New York, New York

Last week I went to New York with my parents, Marilyn, Noelle and Josh. We stayed with Stacy and Taylor who are living in downtown Manhattan- there apartment was not really made for nine people but we made it work and had a blast all staying together . Kera (Deco's Girlfriend) is Nannying there and she spent most of the weekend with us. I'll give a quick rundown of what we did. Noelle and Marilyn went a day earlier than the rest of us and did a few things the day before we got there, the best thing they did was buy 27 cupcakes from a bakery that is famous for it's cupcakes- we managed to eat most of them before we left. We flew all night and got there at 6 am, we were welcomed to NY with a fight between two drivers over who would get to take us into the city, it was actually pretty scary- they yelled and pushed for about 20 minutes and we were sure we were about to see a fist fight but eventually they got in their separate cars and drove off. We got to the apartment and got showered and ready for the day. We went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island that morning, it was cold but fun. That afternoon we went home for a short nap (remember we flew all night) and when we were all rested we went to time square. By this time it was raining so we all bought umbrellas and headed out for Time Square. We had planned on going to the top of the Rockefeller center but due to the bad weather we decided not to so we got some dinner walked around a bit and headed home.

The next day we got up bright and early (OK maybe not, it was around 10 or so) and we got ready and went uptown, we saw the temple (which is not your standard temple, it's more like a big square building with an angel Moroni on top) it was really cool, we then walked through Central Park (which is way bigger than I imagined) and on the other side we went to a few stores. The coolest one was FAO Schwartz, which is the huge toy store in the movie Big. We played the huge piano that Tom Hanks plays on the movie. Then, the highlight of the trip happened, we saw "Jon and Kate plus eight", for those of you who

don't know who that is they are a family that has a show on TLC, Jon and Kate are parents of eight children (twin six year olds and Sextuplet two year olds), they were shopping there- without the camera crew so we won't be on the show, dangit. We asked Jon if we could take their picture but one of his security detail stepped in and said "they're shopping" so we just watched as they shopped, the kids were soooo cute and it was way cool to see them. After a little shopping we went back to the apartment to get ready for the Broadway show Grease that we thought we had tickets for. When we got to the theatre we found out that only four of the nine tickets had been reserved so we stressed a little but were able to all get tickets, not all together but at least someone didn't have to wait outside for us. It was a fun show, after we got some dinner and headed home.

The next day we mostly shopped in China town, buying 20 purses/wallets between the five girls- and most of us aren't really into purses but we got all caught up in the moment. So the next time you see me or my mom at Clark's sporting our Dolce & Gabbana handbags you can rest assured that it's a knock off, we didn't pay hundreds for them.
That night we returned to Time Square, this time it was clear enough to go to the top of the Rockefeller's Center- the view was amazing.

The next day our vacation was over and the long trek home began at 5 am, we got back to Blanding at 10 that night (and we gained two hours) making it a very long day. But it was well worth it, it was super fun and I'm so glad we all did it.