I am so upset with myself for not keeping up with my blogging. One of the things I am most afraid of is not having record of our lives for our children's children to read about. Or for me to read about for that matter when I am old and senile and can't remember who the man sitting next to me is! I was looking through our pictures on the computer to see what I want to be sure to remember. One thing that I can't believe I didn't post about was my AMAZING trip to New York in December 2011.
The Why
It was such a spur of the moment trip. It was planned about three weeks in advance all thanks to one of my best friends, Samantha. We have been friends since Kindergarten and we have definitely stayed friends through all sorts of things, I can't say that about too many people in my life. So anyways, she was doing me a favor one night by giving me a ride to meet up with one of my other friends to give me a ride home. Randomly she asks "so have you ever flown before" It wasn't extremely random because she works for Jet Blue but it was still kind of random. So I told her that I had and then she says "Do you want to come to New York with me?" I had to sit there for a minute to decide if that was really what she said! It was just so matter of fact and nonchalant that I couldn't decide if she was serious, but she was! So over the next week we tried to figure out the particulars, the thing that really made it possible was the fact that she worked for Jet Blue, so she was able to get a round trip ticket for me for $71! But that is not it, she also got round trip tickets for my sisters Darcy and Jessie! We invited my mom but her and my dad had already made big plans for that weekend with some friends of theirs, needless to say she was pretty bummed to miss out.
The Plan
Darcy was amazing enough to pretty much plan out all of our transportation and schedule. We got together with Sam a couple of times to decide on attractions and places we wanted to go and also look over hotels. It took a couple of weeks to get a plan 'cemented' and even then we didn't feel sure because we just didn't want to miss out on anything! I am so glad that Darcy took over transportation because the subway is so confusing to me and she did an amazing job! She planned it so good that we didn't have to waste any time thinking about while we were there because we already knew where we needed to go. One thing I am a little sad about though is we didn't get the chance to ride in a taxi.
The Flight Out
I can't remember all the particulars as far as time and how long the flight was but our flight out was a red eye! I am so glad that my husband is a police officer for the Airport Police Department because he was able to come and hang out for a little while before the flight. Dad dropped us off at the airport at about 9:45pm ish, I think. Then we went through security and met up with Cory to walk to our gate. He was able to stay until he had to go back to the station for line up. Our flight left at 11:20pm ish, I think.
None of us were really able to catch much sleep, unfortunately because we weren't going to get the opportunity to sleep until the next night. I do okay flying until there is turbulence and there was turbulence on this flight! Ugh, I thought I was going to throw up mostly because I was so nervous. Our flight got in at 5:20am ish, I think. We went to a restroom to freshen up and change out of our fancy shoes (we had to look nice to be a good representation of Jet Blue) and then we caught the Air Train to take us into Manhattan.
Day 1
Very first thing we did was drop off our luggage at our hotel where they could hold it for us until check in. Then we headed to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree, it was beautiful! They were filming Good Morning America when we were walking by.
Then we headed
underneath the ice skating rink to an underground mall. It was so cool! We stopped at Au Bon Pain, a little bakery, to grab some breakfast before we started our day.
They had a lot of life sized lego things inside and
of course Jessie had to get a picture
with Jack Sparrow
After FAO Schwartz we went to Central park. It was so cool to walk in that park, it was huge! We could have spent a whole day going to all the attractions in the park and probably still not seen everything! So we picked a few that we for sure wanted to see and started with the Central Park Zoo.
We were fortunate enough to get there right
as they were doing a show with the seals
Next we made our way over to the Belvedere Castle. This was a Victorian folly that was built in 1869, basically it was just built for decoration and had no real purpose. It was used as a weather observation station for a while but now it is just an observatory for Central Park. You could definitely tell we were tourists because we basically walked a mile past a HUGE CASTLE IN THE MIDDLE OF A PARK and had to use a map to find it, ha ha! On our way to the castle, Sam and I bought really cool pictures from a street vendor. Mine is of the Rockefeller Center with the Christmas tree.
