Museum and Membership

Eric and I had a really nice little weekend. The weather was gorgeous, once again. I am loving this weather right now - it's finally warming up, but we're definitely not into the dead heat of summer yet. I can wear sundresses and open the windows in our apartment. The sun is shining, but it's accompanied by a nice breeze. Aaahhh, finally. That winter was just too long.

Eric was very busy at work last week. He worked really late on Thursday night, and just had so many things going on at once at work. He had so much to do, he was actually having to turn down work, which is crazy. So, I was pretty excited that he didn't have to work on Saturday. We decided to make a really fun day of it.

We walked up to the Natural History Museum so we could enjoy the weather. It's over 20 blocks north of our apartment, so it was a little bit of a hike. We had not yet been to any of the NYC museums, so it was about time to cross one off the list. We had a really nice time wandering through and checking out all the exhibits.

Planets in the Hall of the Universe

Alaska Moose Display in the North American Mammals Exhibit

Alaska Brown Bear, fixin' to eat some fish

I think this is a jaguar, but I didn't make note of it for sure and I'm not super up on my big cats. So, forgive me if it's actually a leopard.

My favorite was probably the Hall of Ocean Life, which had a huge model blue whale suspended from the ceiling. And, of course, there were tons of other animals - manatees, giant squids, etc. They even had one of a huge whale eating a giant squid, but it was too dark to take a picture (to simulate the dark deep ocean, of course). Pretty cool display, though.

The big blue whale

A close second favorite exhibit was the dinosaurs. T-Rex is always a crowd pleaser! Especially because Eric and I always laugh at one picture of me from our wedding, as he is about to feed me cake - my arms are all hunched in, T-Rex style. So naturally, we had to do a re-creation at the museum!

So glad this pose is captured on film. Thank goodness the professional pics had a better angle, so I don't look so dinosaur-y in ALL of our cake pictures.

My 2009 recreation of my wedding cake pose, with my T-rex friend.

Mammoth

You didn't think I would let Eric get out of the Dinosaur Wing without joining in the posing fun, now did you?

After we left the museum, we stopped at the nearby Shake Shack for a late lunch. We had heard that Shake Shack has some of the best burgers in the city, and had been meaning to try it for some time, but the line was always too long! We decided to wait it out this time, and it was so good. Five Guys burgers are still my most favorite burgers (and even more so, I LOVE their fries), but these burgers were a good close second. I had a Shack Burger, fries, and an awesome "concrete" called the Upper West Slide. A "concrete" is a really thick milkshake. Actually, it's really closer to the consistency of a Wendy's Frosty. Then they mix in all kinds of yumminess with it. My Upper West Slide was vanilla custard mixed with strawberry puree, fresh banana, and shortbread cookies. It was delicious! Eric also tried a New York Dog and a vanilla shake. Mmm, mmm. We'll definitely be going back there again!

A tray of Shake Shack deliciousness. That's my concrete in the bottom left corner! Mmm, my mouth is watering.

After lunch we walked home and spent the night in watching the Cavs. And that's all I'll say about that, except that being a Cleveland fan can bring nothing but heartache. Oh, Cleveland.

Sunday was a big day for us. We became members of the church we have been going to, Holy Trinity Lutheran! It is our first time being adult members of a congregation, and it feels nice to have a church home after being so transient for so many years. It was an especially big step for Eric, who has been Catholic his whole life. As a lifelong Lutheran myself, I'm excited to have him join us!

The membership induction was very nice. One of the other new members was baptized first, then we all went to the altar and did an affirmation of baptism. After the service they had a potluck lunch, so we were able to mingle with members of the congregation as well as our fellow new members. Also, an added nice surprise: my dad and sister dedicated the church altar flowers to us, in honor of us finding a home church! I was so surprised when I saw their names (and ours!) in the bulletin for that. So sweet.

After church, Eric had to go to work, unfortunately. He only stayed a few hours then when he came home we took Achilles to the dog park. Once again, the weather was amazing! Then Eric made some of his to-die-for chicken parmigiana for dinner. Mmmm.

And that was our weekend! Hope you all enjoyed yours, as well.