that happened: we had visitors! Friends from Virginia stopped by on their way up and back to Long Island. So it was only like one day, and a half of another day, but still very happy to see them. So we got a few pictures of the stuff we did.

They had been driving all morning and got to New Jersey near lunchtime. So we started out at White Castle, simple but something they don't get in Virginia. My friend tried to eat 20 sliders and managed to get to 13 and a couple orders of onion rings.

I didn't get as many pictures as I thought but there's enough to chat about what we did. Click on the "Read more" below!

We decided to go to the giant flea market in Englishtown. Except it was cold, had just snowed a day ago, and was a 95% empty ghost town. Some of the indoor places were still open. I thought we got a few pictures of all the emptiness but it was kind of cold outside and we just ran through it quickly since it was not living up to the hype we gave it.

My friend bought a small pocket knife at a surplus army trinket booth. Yay souvenirs.

We went to the nearby mall with a Lego Store in it, something else they don't have near them in Virginia. Saw this Kingdom Hearts sticker in Hot Topic and thought it could be for the Avenger Black Widow, because she doesn't have any powers but her friends sure do. And okay if you want to be all sappy about it, I guess it also applies to us and our visiting friends, too. Aww.

So the flea market was a bust, but at least we tried. Would you be happy to get this pin? Or would it be a little sad?

We still had a little daylight left and we tried to go all the way back over to check out Princeton. On the way there, driving through the giant Gothic houses in Hightstown caught their attention and we parked there and walked around a little instead. 

We did make it to Princeton with a small amount of daylight left but everybody was too exhausted to consider walking around. Lots of diner places to choose from but we wound up at Ruby Tuesday for healthier salad options and here's my friend's "salad" which is mostly cheese, bacon bits, black olives, and thousand island dressing. So yeah totally healthy salad.

They left early the next morning and then came back at night a few days later. Only enough time for a simple McDinner but we had Shamrock Shakes so that kind of elevated the experience. They were leaving the next day but we had a bit of the morning to do something with, so we wound up in Princeton to check out the awesome Church there.

Well now our visiting friends can use the misleading phrase "I went to Princeton!" as this Church is on the college campus. We quickly stopped into the bookstore first but I guess I didn't get any pictures in there.

Check out the stained glass windows projecting those pretty colors over there.

Here's the big altar area where the speeches are made. There was a concert scheduled here today, and it was only an hour or two from when we visited, but we did not have the time to stay. But knowing they have concerts here, maybe we can check one out later.

I'm sure that massive pipe organ sounds amazing. How fun to notice that these pipe organs are not movable like other instruments. You can only play it, or hear it, at the church.

That tissue box looked a little out-of-place among the intricate railings. There were boxes of tissues all over this place.

Those pipes coming out of the wall are probably for the organ, but it looks like this thing is some kind of drag racing car? Or... can those cars play organ music?

There's a tough looking lock on this door that's always supposed to be open, right? Is this for like, keeping out giant bears or something?

As we were leaving, somebody told us the story about how when the church was under construction, the Dean would scowl at the workers when he passed by every day. So much that they carved a sculpture of his face and hid it up on top of that open area up there, you have to zoom in on this picture to really see it. It was there for several years before somebody who knew the dean looked up and recognized the unmistakable scowl.

We were walking around the outside of the church and saw this odd speech terrace. Imagine being up there talking to a crowd below.

Here's a shot looking away from the church. You can pretty much point your camera in any direction here and get a good picture. Remember the snow?

The guy at the front of the church also told us the story about how Yale engineers helped work on it. And they snuck a Yale mascot Bulldog on this rain spout. How many other secrets are in designs here?

 I don't think this is vandalism or graffiti or anything, but what do you think this chalk "SAVE" means?

 Here's that statue that looks like something else is going on from this angle. It's right outside the church.

We planned on eating lunch at a favorite pub place in Princeton, but Winberie's was closed for renovations. The root beer floats at Stewart's were another talked-about option that we were happy to fall back on.

 It had been a while since we've had a good hot dog lunch, with cheese waffle fries and root beer float, this was a weiner. Or... winner?

 A quick stop into the local Family Fun Hobbies store before they were going to leave. We saw this 40,320-piece puzzle. It was $600 and we were told it was the size of a carpet. So if you didn't know about this sort of thing, I guess epic puzzles exist if you dare try.

Here's a picture we took of Turbo to tell the following long story: Our visiting friends were leaving but they parked over by the dumpsters, and the garbage truck just pulled in behind them. So they were waiting to leave, and we were outside the van watching the dumpster get lifted into the air. When the dumpster was near the top of being lifted, a squirrel LEAPS out if it! Arms and legs spread wide it lands, from like a 40-foot drop, in the muddy ground and bolts away at high speed! AHH! Was that Turbo? Is he okay?! Later that afternoon we spotted him and even though we don't know for sure if he took that leap, it's fun to image he did and he's okay.