This was definitely the coolest part of the castle,
The view of the Park and Manhattan.
We grabbed a bite of pizza and then went to the hotel. Once we made it to the hotel and checked in, our original plan was to head straight out again but we were all so tired that we decided to take a nap and at this point my feet were already starting to hurt. So we all settled down for an hour long-ish nap. It was so hard to wake up again and head out but it was of course well worth it. We went over to Rockefeller center again to check out the tree at night, still amazing!
then we made our way over to Times Square and did some shopping at Toys R Us, The Disney Store and some little souvenir shops. We also ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe
Cory text me during the first day and told me that I should try and get him a patch from the NYPD, when he told me this I thought it sounded really weird and I was nervous to try it! There is a tiny police station in the middle of Time Square and I was too nervous to try and go there before dinner so I decided that I would talk myself up to it during dinner. So dinner was over and we were going to hit a couple more shops and make our way back to the hotel. When it came time to head into the station, Darcy and Sam came in with me. I made Darcy open the door because I was that embarrassed! The officer had to buzz us in and Jessie was freaking out cuz she was all embarrassed so she stayed out. So I said to the guy, "I don't know if this is really weird but my husband is a police officer in Utah and he wants me to ask you if you can do a patch exchange?" The officer was really nice! He told us that that is completely normal and its actually a cop thing but unfortunately he had just given away their last extra patch to a guy from Dallas. I was so mad! If only I would have had the guts to go before dinner then I would have gotten it! But he did agree to take a picture with me.
He told us to try asking cops on the street or we could go to one of the other police stations and see if they had some. So we left there and I was determined to ask cops on the street. On the way back to the hotel we kept passing cops but I kept chickening out so I never did ask that night. The scariest part of the whole trip was walking back that night when it was dark. A few blocks outside of Time Square it got a little shady. When we were about 50 feet away from our hotel, this guy came staggering past us and his pants were all wet. We couldn't decide if he was drunk and spilled some beer on himself or if he was challenged and peed himself, or drunk and peed himself for that matter. We were all glad to be back at the hotel and turned in for the night. Darcy and Jessie went down to the lobby to see if they could find some snacks and a drink machine. On the way back up Darcy was talking to Jessie about how her butt was sore from all the walking and Jessie said to her, "You can get in the shower tonight and let the water run over your hot butt." but really she meant to say let the hot water run over your butt. We laughed about it for probably 20 minutes when they got back up and told us about it. Thats how tired we were. I soaked my feet in the tub for about 15 minutes and then we all turned in for bed.
Day 2
We go up at about 8:30 ish, I think and headed down to the continental breakfast. After breakfast we headed back up to the room and got ready to go for another long day. We checked out and checked our bags with the hotel to be held until we were headed back to the airport. We started off our day with walking to Grand Central Station. We saw a lot of cool cathedrals along the way. One thing that was heavy on my mind was to try and get Cory a patch, every time we passed a cop I was too nervous to ask them because they were all busy directing traffic and such. Everybody was probably sick of me at this point because I kept on talking about it. We got to Grand Central and looked around a bit and then we saw these two cops walking down the hall so Darcy just said, "Come on, just do it already!" and started walking up to them. Finally I was just like, okay whatever, do it or you'll be so mad at yourself forever. I went up to them and asked the one cop if he had any patches on him because my husband was a cop and wanted to do a patch exchange. The one cop was so patronizing and kind of acted like a jerk. He was like "Why would we carry patches around with us? Oh I have this one right here (it was his velcro badge), come on, I can't give you that one, really?" He was telling us to try the police academy and see if they have any there. We were getting ready to leave when the other cop started asking questions like if I had one of Cory's badges on me and how long he's been a cop. All I had was one of Cory's cards and he asked to see it (Cory wanted whoever I got the patch from to email him so he could send a patch to them.) He asked if I had any other cards and seemed bummed when I told him I didn't. Then he seemed really interested when I told him that Cory had only been a cop for a year and was just barely starting his patch collection. He started looking at the patches on his shirt and on his coat and was asking his partner if he thought it could be pulled off. His partner was skeptical and couldn't believe he was actually going to try and pull one off his uniform. The nice cop told us to wait there and he went into the bathroom. When he came back out he had pulled a patch off of his coat, right off of his coat! He was telling me that that patch had been on the streets for 13 years, since he was first a cop. I was so giddy! I gave him Cory's card and told him to make sure and email him and then we got a picture with him. His name was Officer Llorens.
