New York City

I have always wanted to go to New York City.  I was planning to go there during my senior year of high school, but then I had an opportunity to go to Spain and couldn't pass that up.  Now we live about an hour outside of NYC.  We've been putting off visiting because I have heard so many horror stories about driving in the city and the train ride from here costs $25/person round trip.  We decided paying $50 just to get to NYC was too much so we braved the roads and drove into the city.

It really wasn't bad.  We only experienced a couple of crazy things.  Merging to get into the Lincoln Tunnel had me fearing for my life...and then on the way home a lady decide to drive her car across 5 lanes of traffic, in the middle of a crosswalk in front of a cop!  Psycho!

It was our wards temple day, but its a little tricky for us to figure out the babysitting.  And the fact that I'm still nursing Claire doesn't make it any easier.  So we plan on going back another time and asking friends in NYC to babysit for us.

We visited the Natural History Museum because we could get in free with Jeff's work ID badge.  This is the museum from Night at the Museum.  The museum is nothing like the movie...I don't know why I thought they would be the same.  Here are the similarities:

1) Dexter the monkey (not in African Mammals, but some other African rain forest preservation exhibit)

2) Rex, the T-rex (upstairs with all the dinosaurs, not in the lobby)

3) Easter Island Statue, aka Dum Dum.

Here are some things we saw at the museum that were so awesome they should have been in the movie:

1) A giant canoe

2) a rug made of spider silk (no dye, its the natural color of the spider silk).  I learned its hard to raise spiders in captivity because they keep eating each other.

3) A giant tree stump (I think it was from like 1 AD)

4) This great mask.  They could have had Jeff be the actor because he looks just like it!

After the museum we met some fellow MBA students for lunch at Patsy's.  The pizza was awesome and it was fun for me to see how others are enjoying their internships and living in NYC.

In the afternoon we visited Central Park.  It was very beautiful, very huge, and very crowded.  There was some kind of festival going on while we were there.  We stumbled into a wedding.

Once out of the park, we walked up and down 5th Avenue.  We were looking for the Disney Store, but apparently it is not on 5th Ave.  The street here was REALLY crowded.  My favorite sight was the police officer writing a ticket to an ice cream truck driver while the driver continued to sell ice cream cones.

Then we went to FAO Schwartz, the giant toy store from Home Alone.  Claire was really excited to be there, but Lily was sleeping.

Lily did finally wake up and we had fun playing with puppets.

I was sorted by the Sorting Hat (of course into Gryffindor)

And we read a story.

Then we went home because we were exhausted from so much walking!