{"id":2290,"date":"2012-05-05T18:39:45","date_gmt":"2012-05-05T18:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/?p=2290"},"modified":"2012-06-12T03:59:58","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T03:59:58","slug":"new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/2012\/05\/new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"New York!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>**This is an overly long post.\u00a0 I just needed to document our fantastic trip in all its glory**<\/p>\n

Randy needed to attend a management training.\u00a0 There was a session in New York in April.\u00a0 We knew we needed a break.\u00a0 So we booked it.\u00a0 I wasn’t so excited about New York.\u00a0 I have been there several times and really wanted to go to Chicago.\u00a0 Randy won since it was his trip, and we went.\u00a0 I was wrong.\u00a0 It was awesome.\u00a0 It was exactly the break we needed from life and kids and parenting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The quick timeline:<\/p>\n

Friday night – Zac Brown Band (San Antonio) best.show.ever.\u00a0 Seriously.\u00a0 Awesome show, awesome musicians, awesome entertainers.\u00a0 Go see them.\u00a0 (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.\u00a0 Double awesome.\u00a0 Only way to go to a show in my book)<\/p>\n

Saturday morning – wake up early, shower and get ready for airport.\u00a0 Kiss the babies goodbye and head for the airport.\u00a0 Make it to the airport and through security in about 12 minutes.\u00a0 What the heck do we do for the next 90 minutes?\u00a0 Oh yeah…relax!!\u00a0 I could already feel the stress melting away.<\/p>\n

Saturday evening – totally uneventful trip.\u00a0 In the best kind of way.\u00a0 We checked in, took a quick nap and then headed to find dinner.\u00a0 Ate some Chinese food and walked around Times Square and 30 Rock for 2 hours (our hotel was half a block from Times Square)<\/p>\n

Sunday – sleep in.\u00a0 I know.\u00a0 Crazy talk.\u00a0 We rested and took our time getting out of bed.\u00a0 Crazy.\u00a0 Finally headed for Grand Central around 9:30.\u00a0 Hung out and shopped and relaxed some more.\u00a0 Hopped on the train to Yankee Stadium.\u00a0 Hopped on the wrong train going the wrong direction.\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 Guess we won’t be watching batting practice.\u00a0 Made it to the stadium on time.\u00a0 I do not love the Yankees.\u00a0 I don’t even like the Yankees.\u00a0 But man they have a gorgeous ballpark.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 (Too bad it was FREEZING!!\u00a0 Should have taken a coat and not just sweaters)<\/p>\n

Sunday evening – meet DB (little sister) and Jeff (boyfriend) for dinner.\u00a0 They brought a little treat…dominoes!\u00a0 We ate at an overpriced touristy Italian place…but none of us cared.\u00a0 We just wanted something simple where we could hang out together.\u00a0 And we did.\u00a0 Dinner was fine, the company was outstanding.\u00a0 After dinner we went to the pub across the street from our hotel.\u00a0 And we played bones for hours.\u00a0 We had THE BEST TIME EVER!\u00a0 Isn’t it funny how that happens?\u00a0 We were just planning to grab dinner and it turned into a super fun night (with a few more drinks than we planned on).\u00a0 DB and Jeff got on the train heading for New Jersey (and his parents house) at like midnight.\u00a0 It is another 90 minutes from there.\u00a0 Yikes!<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 She didn’t show up until lunchtime.\u00a0 No worries!\u00a0 Just gave me more time to relax.\u00a0 DB and I spent that afternoon shopping and walking and chatting.\u00a0 Just a good sister date day.<\/p>\n

Monday night – When Randy came home from training DB went to NJ and Randy and I went to dinner.\u00a0 We ate at “Bar Americain”.\u00a0 It is one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants, so I knew I would like the style of the food.\u00a0 I was right.\u00a0 I ordered fried chicken and it was amazing.\u00a0 For real.\u00a0 Who would ever pay $30 for fried chicken?\u00a0 I guess me \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 After the previous night’s alcohol consumption we laid pretty low and just went home on Monday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tuesday morning – I woke up to the sound of a sound check at 4:45am.\u00a0 And never went back to sleep.\u00a0 So much for sleeping in!\u00a0 Good Morning America had Carrie Underwood on their spring concert series.\u00a0 The stage was less than a half block from our hotel.\u00a0 It was raining and I was being lazy.\u00a0 As Randy was leaving for the day he gave me the little nudge I needed to go down there.\u00a0 It was pretty cool, I must admit.\u00a0 The rain kept the crowds away and I was able to get pretty darn close to the stage.\u00a0 (When we got home we watched the recording of the show.\u00a0 You can actually see me several times.\u00a0 Too bad I didn’t put ANY makeup on and was wearing workout clothes…so I was actually hiding from the camera).\u00a0 It was pretty fun for something that just fell in my lap.<\/p>\n

Tuesday afternoon – DB and Jeff came into the city again and this time we went down to Chelsea to the Chelsea Food Market.\u00a0 This is a super cool place for foodie nerds like me (plus the Food Network offices are upstairs).\u00a0\u00a0We spent some time just walking about the market and buying gifts.\u00a0 My favorite part was the olive oil and vinegar tasting shop.\u00a0 Holy moly there was some awesomeness in there.\u00a0 My favorite was the blood orange oil with dark chocolate vinegar.\u00a0 It came home with me.\u00a0 Jeff was born in Brooklyn and is a good Jewish boy…so he wanted to take us to the oldest kinishery in the country.\u00a0\u00a0I 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.\u00a0\u00a0This is what a knish is:\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Knish<\/a>.\u00a0 I didn’t LOVE it, but whatever.\u00a0 I’m glad we went and I’m glad to see a different part of the city.<\/p>\n

Tuesday evening – we headed back to the hotel to grab Randy after his training ended.\u00a0 Then we all headed for Brooklyn.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I couldn’t wait!\u00a0 After a 70 minute train ride we were there.\u00a0 And it was everything he promised.\u00a0 Seriously.\u00a0 Best pizza of my life.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 After another long train ride back to the city we said goodbye to DB and Jeff and hit the sack.\u00a0 We had to wake up at 4:30 for our return flight the next morning.\u00a0 Yikes!<\/p>\n

Wednesday – this was another uneventful trip home…except in Baltimore.\u00a0 We were sitting at the gate for our next flight to SA when I realized this wasn’t the right flight.\u00a0 This flight had like 4 stops before San Antonio…and we landed in like 3 hours.\u00a0 I frantically pulled Randy out of the boarding line and we literally ran through the airport to the right gate.\u00a0 We ran up and the Southwest lady said the whole flight had already boarded and was ready to leave.\u00a0 Holy Crap!!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thanks for that one God \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

We got home and took a quick nap before we picked up the kids.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He full body hugged me and didn’t let go for several minutes.\u00a0 This is huge coming from my non-hugging boy.\u00a0 Ali looked at us and when Randy picked her up she couldn’t stop giggling.\u00a0 She just giggled and giggled and giggled some more.\u00a0 Then we switched kids and they both did the same thing again.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I wish I had it on video because it truly was the highlight of the whole trip for me.\u00a0 Love those sweet kids so much (but I REALLY loved our extended date!)<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**This is an overly long post.\u00a0 I just needed to document our fantastic trip in all its glory** Randy needed to attend a management training.\u00a0 There was a session in New York in April.\u00a0 We knew we needed a break.\u00a0 So we booked it.\u00a0 I wasn’t so excited about New York.\u00a0 I have been there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-julie","category-randy","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2337,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}