Unfortunately we have never heard from him. I am determined to search him out some how and send one of Cory's badges to the police station he is out of. That is my favorite story of the whole trip.
While we were at Grand Central they were opening a new apple store and they were drawing names of people who got to go in the store first it was so crazy, nerds.
Then we caught a train out of Grand Central to head out and do some street shopping.
This is the picture example of how Darcy was telling
everybody where to go and what train to catch the
whole time, Jessie's face tells how the rest of
us were as far as, 'yeah, what she said.'
This is our funny picture for Jessie that we
sent to Mom and Dad. She is terrible
with directions and gets lost on
the way to her own siblings
houses. So this is a YOU
ARE HERE sign. My Dad
sent back a text saying
she would be lost if it
wasn't circled on the
map!
Then we attempted to do some street shopping but that kind of ended up being a bust, they were all little boutiques and were so expensive. We did end up hitting a little farmers market that was really neat and had some fun vendors. We made our way back to Rockefeller Center and walked around in the underground mall again. We headed back up to the street and we were going to use the restroom down in the mall but there was a huge line so we decided to go find a different one. Well the thing about New York, there are not public restrooms inside most department stores! We basically ran around for 3 blocks before making our way back down to the mall to wait in line for the bathroom, I almost didn't make it. We finished up the day by picking up our luggage and then walking around Time Square again and doing some more shopping there before catching the train back to the airport.
The Flight Home
We made it the airport with plenty of time but I ended up spending about 30 minutes with Darcy at security. This is where the chess game comes into play again. When her bag went through the x-ray machine they did not like the looks of a big metal box that they could not see the contents of so Darcy had to step off to the side while they took everything out of her bag and examined the chess box. Then they had to put it all back together and send it back through the machine, makes for good memories! We had a little bit of a nerve racking wait to board the plane, since we were using these special passes, we were basically on stand by and didn't know if we had seats until 10 minutes before we were starting to board. But we got on at about 5pm ish, I think and arrived back in Salt Lake at 11:20pm ish, I think :). This flight was much better with no turbulence. Cory had just gotten off shift so he was waiting there to give us a ride home.
Conclusion
It was a whirlwind trip but I do not feel like we were cheated at all by only being there for 2 days. I felt like we made good use of our time and got to see and experience a lot of things. From vacationing in a huge city I realized how I could NEVER live in one! The movies glamorous all thing about New York especially the streets. In real life they are so dirty and at about 5pm all the businesses literally pile a mountain of garbage on the street for the garbage trucks to pick up. There is a constant stench in the air and it is too humid! My favorite time was at night, when the city really did seem magical and all the Christmas lights really helped that. I was so happy to be back in Utah where you can always see mountains, even right in the middle of downtown Salt Lake. I will definitely go back some day but only for a visit:) Thank you Samantha!
Hello blog world. Today's post is of a serious nature. A very dear friend of ours has been experiencing an incredible trial. No one deserves to experience this but especially not Jesse Barney. He is so strong and humble that I was even unaware of the extent of his trial until reading the blog his mother put together for him. We love him very much and are relying on the compassion of others to help him survive this so he can fulfill his life long dream of finding a wife and starting a family, no one is more deserving.
