NYC: October 2017

I will be trying to wrack my brain for details of this trip. I normally have a travel journal to refer to, but sadly, I didn't finish writing about this trip. I should know better than to not write things down. My brain just cannot remember details as I get older.  Oh well, maybe as I post these pictures, more details will come. :)

New York City, NY

October 27-October 30, 2017

Mark and I decided to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary by taking a trip to New York City. Mark had been to NYC a couple of times for some work things, but I had never been. I was very excited, especially since we would be going in the fall.

We arrived in NYC on Thursday, Oct 27, and after a tiny bit of a struggle with which train to take, made our way to our hotel.  We rested for a bit and then met up with my friend, Kate, for dinner.

Kate is part of my First Descents family.  I was so excited to have dinner with her.  She lives in New Jersey and works in New York. She took us to an awesome pizza place called Késte.  After dinner we walked down to Washington Square and took some pictures.  It was awesome to be able to talk with Kate.  I had not seen her for a while.

After visiting for a bit, Kate left to go home, but Mark and I wandered around a bit more before heading back to our hotel.  We found a place where Mark got some of the thickest, most luxurious, hot chocolate you have ever seen in your life.  It was more like just drinking melted chocolate.  We felt like we had slipped into the river in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

On Friday, Oct 28, we had a very fun and exhausting day. We left the hotel around 9 am and headed downtown to the 9/11 memorial and museum.  What an absolutely incredible experience that was! I was in awe of the memorial pools they have built where the 2 towers once stood.  They are a beautiful, peaceful tribute to the men and women who died that awful day.

9/11 Memorial and Museum

The One World Trade Center building is enormous! (That is the building in the above collage in the top right hand corner.) It goes on forever!  We decided to not take the tour of that building because our time was a bit limited and we wanted to go through the 9/11 memorial.

What a special experience that was.  That memorial and museum is beautiful.  It was a very somber and sacred time to go through and hear stories from people who survived that attack back in 2001.

I remember that day very clearly and to be standing there at the actual place where it happened was surreal.  I am so grateful that I had this experience and that Mark and I were able to pay our respects to the men and women who died that day.

From here on out in this post, I am going to have to wing it because that's where my journal entry stopped. (Ugh.)

After the 9/11 memorial, we did some more walking around downtown.  One thing I should mention is that we took tens of thousands of steps every day while we were in NY.  By the end of the trip, my legs literally fell as though they were detached from my body. 

Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

After checking out some sights and buildings downtown, we made our way to the Ellis Island Ferry so we could go see the Statue of Liberty.  The Ferry station is huge!  I was surprised to see food places and gift shops there, although I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.  Anything to make a buck off tourists, right?

I was very excited to be able to see the Statue of Liberty.  Even though we only saw her from the ferry, it was still cool to think that I was that close to something that I have learned about my entire life.  It was a spiritual experience for me because I have ancestors who came to America and probably saw the Statue of Liberty on their journeys.  

I feel like the Statue of Liberty was the last major place that we saw on Friday.  Now I am going to attempt to remember what we did on Saturday...

We found some amazing New York bagels, walked thousands of more steps, saw Rockefeller center, and went to the top of the Empire State Building, among other places.   

The bagels we had were awesome! We ended up going back to that place right before heading to the airport so we could bring some bagels home with us.  Mark also found some real New York pizza and was pretty happy with that find.

Random pictures from our endless walking adventure...

More random pictures...

 St. Patrick's Cathedral

It really is a beautiful building.  I love looking through old churches.

Empire State Building

Here we are at the Empire State Building. The elevator ride up to the 80th floor was pretty intense.  You have to make sure you keep swallowing to pop your ears.  The view from the top is unlike anything you've ever seen.  You can see for miles.

Pictures from our walk around the city including Rockefeller Center, Chelsea Market, and Herald Square.

I just realized something as I was writing this post.  It really doesn't matter which day we saw what.  I can just post about all the amazing places we saw out of order!  Look at me, letting go of some of my OCD blog writing tendencies.  Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right?

The Manhattan Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Time Square

Time Square was super crazy! So many people and so many lights!  It was hard to take it all in, but I am glad that we went.  It's definitely something crossed off my bucket list.

Central Park

I loved Central Park and we were only able to see portions of it.  There were a ton of street performers and lots of great people watching.  It was really nice to just walk around the peaceful park in the middle of the busy city.

 The Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge was super cool and we saw a lot of great architecture and places along the way.

The Museum of Natural History

We went to the Museum of Natural History after church on Sunday. As you can tell from the bottom left picture in the above collage, I was T-I-R-E-D.  Mark looks great, but I look like death warmed over.  I swear I almost fell asleep standing up.  But the museum was awesome and we just tried to take in as much as we could.

Random pics of New York

 The food.  We loved the food.

 Selfie time!  We actually took some decent selfies on this trip!

Mark snuck some great (lol) pics of me.  The bottom left picture is me being excited about seeing the red pandas at the zoo.

