New York City

So this past week I had to go to New York for business.  To say that traveling intimidates me is an understatement, but thankfully I had no problems and everything went really well with our client.  I had the evenings to myself so I went exploring in the general area around my hotel.

After my first day of meetings I went to my hotel.  Thanks to my brother, I got a pretty good upgrade on my hotel room.  When I went in, I saw this view.

Yes, that is the building that has the New Year's ball on it.  The ball is the white circle at the top of the picture.  I thought that this was really cool. I have a room that looks out on Times Square. That is until I decided to go to sleep and then even the light blocking shades couldn't keep the light from flashing.  Honestly it was a pretty cool experience for my first time in NYC.

The first night I decided to eat at the Hard Rock Café on Times Square.  It was pretty fun seeing a bunch of the instruments that my favorite bands had used.  There were guitars from Everclear, Lincoln Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even one of Ringo Star's drum sets. 

I took this for any of the Beetles fans that may follow our blog.

I then spent the rest of the evening walking around Times Square.  There are a lot of really cool stores so I tried to find different things that my kids would think were fun. 

This picture is 100% for Ella.  She loves Frozen!  I had to get a pictured with the life sized Sven.

Going down the escalator at the Disney Store they have "lanterns" from Tangled which I thought the girls would like.

Lego Buildings for Skyler.  There were a ton of them. And they were huge!

Lego Statues of Liberty.  (She was probably 25 feet tall)

The next day, between meetings, I went down Penn Station to grab some lunch.  There were all kinds of foods, but I decided to try some NY stromboli.  It tasted great, but was pretty greasy.  This is a picture of where I got it.  There were three or four stores jammed into that little space.

After my meetings the second day I decided to go and look at some of the history/architecture of New York.  Anybody who knows me well knows that I love history and I love detailed architecture.  So I started out and went through Bryant Park.  This park has to be one of my favorite place that I visited.  It was beautiful and had lots of little shops that sold everything from maps, food, wooden puzzles, to clothing.  It really was fun.

I then ran to Rockefeller Center to try and see if I could get into the Jimmy Fallon Show.  I got there 2 minutes after they gave the last ticket away.  Heather was pretty disappointed about that one.

I was a little early to see the Rockefeller Christmas tree in its full glory, but I think this picture helps you see how massive it really is.  Each one of the layers of scaffolding is 6 feet tall.  That makes the tree 54+ feet tall.

St. Patrick's Cathedral.  This is the real reason I wanted to be by Rockefeller Center.  To my disappointment they are in the middle of a restoration project so the majority of the building (inside and out) was covered in scaffolding. It was still a really cool experience and I am glad that I made the trek.

The naïve for the Virgin Mary.

St. Elisabeth.  I found it very interesting, the portrayal of John the Baptist baptizing Christ.

This painting went through World War II and was vandalized.  Despite a very careful restoration the slash marks across her face can still be seen.

The main part of the cathedral.  Sad to say it, but none of my pictures do justice for the beauty of the carving in stone and wood or show some of the beautiful symbolism that I found there. This was definitely worth the time for me to come and see.

Later in the evening I stopped by the New York Public Library.  Again the architecture here was amazing.

They had a Gutenberg Bible that was on display. 

This was in the periodical hall.  The entire room was paneled in wood and the wood was covered in intricate carving.  I can't even begin to imagine the amount of time that was put into building both of these buildings and the detail that was used. 

The rest of that night was spent getting a couple of things for the kiddos, and eating at an Italian restaurant called Sofias.  The food was excellent and the atmosphere was great.  All in all my trip turned out really well.  The only thing I wish I could have done differently was to bring Heather along.  It was fun, but it would have been so much better if she would have been able to be there with me.  I love you Wife.

Indians and Reindeer

Let's just all nod our heads in agreement that Kindergarten productions are adorable.  Since Lily and Skyler have both had Mrs. Lockhart as their kindergarten teacher, we knew that Skyler would be putting on a production for their annual Thanksgiving Feast.  Many a song were sung, but I only know this because Ben recorded everything for me since the whole thing took place during the babies' nap time.  I get to volunteer in there every week thanks to Ben being home every Friday, so we thought it was fair to let Ben go to the feast.

The kids could choose whether they wanted to be a pilgrim or a native American.  Skyler chose to be an Indian and so we got to work making his shirt.  I'm getting better at letting the kids take the reins on their own art projects and not being such a control freak.  Skyler painted clouds and part of our family and asked me to paint the worst looking cheetah ever (thankfully not visible in the pictures).

We don't let our kids buy lunch often even though they think it's so special, so Skyler was practically counting down the days until Ben bought him his "feast" of pizza, mashed potatoes, strawberries, and an apple.  

Apparently they honk when it's time to put a period at the end of the sentence.

Ella is so obsessed with reindeer now that she can't even say the word "rain" by itself anymore..

Happenings

Sometimes you lose your camera charger and sometimes that leaves you with just your iPhone to take pictures with. I went through my phone's pics and found a few I wanted to share.

Ben and I both agree that we prefer living in small towns.  Holly Springs is no exception.  Here, we have a lot of great stores but it's just small enough that you start to know people personally.  Pretty much everyone is kind and the town is so family-centered.  Every October Holly Springs throws a mini-fair called Hollyfest.  It's basically like the NC state fair except it's free and the parking is just a few feet away.  

