Friday, December 10, 2010

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.
Align Center
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?

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Baby Hurst

Hollie and Adam are getting ready for their little guy to get here. She is being induced on Dec. 9th so it's not too far away! :) We had a baby shower for her at our house last week. The food was yummy and the turn out was great! She is all organized now and ready for the baby to come. Now we just get to wait. Good luck Hollie!! We can't wait to see him!
Hollie, me, Brittany, Taylor

Me with the 3 preggo's. There is something like 15 girls in my ward that are pregnant! I am starting to feel like the minority.

Walkie Talkie

Anderson is walking!! These videos were taken a couple weeks ago, so he can stay up a lot longer now. He thinks he is pretty cool walking around. :) It's cute. He doesn't really talk, but he LOVES to scream!! Oh man, we aren't sure we are going to survive this. When he is happy and playing, he squeals and screams. When he is mad or wants something, he screams. And man, is it loud. Every time I am talking to someone on the phone and Anderson is screaming as usual, they all say, "What was that??" Oh, it's just Anderson. He's so darn cute but he is so darn loud!! I love the end of this video because it is our life in a nutshell. Jack being a spaz and Anderson screaming. They are still pretty cute though :)






I love when Jack sings to me. He kind of makes up some of the words, just like Justin. I hope he always likes to sing.


Saturday, November 13, 2010

Soccer

Jack's soccer came to an end. He was really excited to be able to play, but it is funny to see the difference between the 3 yr. olds and the 5 yr. olds on their team. The 5 yr. olds are the ones that get the ball up and down the field and the 3 yr. olds follow behind and sometimes get distracted. :) Either way, it was fun and Jack had a great time.




Jumping Jacks for their warm up :)


Friday, November 5, 2010

Square Dance!

We had a ward hoedown with professional square dance callers. I'm not sure I knew people like that really existed. It was a lot of fun, even though we didn't know what we were doing.
The picture above is Jack and his friend Andersen. They stayed right on that black line holding hands forever, saying that they were playing a game. They had a lot of fun together.

Howdy!

Jack got right in the middle and started dancing. He was trying really hard to follow the steps.

We're natural cowboys :)

Fall Wrap Up

We have had a crazy September and October! I cannot believe we are already 5 days into November. Time is flying by but we have managed to have a lot of fun in the mean time. Every year that we have lived here, the squirrels have eaten my pumpkins. This year was no exception. Blasted squirrels.
2 out of the 4 that we bought lasted long enough to carve them. The one that Justin carved on the right, got the face eaten off the very next day. Sad!
The trees haven't been quite as great this year, but they were still some pretty ones. They are all starting to fall off now.

Jack had a fall party in his preschool class. One of the moms made these jack-o-lanterns out of oranges. She filled them with cut up strawberries. So cute!!! I can't imagine cutting all of those faces. It would make a really cute Halloween tradition, but a LOT of work!
Jack sat by his friend Joey.


We had a Trunk-or-Treat at the church. Eli and Anderson were nice and warm in their costumes.
I cut out this spider from a big piece of cardboard and spray painted it. One of the little girls had a concerned look on her face and kept asking if it was a real spider. I'm sure glad it's not...I hate spiders!!
Anderson and Emersyn were matching ducks/chicks/cuties.


A blurry picture of us and the Bjarnason's. Sydney was a princess but she was more interested in the candy then wearing her crown.

On Halloween we went to dinner with our neighbors at Heather's sister's house. This is their little boy Cooper. They have a super family friendly neighborhood and we let the boys go around to a few houses and get a little extra candy. They were so funny running from house to house.
Snoopy and Peter Pan

Anderson didn't think riding in the wagon with Sullivan was a very good idea. Love that face!

Even though Fall has slipped right past us, we are anxious and excited for the Holidays!!! Yay!