Whew!  I think I managed to cover everything we did in New York! The highlights for me were

• Going on a session at the Manhattan Temple
• Seeing red pandas at the Central Park Zoo
• Seeing the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and the Museum of Natural History
• Eating a New York bagel

But, the absolute best part of the trip was hanging out with my bestie.  We had a ton of fun together.  Missed the kiddos like crazy, but it's always nice to have some time together to explore new places and remember why we like each other.  Lol.

The Blue-Eyed Skater Takes on Denver

In March, Emma had the opportunity to skate in a competition in Denver.  Because of Abbie's performance in her school musical, I sent Emma on an airplane with her coach and then I took a road trip the following day with my good friend, Jennie.

Jennie and I took off in the wee hours of the morning, so I was a bit sleepy when I was loading up the car.  About an hour into our journey, I received a phone call from Josh.

Josh:  "Mom, have you seen my backpack?"

Me:  "Umm...it's not by the door?"

Josh:  "No."

Me:  (sudden realization hits me and my stomach plummets.) "Oh no, Josh.  I think I packed it in the car when I was loading stuff up this morning!"

Josh:  "What!  I have stuff in there that is due today!"

Mom:  (trying hard not to cry.)  "I'm so sorry!  I was taking stuff for Emma's coach and it was under her stroller so I thought it was something that belonged to her.  Let me pull over and we can figure this out.  Maybe I can take a picture of your assignments.  Do you think your teachers will be okay with that for now?"

Josh:  "I guess we'll see."

Okay, so maybe that is not exactly how the conversation went, but it is pretty close.  As soon as I hung up the phone, the tears started.  Jennie tried to console me, bless her heart.  I just could not believe that I had packed his backpack!  Who does that?  Apparently, I do, because..."Hi, my name is Desirae.  I'm an imperfect human being who makes mistakes and does dumb stuff sometimes."

Fortunately, Josh's teachers were understanding of the situation and were okay with the "My mom stole my backpack" excuse.  I took pictures of the assignments that were due and we continued on our way to Denver.

Emma was ah-mazing, as usual.  She did two programs.  Her first program was her Showcase.  She skated to the song, "Alive" by Lady Gaga.  I really love this program.  She ended up winning 1st place!  This was exciting in more ways than one, because not only did she win first place, but because she won first place, she qualified herself to compete in a National Showcase Competition in August.

So proud of this little blue-eyed skater girl who is not so little anymore.

Her second program was her Freeskate program.  She skated to "Sampson and Delilah".

She skated really well and ended up winning second place in that group.

She is so beautiful on and off the ice.

Aside from the figure skating, we ended up having a ton of fun together as well.  We had to eat at Chick-Fil-A.  That is a must.  We ate at probably the best Chick-Fil-A ever, well, at least they had one of the best employees ever...Ron.  Ron is our hero and every customer service employee should be like Ron.

We also took Emma to see La-La-Land because she had not seen it yet.  Jennie and I had both seen it twice already, but we love it, so we didn't mind.  We cruised a mall, watched a ton of "This is Us" and "Psych" and road tripped our way back home.

It was one of my favorite road trips ever because of the company I was with.  

Here are the videos of Emma's programs.

California 2017

It's been about four years since we ventured to the land of Anaheim.

It's crazy to think that it has been that long, and we were all excited to go back.

We arrived on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and spent some time with my good friend, Susan and her family.  The kids had fun at the pool and the adults had time to catch up and visit.  I loved it.  The perfect start to our vacation.

The following morning, we were up bright and early to begin two days of standing in lines.  Hooray!  They are the best lines to stand in by far.

Mark calculated that we walked over 11 miles that day.  Whew!  No wonder little Ellie was zonked as soon as her head hit the floor!  We had such a wonderful first day.  No strollers, everyone was tall enough to go on everything, and we had made a pact that if anyone started showing signs of being "Hangry" then we were going to immediately stop and get some ridiculously over-priced, but delicious Disneyland food.  It worked like a charm.

Day Two began just as early except this time we started at California Adventure.

Again, it was a gorgeous day and everything went smoothly until Abbie left her phone in the bathroom, never to be found again. :( . Fortunately it was just a really old iPhone, but she was sad to lose all of her pictures.

So, let me just say here...World of Color is quite simply one of THE greatest things I have ever laid eyes upon.  There may have been a tear or two or three in my eyes.  If you have never seen it, I HIGHLY recommend it.  Totally worth the wait.

After a whirlwind two days in the most magical place on earth, we spent a very fun day at Knott's Berry Farm.  Mark and I had not been there since we were teenagers and the rest of my family had never been.  Unfortunately Ellie was not tall enough to go on some of the rides, but we still had plenty of fun.

Here's a fun little treat for you.  A re-creation of an oldie, but a goodie.

The whole time we were at Knott's Berry I couldn't help but think of my Grandma and Grandpa Holt.  They loved roller coasters and the last time I was there, they were with us.  I miss them, but I know that they were watching over us this day.

It was a very quick trip, but it was filled with fun, laughter, pure joy, and memories that will last a lifetime.