Ben was busy finishing the fire pit during nap time so I grabbed Lily and Skyler and $10 and we went to Hollyfest.  We grabbed snow cones and deep fried girl scout cookies.  They had free rides, rock climbing, bounce houses, and even pig races.  They also had a bunch of tents to look at that were promoting local businesses and organizations.  The kids scored lots of free things like frisbees, frozen yogurt, and pumpkins.

Lily and Skyler exploring a fire truck.

Overall, I think this will be a yearly tradition.  I loved that it was the fair on a much smaller scale (and a much cheaper one too!)  The kids had a blast going from bouncy house to bouncy house.

Also, as a side note -- Clay Aiken was at Hollyfest campaigning for his future (now lost) election.  He was having his picture taken with random people coming in and out and he looked right at me and started putting his hand out to shake.  I basically said, "Um, no," under my breath and kept walking with Lily and Skyler.  Needless to say, I ended up having so much respect for NC for not voting in an American Idol runner up.  

The Tuesday before Halloween, Lily's dance class was supposed to come dressed up in their Halloween costumes.  So proud of myself for remembering, I grabbed Lily's costume on my way out the door.  It was about 2 minutes before the bell rang for school to get out that I realized I had grabbed Ella's costume.  Luckily, the dance studio always has costumes there and so Lily was able to borrow one.  Whew.  That was a narrow escape from scarring her for life.

One of our favorite things to do on weekends or days off of school is to head over to my parents' house.  They do arts and crafts and run around in the back yard.  Typically, Papa takes them for a walk down to the neighborhood park and then we eat Cook Out for dinner.  It's always fun to visit and the kids are always asking when we'll be visiting Nanni and Papa next.  Whenever I tell them I have a surprise their first response is always, "Are we going to Nanni and Papa's house?!"  I hope the excitement never fades.

For a few months now we've been preparing for our fire pit.  It was the first project we had in mind after we moved into our house.  Obviously we were going to build it ourselves since Ben has those skills and it would save us a ton of money.  But if you've ever looked at a step-by-step guide of how to build a fire pit with a paver patio, it's not as simple as you'd think.  I think the actual fire pit building part was the easiest.  We did our research, found the best prices on things, and got to work.  We ordered our bricks and pavers on sale online and picked them up.  When we looked at the price of sand and gravel (since it requires a lot of sand and gravel to flatten out the ground) we just kind of laughed it off and went without buying any.  Instead we went back to the creek behind our house and dug out several wheelbarrows full of sand and gravel.  We kind of laughed about how cheap that made us, but hey, it worked.  

We finally had the chance to use the fire pit on Friday.  We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores.  The kids thought it was the coolest experience ever and thanked us for letting them stay up so late.  FYI it was 6 PM.  Sometimes daylights savings ending has its perks.  But it was great because Lily and Skyler took a huge step toward getting over their fear of fire.  On the other hand, we discovered that Ella is a pyromaniac.  So there's that.  But I'm so excited that it's done because we will be able to have a lot more fireside dinners and Ben will be able to make dutch oven dinners far more often.

Halloween was greatly anticipated this year.  The kids may have prayed multiple times the week before that they would have a fun Halloween.  I think trick-or-treating in the mountains and trunk-or-treating at the church really got them excited about the real deal.

The kids get off the bus at 4:30 so we ran home, made dinner, ate, and changed quickly so that we could get out early.  During dinner, Lily's front tooth started bleeding again.  It had been loose for forever -- she just didn't have the courage to pull it out (even though every time she loses a tooth she talks about how it doesn't hurt that badly).  She got so annoyed with it because she wanted to eat her dinner quickly and get on with trick-or-treating, that she asked Ben to pull it out.  The tooth fairy visited that night with money and a butterfingers that may or may not have been stolen from her own bucket.

The tooth fairy may or may not have also run out of cash on her visit here and had to steal money out of Lily's piggy bank and left an IOU.  She feels very guilty about it, but considering she made Lily a very happy girl and the money will be quickly replaced, she doesn't feel too guilty.

 Ella at the last second stuck a sticker on her forehead and thus made the best Halloween picture ever.

Last year our neighborhood was swarming with kids by 5:30.  This year it was 5:45 and still no one was out.  But the kids were going crazy waiting so I went ahead and took them while Ben stayed home with Thaddeo to hand out candy.  Going early had serious advantages!  Everyone kept saying, "You're our first trick-or-treaters!  Here, take a handful!"  

Don't mind if we do.

For many a year now, I have been highly discouraged by the lack of modest women's costumes.  Then one day a couple of months ago it dawned on me.  QUIDDITCH.  I instantly became excited and told Ben right away since he was working from home on the other couch.  I think he then realized that he didn't have much of a choice and that we would therefore both be Quidditch players.  He did slowly get excited about the idea and if we're being honest, he did 95% of the work in making them.  We spent a couple of Saturdays together sewing, ironing, pinning, etc. but the sewing pattern we were following was in Ben's head so he really did have to do the majority of the work.  I'm so glad I have a modest (and AWESOME!) costume to wear now!

We were done trick-or-treating after two hours and we came home and talked with neighbors.  We truly live in a wonderful neighborhood.  I couldn't be happier.  Once the kids were in bed, Ben and I finished our traditional October Harry Potter marathon.  With a very sore tummy, I went to bed happy -- thinking about how I'll never eat so much candy ever again.  So naturally I did it again the next day.

Happy belated Halloween everyone!