St. John's and Columbia

Every week we have playgroup with some friends from church. It's always fun and I'm so grateful for all the Moms who think of awesome things for us to do. This last week we went uptown to St. John's Cathedral. In normal little kid fashion, we ran through the cathedral in about 4 1/2 minutes and then hit the gardens to find (stalk, chase, terrorize, whatever) the Cathedral's three peacocks.  

 

Such a super pretty church. Talmage and I had a good discussion about churches and temples and all the different religions of the world. It was deep considering it lasted 5 minutes and was with a 4-year-old.

A few of the little people climbing (agh, did their mothers really let them do that?) in the Cathedral.

Getting a picture of all of the kids is mostly pointless, but still kind of cute. You get the picture though: lots of cute blonde children (you don't have to be blonde to hang out with us, but I did notice that they're almost all towheads!) And btw, it was like attack of the strollers when we got out of the Subway at 110th.

After the Cathedral we all split up and headed in our own directions. A few of us went up to Columbia to eat our picnic and see the school. I went up to reminisce. I must admit, my stomach was churning just a little when I walked onto that campus. That first year of law school sure was a doozy, and boy everything that has happened since. It's funny that Columbia was my dream for so long (for me, and then for James) and yet it took me almost two months to even visit after coming back to the city. That's saying something. It was a hard year in so many ways, and going back I remembered some of those feelings, fears and stress. But at least Talmage didn't remember that he used to think his Daddy lived at this school because it was the only place he ever saw him ;)

And this was Ever Knight's first trip to Columbia (out of utero!) He was the reason we left this school--he was the person who brought us to Stanford, maybe that's another reason why my emotions were tingling. Everett thought everything about this campus was pretty awesome though, from the stairs to the statues to the fountains. He is such a funny kid--he looks at the picture above and says, "I'm so sad. I cwying!" Mostly he was mad that I said it was time to go. Who knows, maybe he'll be our family's first Columbia grad! Now wouldn't that be ironic.