nyc: day 2

warning: day 2 was long long long so if you need to take a break while reading this I understand :)

We started off Saturday morning at Grand Central Station to catch a train to Battery Park. It is one beautiful building.

We walked around Battery Park for awhile and saw the Statue of Liberty from afar. You can't go on the island right now so paying to take a boat to just get a little closer seemed like not the best financial investment.

We walked up to Wall Street to walk around and went in Trinity Church. It's a gorgeous church that was also the scene for the end of National Treasure. We visited the Ground Zero and saw the new trade center being built. It will be HUGE! It's also covered with mirrored glass to reflect everything around it. They have also started on a very large museum and memorial for 9/11. I can't believe the 10th anniversary is this year!

Next we headed to Chinatown. No purse buying for me but we had fun walking in some of the shots. We bought Micah and Connor toy taxi cabs for a surprise. A few weeks ago I was watching The Best Thing I Ever Ate on Food Network and Guy Fieri was talking about a noodle shop in Chinatown. We were meeting Zach's aunt and uncle for lunch but I figured a little snack wouldn't hurt :) They were some yummy noodles!

Little Italy is pretty much right next door so we walked through on the way to the subway and happened to run into Chip Carey (Braves announcer). Zach was super excited!

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking and eating and walking and eating. Seriously! We met Zach's aunt and uncle at Gray's Papaya hot dogs in the upper west side and continued on a walking eating tour. We hit a lot of the spots from the movie You've Got Mail (one of my absolute favs!) and then finally rested in Central Park before heading back to the hotel.

This is from the beginning of the movie when Tom Hanks is walking down one side and Meg Ryan down the other.

Gray's Papaya. Super yummy hot dog and also the meeting place before she found out he was her online love :)

Cafe Lola. Where Tom Hanks finds out who she really is and is mean!

Zabars. Super awesome store with fun yummy food. Scene: Thanksgiving, Cash Only Line

Bagel place where the flour looks like mist

After our 'tour' we sat and stared at the lake in Central Park. It was gorgeous. You can tell this is a much needed part of NYC. The atmosphere is just so much more relaxed as soon as you see the green.

After taking a taxi to our hotel (my first ride ever) we got ready for our anniversary dinner. We were eating a little Italian place in Greenwich village. First stop was Washington Square where we walked around and saw the cutest little old couple shuffling together down the side walk! We stopped in a few shops, had a long chat with a guy who worked in one of them about Provence and Paris (random to me but not if you know zach) and then headed to the restaurant. The food was delicious, the place was quiet and on the way out we ended up having a 20 minute conversation with the owner, Monte, a big giant Italian man, who told us all about his children, childhood home and asked a ton of questions to us.


We got one shot of us in the lobby of the hotel while we looked pretty and then CRASHED in bed. My feet were so tired and swollen!!

nyc: day 1

Sunday was mine and Zach's 7th anniversary. We celebrated by spending the weekend in NYC. Ok really Zach has been wanting to go for a long time, our credit card was running a special and it happened to be anytime in June so we just went on our anniversary. Still...win-win-win!

We flew into Laguardia Friday morning. Here's some pictures Zach took out the window. I was too busy praying that (1) we didn't crash and (2) i wouldn't throw up until we got off the plane. (altitude headache plus pregnancy was not fun!) that I didn't look until we were on the ground.


We couldn't check into our hotel for a few hours so we just dropped off our bags and got straight to work on our long list of to dos. Our first stop was the Chelsea district to walk through the Chelsea Market and then the HighLine. The highline is a garden that has been built on top of an old unused train track. VERY COOL! Besides the fact that it sits above the city streets and is covered in gorgeous greenery, it also was started by two people who didn't want to just tear something down but make something beautiful and useful instead. Gets you thinking about how one person and one idea can snowball into something huge!

We continued our walk along the streets of...somewhere...seriously I very rarely knew where we were but Zach did so all was good. I asked him to take a picture of this door at St. Thomas Episcopal church because I LOVE red doors and against the gray walls it was too pretty to pass up.

After checking into the fabulous Waldorf-Astoria (I told you our credit card was running an AWESOME deal) we took a much needed nap! Somewhat rested we headed to Rockefeller Plaza to go to the "Top of the Rock". We walked around the plaza for awhile and peeked into the Today Show studio and then headed up to the top because Zach wanted to get day time pictures, sunset pictures and night time pictures. In my only other trip to New York we had gone to the top of the Empire State Building. This was a hundred times better. It wasn't as crowded, much easier to navigate and you also got a great of the the Empire State Building.

We got there a little earlier than we needed to which made for a rather lengthy stay to insure Zach got all the pictures he wanted. I didn't mind how long he stayed outside as long as he didn't mind that I finally went inside to sit down. It was cold up there!

My personal favorite view was of Central Park. I just love the idea that there is this great expanse of creation in the midst of the concrete craziness!

We finally went to the bottom of the rock ;) around 9:15 and I was starving. We did some lost touristy wandering, sat down one place, left because after 20 minutes they still hadn't asked us if we wanted something to drink and then just walked in to the first place we saw after that. The food was not awesome but not horrible either. Bonus was that we got a free piece of chocolate cake because according to the waiter they had never witness two people hold hands and pray before dinner and they thought it was cool. We were caught off guard and didn't quite know what to say except thanks and that we were glad they got encouragement from it. BTW the cake was the yummiest part of dinner!

Following dinner we walked to Times Square. We were honestly there maybe 15 minutes because by this time it was 10:45, we'd been up since 5 and had walked who knows how far. I was TIRED! We took a few pictures and headed back to the hotel where I took some tylenol and crashed but looking forward to a great day planned for the next day.

memorial day

We had a very fun Memorial Day. We invited anyone from our friends/church that didn't have out of town plans. We ended up with 11 adults and 7 kids. We set up the new 'pool', slip n' slide and water guns for the kids and corn hole for the adults. The kids had a blast and we got some great shots of them attempting to slide down the slip n' slide. Cole was the only one who could kind of do it by himself (he was the oldest of the crew) but pretty soon all the dads just picked their kids up and flung them down on their bellies so at least they could get the real experience! Micah wouldn't go down it unless Zach helped him and since Zach was in charge of pictures there isn't one of him :( Hopefully one of the others got one!

After water fun we sat down to a feast of ribs, barbecue, hot dogs, potato salad, pasta salad, deviled eggs, baked beans, and homemade mac and cheese. None of us got the vegetable memo apparently...bring on the meats and starches :) It was a very fun day of fellowship!

pool

While technically we still have a couple weeks, in my book summer is HERE! It's 90s baby and HOT HOT HOT! We've tried to go to the park twice during the day and have sweated a bucket. We will officially not be doing any outdoor activity before 5 pm that does not involve water! In honor of that sweet Georgia heat we invested in a little better pool this year. I considered getting one of the small chlorinated ones with a cover BUT with the house still on the market I wanted one to put away and I'm nervous about Connor getting in one without me because let's face it by the time the summers over I'm going to be big and wanting to be in the shade ;)

We bought this one from wal-mart. My niece has the same one and the boys loved it. It's a winner! They have had a blast in it. So much that the other day they played in it without water. Too funny! So bring the heat baby cause we are PREPARED!

What's a day in the pool without a refreshing snack :)

Cutest chocolate covered boys ever!