**This is an overly long post. I just needed to document our fantastic trip in all its glory**
Randy needed to attend a management training. There was a session in New York in April. We knew we needed a break. So we booked it. I wasn’t so excited about New York. I have been there several times and really wanted to go to Chicago. Randy won since it was his trip, and we went. I was wrong. It was awesome. It was exactly the break we needed from life and kids and parenting.
The quick timeline:
Friday night – Zac Brown Band (San Antonio) best.show.ever. Seriously. Awesome show, awesome musicians, awesome entertainers. Go see them. (It helped that our generous friends invited us to join them in their suite with food, beer and wine, and to ride in the party bus. Double awesome. Only way to go to a show in my book)
Saturday morning – wake up early, shower and get ready for airport. Kiss the babies goodbye and head for the airport. Make it to the airport and through security in about 12 minutes. What the heck do we do for the next 90 minutes? Oh yeah…relax!! I could already feel the stress melting away.
Saturday evening – totally uneventful trip. In the best kind of way. We checked in, took a quick nap and then headed to find dinner. Ate some Chinese food and walked around Times Square and 30 Rock for 2 hours (our hotel was half a block from Times Square)
Sunday – sleep in. I know. Crazy talk. We rested and took our time getting out of bed. Crazy. Finally headed for Grand Central around 9:30. Hung out and shopped and relaxed some more. Hopped on the train to Yankee Stadium. Hopped on the wrong train going the wrong direction. Oops. Guess we won’t be watching batting practice. Made it to the stadium on time. I do not love the Yankees. I don’t even like the Yankees. But man they have a gorgeous ballpark. Wow. (Too bad it was FREEZING!! Should have taken a coat and not just sweaters)
Sunday evening – meet DB (little sister) and Jeff (boyfriend) for dinner. They brought a little treat…dominoes! We ate at an overpriced touristy Italian place…but none of us cared. We just wanted something simple where we could hang out together. And we did. Dinner was fine, the company was outstanding. After dinner we went to the pub across the street from our hotel. And we played bones for hours. We had THE BEST TIME EVER! Isn’t it funny how that happens? We were just planning to grab dinner and it turned into a super fun night (with a few more drinks than we planned on). DB and Jeff got on the train heading for New Jersey (and his parents house) at like midnight. It is another 90 minutes from there. Yikes!
Monday morning – all 4 of us are moving pretty slow. DB had hoped to catch an early train and spend the day with me in the city while Randy went to training. She didn’t show up until lunchtime. No worries! Just gave me more time to relax. DB and I spent that afternoon shopping and walking and chatting. Just a good sister date day.
Monday night – When Randy came home from training DB went to NJ and Randy and I went to dinner. We ate at “Bar Americain”. It is one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants, so I knew I would like the style of the food. I was right. I ordered fried chicken and it was amazing. For real. Who would ever pay $30 for fried chicken? I guess me 🙂 After the previous night’s alcohol consumption we laid pretty low and just went home on Monday night.
Tuesday morning – I woke up to the sound of a sound check at 4:45am. And never went back to sleep. So much for sleeping in! Good Morning America had Carrie Underwood on their spring concert series. The stage was less than a half block from our hotel. It was raining and I was being lazy. As Randy was leaving for the day he gave me the little nudge I needed to go down there. It was pretty cool, I must admit. The rain kept the crowds away and I was able to get pretty darn close to the stage. (When we got home we watched the recording of the show. You can actually see me several times. Too bad I didn’t put ANY makeup on and was wearing workout clothes…so I was actually hiding from the camera). It was pretty fun for something that just fell in my lap.
Tuesday afternoon – DB and Jeff came into the city again and this time we went down to Chelsea to the Chelsea Food Market. This is a super cool place for foodie nerds like me (plus the Food Network offices are upstairs). We spent some time just walking about the market and buying gifts. My favorite part was the olive oil and vinegar tasting shop. Holy moly there was some awesomeness in there. My favorite was the blood orange oil with dark chocolate vinegar. It came home with me. Jeff was born in Brooklyn and is a good Jewish boy…so he wanted to take us to the oldest kinishery in the country. I had no idea what a knish was or what a kinishery was, but I am totally down for traveling around and seeing non-touristy stuff, so off we went to the lower east side. This is what a knish is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knish. I didn’t LOVE it, but whatever. I’m glad we went and I’m glad to see a different part of the city.
Tuesday evening – we headed back to the hotel to grab Randy after his training ended. Then we all headed for Brooklyn. As you can tell by the content in this post I’m a foodie and a fat kid at heart…and Jeff had been raving about the pizza place he was going to take us for 2 days. I couldn’t wait! After a 70 minute train ride we were there. And it was everything he promised. Seriously. Best pizza of my life. We relaxed some more and chatted and ate delicious pizza and salad and wine and then had spumoni (again, not my favorite thing, but this place was famous for it). After another long train ride back to the city we said goodbye to DB and Jeff and hit the sack. We had to wake up at 4:30 for our return flight the next morning. Yikes!
Wednesday – this was another uneventful trip home…except in Baltimore. We were sitting at the gate for our next flight to SA when I realized this wasn’t the right flight. This flight had like 4 stops before San Antonio…and we landed in like 3 hours. I frantically pulled Randy out of the boarding line and we literally ran through the airport to the right gate. We ran up and the Southwest lady said the whole flight had already boarded and was ready to leave. Holy Crap!! I knew there was no way we were sitting together and apologize profusely…but somehow when we got on the plane there were 2 seats next to each other in the third row. Thanks for that one God 😉
We got home and took a quick nap before we picked up the kids. This last part was my favorite part of the entire trip…we opened the door to Randy’s parents’ house…and Reed lunged into my arms. He full body hugged me and didn’t let go for several minutes. This is huge coming from my non-hugging boy. Ali looked at us and when Randy picked her up she couldn’t stop giggling. She just giggled and giggled and giggled some more. Then we switched kids and they both did the same thing again. Wow. I wish I had it on video because it truly was the highlight of the whole trip for me. Love those sweet kids so much (but I REALLY loved our extended date!)