Thanksgiving in NYC

We spent our Thanksgiving in NYC this year with my family. As expected, NY did not disappoint!

Just thought I'd start the post off with a doozy from Jack. Gotta love the sass. Jack was not being nice (I know, hard to believe!) and I took him in the back room to talk to him about it. I said, "Jack, how many times to I have to tell you to be nice??" And he replies, "Seven!!" Apparently I just haven't asked seven times yet.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I really enjoyed it. There were so many amazing things there. And extremely old things too! Everything from mummies to ancient Greek jewelry to paintings from Monet, Picasso, and Van Gogh. It was awesome.

I actually think that this Starry Night painting was at the MOMA museum, and not the Met, but it was fun to see too.

The Met is HUGE! I could not believe how big it was. You could spend a week there and still not see everything.

Van Gogh

Monet

These boys looked like they came straight off of Harry Potter.

Goof Ball

We can't come to Central Park and not do our jumping pictures! Oh wait, do we go anywhere without doing jumping pictures? No. What can I say? We are GEEKS!

Nice Dad :)

We picked the best day to go to Central Park. It was around 65 and sunny. I was happy that there were still some pretty leaves on the trees. (Most of these pictures were taken by Whitney.)

Photo by Whitney :)

These soldiers outside of FAO Schwartz were awesome. They seemed to enjoy their job a lot. I thought they were cute.

Time Square

Can you find us on the screen??

There is a family that we know here in Cleveland and all of their kids play the violin or viola. The two oldest girls are at Juilliard right now and we were lucky enough to go to one of their orchestra concerts. It was amazing!! The quality of the music was unlike anything I have ever heard. It was my favorite part of the whole trip. Anna even gave us a tour of the school. The picture above is us in the new dance studio that looks out at Lincoln Center. And if you look closely, you can see the temple behind us. It was awesome.

We took the Staten Island Ferry to show Whitney the Statue of Liberty. The view isn't quite as great at night. Still fun though.

Jack kept looking out and saying, "I see the Statue of Liverty!!"

We also went to China Town. Now that was quite the experience. My parents took us to this market that had every live creature you could think of to buy and apparently eat too.

Jack thought we were at some kind of zoo. There were so many things you could buy and they were almost all alive. Turtles, eels, you name it.

We watched this guy dig through this bucket of live toads and throw a couple in his bag with his other groceries he was buying. Sounds yummy, right?

Cute!

I love that my mom and dad are so close. I love that I get to see them on their mission and be able to experience a tiny piece of it with them. They are great examples to me and I could not have been happier that they were called to serve in New York City!

On Thanksgiving, we had Star come and eat with us. She is a lady in my parent's branch that is currently homeless. She was such a nice lady. Anderson did NOT want to take a picture with her. Having her there made me so grateful for everything that I have. I can't imagine being homeless. So sad.

We also were crazy enough to try out the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was CRAZINESS!! These people that brought their ladders had the right idea. There are 4 million people that go to watch it so you can imagine the chaos.

Us with Kung Fu Panda coming up!

The balloons were cool. They are huge! There were so many people though, the balloons were pretty much all we could see. Justin could see a lot more of the parade than I could...Imagine that! It is a 3 hour parade so we stayed for about an hour and a half and then joined my Mom and Anderson at their apartment to watch the end.

Jack helped to decorate my parent's HUGE Christmas tree. :) I think it was about 4 ft tall...maybe. It was cute though and perfect for their tiny apartment.

Cuteness. This little guy did not sleep that great while we were there, which means Justin and I didn't sleep. Gotta love traveling with little kids!

And to top everything off, we got to see Scott and Denisse as well! They came on Sunday and had gyozas with us. It is so funny to see them in Queens, NY of all places. It was very nice of them to take a couple hours out of their weekend getaway to come and visit with us. :)

It was a great trip, but as always, it is nice to get my kids back in their own environment. I feel like it has taken me 2 wks to get back in the groove of things, and yet I still feel like I am trying to catch up. Oh well, there's always tomorrow, right?