Our flight left at 11:37pm on Monday night. We were SO excited all day! We listened to the Justin Bieber cd all the way to the airport (no joke). The flight went well besides a little bit of turbulance which I do not enjoy, but I took dramamine so I was pretty drugged! We landed at the JFK airport at 6:00am, New York time. Jodi was there to greet us, and it was a happy, happy moment! We spent all day Tuesday just hanging around Jodi's house and playing with the kiddos. It was like Jodi never moved. . . except we were in New York. The kids warmed right up and everything picked up where it left off. Might I mention, it was pouring rain the day we got there. It wasn't very cold, but gosh, I've never in my life seen rain like that. Now I really know that Utah is a desert. There are trees EVERYWHERE on Long Island it looks like no civilization is in sight but really all of the buildings are nestled in trees. We also went on a drive on Tuesday just to see Long Island. It was pretty cool, we drove down by the water to Port Jefferson. It was so pretty!
After we crashed hard after being awake for 24 hours, we woke up feeling refreshed on Wednesday morning. We went into the city on Wednesday to take a tour of New York City. It was such a BLAST! I thought I would be freaked out by the City; overwhelmed and culture shocked but I wasn't at all. I really loved it. If I had to choose, I'd still say I'd be a cowgirl living in hickville before I lived in New York City but I could go both ways! We toured almost everything. . . we saw Central Park, Times Square, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, Rockefeller Center, Wallstreet (loved it!), Ground Zero/9/11, Brooklyn Bridge, etc. I could go on and on. We didn't get off of the tour bus at every stop but a lot of them we did like Wall Street, Ground Zero, Central Park, etc. Then we took a boat tour to the Statue of Liberty and to see Ellis Island and a bunch of other important buildings you can see from the shore but I forget. . . The tour was GREAT even though it poured rain when we were at Pier 16 to go see the Statue of Liberty. But I was okay with it, at least it wasn't cold. We saw a lot of familiar scenes in movies, which was really cool to stand where the stars have been! We also had a lot of fun trying to figure out where Kelly from "Regis and Kelly" lived. We also pretended to find Jennifer Anistons apartment, I think we got it narrowed down.
Thursday we went to the beach on Long Island! It was fun. It was cloudy and a bit foggy but it wasn't cold. We didn't swim in the water but we did put our feet/legs in. The waves that day were HUGE! We had a good time taking pictures, building sand castles, looking for seashells, and running from the waves.
Friday we went into the city to go to China town to shop and then to see Wicked on Broadway. Gosh, what fun. Caecee taught me how to wheel and deal with the Chinese people and although we didn't follow any of them to warehouses to buy knock off purses, we did get pretty good deals on knock offs! I bought two purses and one ginormous bottle of very expensive perfume for way cheap! Knock offs, but still the bags look great and the perfume smells the exact same. China town freaked me out. . . I had like major anxiety with all the people and everyone comes right up to your face saying "Pretty girl, want a purse? Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc." And if you even look at something that you might like, they think you've bought it. They start bagging it up and demanding money. Also, the shops are about 7ft wide and 15ft long. So it's kind of like walking into a long closet with stuff piled up and hanging on the walls. It was soooo crowed that I started to freak out a little bit. Since China town is in Brooklyn, it was also a little bit sketchy of an area. I wasn't worried because I'm a lot meaner than I look but it was definitley a culture shock. It was odd. But heck, we got a lot of shopping done in like a half hour because they move so quickly! We were running late for dinner so we ran through the crowded streets of New York, like you see in the movies. Yeah, we're cool like that.
Wicked was AWESOME! I've seen it before in Los Angeles and it was great but it was WAY better on Broadway in NYC. I absolutely loved it. It was just amazing!!! On Saturday we went to a duck pond/park and spent some time playing with the kids then we headed back to the airport. The trip went by so quickly. After I held in my tears, Jodi called me after we got through security and said that Elijah wouldn't stop crying. Dang, it was so hard to get on that airplane. We made it home safely and we had such a great trip. Best vacation of my life!!
I wish I could write about EVERYTHING we did, but it probably wouldn't be very enjoyable for others to read. We had so much fun and what I've wrote here is just skimming the surface. We did so much and made so many great memories. New York is absolutely amazing but the best part of the trip was spending time with the kiddos and Jodi! It was so great to see them!
Here is the slideshow of a lot of great pictures from the trip!I also took a lot of funny video on the trip but for some reason the slide show program won't let me put the videos in the slide show so I'll have to add them later. Between Caecee and I, we took A LOT of pictures but this slideshow includes my favorites and it gives you a good look at what we did on our trip!
Enjoy!
