New York!!

I got to go to New York with my friend and her sister.  It was such a great trip.  So nice to get away, fun to be with girls, and of course, fun to explore New York.  It was a quick trip, because moms can't leave for too long, but we had great fun.  And Jake and the kids held up quite well.  Yay!

We ate delicious food, of course.  I had my favorite burger ever, delicious cheesecake, and some really good New York pizza.  Yum.  I'm normally not much of a pizza person, but this pizza was so good.

We rode our bikes around Central Park.  This was probably my favorite thing we did.  The weather was amazing, and the trees were blossoming and flowers blooming.  So great!  From there we headed to Chelsea Market for, you guessed it, delicious food.  I had an authentic italian meatball sandwich.  So, so good.  From there we headed to the Brooklyn Bridge.  That was super cool.  So big.  Fun to think about how they built it so long ago.  All of this was done amidst lots of people.  So many people.  Everywhere.  Sometimes I think Midway is getting too big and busy, but no, we live in the country for sure.  I didn't mind all the people for a few days, but I could never live someplace that busy.

We went to the 9/11 memorial and museum.  That was amazing.  The museum is really well done, and very intense.  It's packed with people, yet super quiet.  Everyone talks in a whisper.  There's a definite reverence there. 

We went to two shows: Aladdin and Chicago.  Aladdin was really good and a lot of fun.  Chicago had Christie Brinkley as a guest lead.  She's 65 years old and can't sing at all.  Not so good.  Oh well, still a fun experience.  We rode the subway everywhere, even from the airport.  We only had a semi-bad experience with a really creepy guy.  Luckily he was creepy, and then just when I was starting to get worried, he left.  Thank heavens. 

We got to spend an extra few hours in the airport.  We were almost there to catch our flight when we were notified that our flight had been delayed 3 hours.  What?!  If they had told us sooner we could have stayed in the city.  Instead we spent a few hours in the airport.  So we went to a spa where I got a manicure, and finally made it to Shake Shack.  The time at the airport passed fairly quickly, but the flight seemed eternal since we'd already been sitting around so long.  I finally made it home at 1:30am on Sunday.  Let's just say I was a little tired at church the next day...

The view from our hotel room

Ate the best burger ever, followed immediately by the best shake ever.  Oh yeah, that's Ashley on the left and Audrey on the right.

Times Square in all it's madness

Creepy adults dressed up to get paid for pictures.  Yikes.

The cool bikes we rode in Central Park

Beautiful gardens.  The worker was going through each flower and pulling off specific petals.  Crazy detailed.

Chelsea Market

Brooklyn Bridge

The beautiful theater where we saw Aladdin

A weird piece of "art work" by the Highline Trail

At the spa in the airport

This pizza was so, so good.