Okay, so flash back to October. We had Kylies baby blessing, a trip to New York, and one of our favorite holidays--Halloween.
Kylie's Baby Blessing Day 10/10/10
Kylie's baby blessing up in Santa Barbara was such a neat experience to be part of. The blessing was beautiful and then we went over to Jen and Chris' house with some of their family and close friends and had a lunch. It was a great day. Here are some pictures from the day.
Getting Dressed
Mom & Daught
Such a adorable family
Her blessing dress is gorgeous.
Cousins!
New York Trip
A few days later Russ and I headed to New York. I had never been before so it was quite the trip for me. Russ had already been in Florida and went to New York two days before me, so I kept telling him, no problem, I can get myself from the airport to the hotel no problem. I traveled all over Europe with some girlfriends, I can get myself to a hotel in New York, no problem.
Well I get to La Guardia airport in New York at 4pm and it's pouring. Instead of taking a taxi, I decide to take a airport bus that takes you to Central Station. There's horrible traffic. I don't get to Central Station until 6:30pm. Once I get to Central Station, I decide I'm not going to brave the metro with my luggage, but I would go and wait for a taxi. Since it's raining, there are no open taxi's anywhere! So I walk around in the rain with no umbrella to I come upon a ritzy hotel. There's a line of guests in beautiful outfits standing outside under an awning waiting for taxi's so I get in line. I look totally out of place in my jeans, t-shirt and tennis shoes--but at this point I don't care at all. I just want to get dry.
I wait for about 45 minutes and finally get a cab. The cab driver takes me to the wrong street and drops me off. By now its 8pm and I'm tired, hungry, soaked and want to stop carrying my suit case around on the dirty wet streets of New York. Luckily I call Russ and he says I'm only a block away. I start walking and walking and walking and I can't find it. I'm totally turned around. I am defeated. I know I'm a block away from my destination and each time I walk up each block I can't find it.
Finally I call Russ again and cry that I'm lost and unless I get myself a taxi again, I'm not going to find it on my own. I tell him I'm going to wait for him on a certain corner and he can come and get me. He shows up with a bouquet of flowers he had picked up for me at the flower district earlier in the day and walked me back to our hotel. He orders takeout delivered to the hotel, I jump in the shower and get all of the dirty New York streets off of me. I snuggle in my warm PJ's, eat and feel a million times better. I realize then that sometimes you can be over-confident. :) My whole thing was that I wanted to show Russ that I knew how to get around, but I guess sometimes it's just not meant to be. He was my hero that night.
Our first real day as tourists in New York City is awesome. We head over to do a Museum day and hit up the American Museum of Natural History. We lose ourselves inside with excitement to see the sweet mammal exhibits, we watch the IMAX Space Show, and check out the cultural halls and the dinosaur exhibits. We have so much fun that we totally lose track of time. We've been there for over a several hours. We thought we would be doing two or three museums that day, but we had so much fun that it was just the one. Here's a few of my favorites.
Then we head over to Times Square. There's a Olive Garden right in the Center of the Square that overlooks it. We decided to go in and got a sweet table watching the streets of Times Square. He had a delicious dinner, then walked around for a while and then head back to the hotel to call it a night.
The next day we decide we are going to hit up the statue of liberty. I've always wanted to see her and am so excited. We sleep in a little (well since New York is 3 hours a head, I guess getting out the door at NY time at 9am isn't really sleeping in- but we head down town. The metro is under construction that day, so we get out at one of the stops and they bus us down to the pier. On our way, all of a sudden we start to notice hundreds of skateboarders and longboarders passing the busses on the street. Soon that hundred turns into a thousand. It's some sort of event where all the skateboards are coming down the street stopping up all the cars. They're heading to wall-street, which were only two blocks away. The bus can't move along with any of the other traffic, so we decide to get out and walk and see what's going on. It's awesome. We watch as they all end at the famous bull in the financial district and are yelling. Many are dressed in cool outfits. Russ and I hang out for a while-- the police aren't able to get there because all of the traffic is totally stopped.
We finally decide to walk the rest of the way to the Pier, which is really close. We get in line to go to the statue. It's a full security effort and they have you wait in the long lines to go through airport-like security. We finally board the top of the boat and we're off! We got tons and tons of pictures. I was amazed by how beautiful she was. I know people say she looks smaller than she is, but I was still so impressed by this great symbol of freedom. I thought back to how she was the icon that immigrants coming over to America. How did they see when their eyes fell upon her? We hung out on the island for a while walking around. unfortunately, we were so late that morning that all of the tickets to go inside the statue were sold out, but it was okay.
Since we weren't able to take pictures with the crowds at the bull, we headed back to the financial district. It was still crowded, but we got some shots. Nice, Russ decided to punch the bulls balls.
We stopped by the stock exchange.
Russ also wanted to show his "Your Fired" at the trump tower.
We founds some really cool buildings and we sat down for a little while to relax and take some cool pictures. We decided to try to jump in front of these pillars.
Then we headed down to Ground Zero. We ran into some really crazy groups that were demonstrating. We steered away from them. We walked around to see where the monuments would be.
We ended up having dinner at a NY pizza place near ground zero, then we walked over and walked around the water line near ground zero. We ran into some movie theaters and were like, let's go. I can't remember what we saw (I guess it really was that good).
The next day we woke up and stopped at Times Square to get tickets to Mary Poppins the musical that night. We then headed out to Serendipity III for lunch. Where we had the frozen hot chocolate. YUM!!! We also tried out the burgers and fries which were pretty good.
Next we headed to Central Park and took a carriage ride through it. We also walked around for a while. the day was beautiful. There was even a couple doing there wedding photos behind us ins some of the pictures.
We then headed back to Times Square to go to Mary Poppins.
We loved it. The actors and actresses were amazing and the props were awesome. We were so glad we picked that one. It was clean and just all around fun.
We only had one morning left so we headed out for breakfast and then to the Apple store for Russ to drop off some more marketing materials, then it was off to the airport. The trip was quick, and we barely touched all the things we wanted to do--but it just means that we'll have to go back again soon to do the rest.
Halloween
For Halloween this year, we decorated the house. We put up tomb stones, put up the witches and paintings and went all out. We were too busy for a party this year, but we're already planning one for next year. I was a flapper, Russ was a pirate. We had our ward trunk-or-treat where we took Russ' car and dressed it up so it looked like he ran over a whole bunch of skeletons. We also went to a member in our wards Halloween party which was so much fun, and then I had my work costume party. And for Halloween night, we had my parents and a few friends over to pass out candy and have dinner. This Halloween was low-key but we had a lot of fun.
