our New York walk

My cousin just got married, in Connecticut and it gave Darrin and I a great excuse to go back East for 10 days. We decided to start our trip in New York City. My uncle lives there and let us stay at his apartment for a few days. We would take the subway to our destination area for the day, and then just walk, and walk, and walk. It was such a great trip.

We saw....
Wicked A+
Traces A
Potted Potter B+
Channeling Kevin Spacey F

We found food along the way which included...
Pizza
Belgium waffles
Sandwiches
Oranges
Pizza
Doughnuts
Roasted nuts
Hot dogs

We visited...
Harlem
Wall Street
Rockefeller Center
China Town
Little Italy
Times Square
Bryant Park
Columbus Circle
Frick Museum A+
5th Avenue
Public Library
Tenement Museum
Central Park
FAO Schwartz
LDS Manhattan Temple

We traveled by...
Taxi
Subway (mainly)
Car Service
Train
Foot (of course!)

here are the pics...

The picture on the left, was the view from my uncle's apartment, it was an amazing view.

China Town - We were the only "white people" in sight. We were even refused lunch service because they didn't have any English menus.

My favorite tour had to be this Jewish synagogue, it was in the heart of China Town, which used to be called "Little Germany". It was beautiful, and the guide was amazing, she shared some of the greatest stories from the early immigrants.

Let's get wet

All four kids took swimming lessons at the same time. It was pure heaven. I had time to sit and read, or watch their class. Mainly it was just peaceful. When I did observe it was so fun to see them learning and growing. The teachers were excellent, and I especially loved the daily update on their progress and what they still needed to work on. I was a little nervous for Kale because he was one of the younger ones, but he did great. He has absolutely no fear of going under the water, usually his teacher was lifting him out from under the water, to get him to listen. I guess that is a better problem to have then not wanting to get wet. He is getting better at swimming on his own, although if you watch him it's pretty scary, he is completely under water and doing more a crawl then a swim, but he knows when to come up for air, and then quickly dives back under. Eden grew a lot too. She is mainly getting comfortable to swim on her own, she can do it, but if she thinks about it too much she gets scared. With more time she will do really well. Jaya and Baylie were in the same class, and they focused on getting technical strokes. They both did well too, Jaya is a natural swimmer, Baylie is too she just needs to build her endurance.

 
 

Romney in the Valley

Governor Mitt Romney has visited our town twice this year and the second time we decided to take advantage. I took Jaya and Baylie with me, despite Baylie's many attempts to get out of it, and Eden trying to come, I took charge as the decision maker and said "Baylie you are going, Eden you are staying with Grandma."We stood in line in the sun for a long time. That's when Jaya decided she had had enough also. As we got about 10 feet from the doors we heard some rumors through the lines that the venue was full. When we finally got in, they then politely ushered us back outside (into the hot sun) and told us they were so glad we came. We decided to stick it out for a few minutes longer and I am glad we did because, Romney came outside, made a few comments and then shook hands with people in the crowd. Jaya was one person away from a handshake. All in all it was a cool experience. I have never been to a political rally, maybe that's not even what it was called, but it was neat to go.
To keep the overall morale of my group, I told the kids that they would get to take a few pictures while we waited. It really helped, they both loved taking photos. When we got home they even edited them too!

This was Jaya's picture she took. While we were there we ran into some families from the ward. This is one of my YoungWomen friends, Mel.

This little girl A goes to our church too and she did get to shake Romney's hand.

We also ran into Don my dad's best friend, he jumped in a picture with us.

Baylie's picture. She is much more into the abstract art than people!

This was the small group of Democrats supporting Obama