East Coast Adventure

Cruz went on his first airplane ride from San Francisco to Pittsburgh for his Uncle Jason's wedding. He did really well during the flight and enjoyed himself by flirting with the flight attendants. Uncle Jason's (Chang) wedding was very nice and the Cortez family enjoyed the 20 varieties of cookies baked by Sara's (Jason's now-wife) relatives at the cookie table. Cruz even had time to visit the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh.

Next, the Cortez family drove from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn to visit Auntie Jen and Chris. We spent the day walking around the tree-covered streets and enjoying good ice-cream! Cruz also got to meet Auntie Jen's friends from art school whom Sue and Ben have known for a long time.

While in New York, we also got to meet Julia, the beautiful newborn daughter of Joe and Danielle. Coincidentally, Joe and Danielle met Cruz for the first time when he was about Julia's age. She was absolutely precious.

Next we headed off to Cambridge where we stayed with Marla, Jason and Ethan. It was the first time Cruz and the "original" Ethan met. We call him the original Ethan since he is the first of the two Ethans that Cruz is friends with and we deemed them unofficial cousins since neither one has any actual blood cousins yet. Cruz loved crawling after Ethan the entire visit, sometimes trying to steal Ethan's favorite stuffed animal. Ethan was very courteous about sharing Pepito but definitely not about sharing his nanny!

Thanks to the nanny however, the parents were able to enjoy a nice Italian meal in Boston.

Next stop was Cynthia and David's place in Cambridge for breakfast where the adults ate and poor Cruz threw up all over mom. Luckily, he avoided throwing up on their nice new white sofa!

We quickly headed over to the Cape where Cruz enjoyed all the fun toys that David's mom had at the house.

Probably the highlight of the trip for Cruz was dipping his legs into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.

Our last and final stop was the northshore where we stayed in Andover. We got to see Auntie Jen's high school campus and then had lunch with Karen and Charles (Cruz' surrogate grandparents).

As you can tell, it was a whirlwind tour of the East Coast. Poor Cruz stayed at 6 different places in 10 days! Overall, it was a great opportunity to reunite with so many people. Next time, however, we will be visiting in the fall or spring in order to avoid the heat and humidity!