NYC

Well my trip away was a success for everyone! Joel did a great job with the girls and had everyone under control for 4 full days! The girls asked for me on the first day, but after that they settled into a (busy) routine and didn't seem to miss me too much! I must say though that I think the three of them bonded quite a bit while I was gone--the past couple days the girls have really missed him when he's away at work and keep talking about all the fun things they did together!

Joel kept the girls very entertained-they went to the zoo, listened to live music at Central Market for dinner, a Celtic festival with our friends Matt and Emily (and daughter Daphne), Cat-mama and Papa's house, the park, etc. He was even able to convince Larkin to finally change out of her dress that she'd been wearing for 5 days (and nights!) straight--a real accomplishment--she was obsessed with this dress!! :)

My trip went very well--all my flights were on time and it was so nice to just not have any responsibility for a few days!! With all the down-time traveling on the plane, subway, trains, etc., I was even able to finish the last 500 pages of my 600 page book!

One of the first things we did while I was there was to get a haircut--awesome that I did not have to arrange a babysitter or coordinate with Joel's schedule!!! Patrick kept me very busy touring NYC, and I have the sore leg muscles to prove it. I had been there before once with Joel, so many of the touristy sites I had already seen--but we did do some things that were on my list, like the Metropolitan Museum (got to put my Art History classes to use!). We saw a lot of Dutch paintings, Impressionist art, and a really neat photography exhibit. That place is huge though and it would take you a week to see it all!

Pat lives on Staten Island, which is a 25 min ferry ride from Manhattan. Here's a pic of a Fort Wadsworth, which is on Staten Island. This fort is at the entrance of NY harbor and protected NY city for 200 yrs.
Here's me freezing my tookus off underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. It was really cold the first day of my trip, but after that it stayed in the low 60s.

Pat and Sara's live on the top floor of a house that was built in the late 1800's or early 1900's...I can't remember when, but it's an old house! This is the view out of their living room window--a huge Catholic church, but if you look off in the distance you can see Manhattan. It was a little hazy on this day, so downtown is not super clear-but on clear days the view was great!

Here's a pic of Patrick in front of his work-his office is on Broadway. The day I arrived, there was a ticker tape parade for the Yankees who just won the World Series. Sara also works on Broadway, and had to get to her office by 6am to avoid the crowds and get into her building. The parade goes down Broadway and people started finding spots along the parade route at 2am. CRAAAAZY fans. We walked down the street the day after the parade, and there was paper EVERYWHERE!! You can see some of it leftover here on the ground the following day, but this picture in no way does justice to the amount of paper that we saw!!

Sara is a lawyer and was in the midst of a "fire drill" at work (her term for when things get super busy and she has to work a lot on the weekend!) so I didn't get to see her too much, but we did go to a Broadway show together. We saw West Side Story. Everyone always says that you HAVE TO see a show when you go to NYC, and now I understand why. I've never been a fan of musicals (at least not in the movie format), but West Side Story was amazing! The singing, dancing, and costumes were so beautiful to watch and it was fun to just "check-out" for a while mentally and get sucked into the show!

Here's the three of us in Times Square.

We also ate tons of great food-- toured "Little India" and had the best Indian food ever (my favorite), went to Katz's deli, and had lots of pizza and bagels!

There are a few other things that we did, but I've run out of time to tell it all. My vacation is most definitely over--Willa is here trying to type on the computer and her finger is moving dangerously close to the power key...back to reality!!

Thanks Pat and Sara for a great trip!!!