Day 4- NYC

One thing that was on the top of my "must do" list was to eat at a waffle truck. I had read some reviews before we went and decided that Wafles and Dinges was the place to go. It was on a corner in Central Park so we got on the Subway and headed to it. I got the liefe wafle with strawberries and nutella. It was so yummy! Kyle got some fancy one with ice cream and he loved his too. Marie hooked us up with some bike guys that gave us a tour around Central Park which was really fun!

 

 After waffles and the bike tour we walked around the area and see sights around the area. We stopped at St. Patricks Cathedral where the Pope visited America for the first time. They were cleaning so we didn't see all of the inside but what we did see what pretty amazing. It was kind of weird because they were having a Mass while tourist were walking in and out- I'm sure that would be pretty distracting.

 Next we stopped at the Rockafeller Center and Kyle had to at least get a picture with the Jimmy Fallon sign. We tried to get tickets to Jimmy but we got put on the waiting list and never made it off. We ran over to a little restuarant across from the Phantom of the Opera for lunch and then headed back over to the theater to see our 3rd Musical- The Phantom of the Opera. This musical was a little different for us- because we got a backstage tour! Seriously! Kelly knew some one, who knew some one that knew a guy that played The PHANTOM. He hasn't played in a few months- but still really cool! He asked us what we wanted to see and just showed us all around the sets and in the backstage area. This is a photo of us in the wig room- so cool! I asked them what they used to keep beards on their faces since we have used glue and he gave me a sample of the stuff they used called topstick that is basically double sided tape.

 Next up was Grand Central Station. So HUGE and SO many people! We had heard a lot of things about how amazing the Shake Shack was and treated ourselves to some dinner in the Grand Central Station.

 On our way back to Broadway for another musical (number 4!!) we noticed the line for the jumbotron was super short and hoped in. It wouldn't be authentic without a crazy man in the picture- for reals, that's a man.

Next up was Something Rotten! It's a totally original Broadway Musicals. New ideas, music- everything. It was amazing! We loved it. It was kind of a parody of other musicals so it had all kinds of one liners that played into other musicals- it was really cool how they tied them all together. It was definitely worth the watch!

And here are all the musicals we went to in 2 days! We saw a show in every time slot we possibly good!

NYC- Day 1-3

Kyle's sister, Kellie, has lived in Pennsylvania for the last couple years and is moving to Tucson in a few weeks. Before she moved Marie wanted to take her to NYC and to see some of the East Coast. The plan was for their sister Kathleen to join them, but when that didn't work out Marie asked if we would come along with them. We jumped on the chance and got my mom booked to watch the kids for us. The trip would be about two weeks long- 2 days in Tucson looking at rental houses for Kellie, 5-6 days being tourists, and another 5-6 at Kellie's house seeing the sites around her home. We drove down to Tucson on Monday, June 15th and picked up Kellie at the airport and headed down to Tucson. Chris and Kati live just outside of Tucson in a suburb and we thought it would be a great idea to pick Kati up and have her show us around the neighborhoods while looking at houses. Kyle is an awesome sport and volunteered to watch Chris and Kati's 6 and our 3. We spent the entire afternoon looking at houses, dropped Marie and Kellie off at a hotel, and then went back to Kati's to stay the night. We had planned to look at properties the following day, but we didn't have any left to look at. We went to the park for a little bit with the cousins and then drove down to Buckeye to drop off the kids. We hung out at my Mom's house for a few hours, put the kids to bed, and had Stormy drop us off at the airport. Our flight left Sky Harbor at 9:30pm and arrived in Newark, NJ at 5:30 am. With the time difference, taking off, and landing- we really only had like 3 hours of sleep that night. We were staying The Paper Factory on the very tip of Long Island so it took us a little while to get from New Jersey to the hotel and then over to Manhattan. We hit time square first and then realized that we needed to get over to the Freedom Tower to get there in time for our One World Observatory tickets. We hoped on one of the NYC sightseeing buses and quickly discovered we were taking the long way around. 

I do have to admit that I totally fell asleep on the bus, like for more then just a few minutes. I got a pretty good nap in- it was well needed! We pulled up to the Freedom Tower and couldn't believe how huge it was! It's hard to grasp that we were going to the top of that really really tall building! We were about 2 hours late for our reservation time but confident Kyle didn't think it was going to be a big deal. He was right- they let us right in. They did an amazing job with making the whole thing a great experience instead of just going to the top of the building. The elevators have three sides that are screens and then the door is just a normal elevator door. As you are sitting on the ground floor of the Freedom Tower the screens show a jungle like surrounding. As the elevator starts to go up it there is a time line on one side of the screen with the evolution of the city scape. It is a pretty intense minute ride up to the observation floor. You are then escorted into a small room with a huge screen in front of you that is broken up into different sizes squares at different levels. They show a short video about the Freedom Tower with a sweet message attached and then they fly out the screens and you see the city. It was super unexpected and really cool. After the video you file out to the actual observation deck. 

 I really wanted to get some National Park Stamps in my NP Passport, so we stopped at Federal Hall to snap a picture and get a stamp. Thanks guys for humoring my stamp addiction! :)

 We had to make our way back over to Time Square to make it on time for our 1st musical- Finding Neverland, and on the way found the financial district and the gigantic bull. Classic picture of Kellie and the Bull... be forgot it's head, but got a great picture of the guy giving the bull some love.

Kyle's favorite part of our trip was all 4 of the musicals we went to! The first one was Finding Neverland. I had the HARDEST time staying awake for this- only because we had been going going going, but it was amazing. It had simple sets and not these amazing costumes, but I think that's part of the point of the musical- using your imagination. Finding Neverland is the story of how Peter Pan came to be, it's about the author of the story and his life. If you get the chance to see it- definitely take it!

Something cool about Finding Neverland- Kelsie Grammar was in it! He made his way out the front of the theatre instead of the side and had a car waiting for him out there. He went right by us and Kellie grabbed his shoulder and told him great job. 

Kellie and Marie were super tired and ready to head back to the hotel. We hit up Carlo's bakery on the way our. I wasn't super impressed but it was the experience we were looking for. I tried their famous Cannoli- and it was good! I think the best thing was Kellie's cupcake.

Kyle and I weren't quite ready to go back to the hotel so we let Kellie and Marie know where to go to get back to the hotel and then we ventured out to Time Square a little more. We took a seat up on the big steps and called the kids. They were doing great- lots of swimming and crafts.

I'm pretty sure it was all part of Kyle's plan to just "go hang out in time square" and then "just check out the tckts booth to just see if there were any musical tickets left". Of course their were- how could I say no?! We got tickets to our 2nd musical- Matilda! I had gotten some pretty good naps in during Finding Neverland so I did better with staying awake for it. During intermission we got some snacks and that really helped with staying awake :) We were in the mezzanine for this one and it felt so much closer then the balcony for Neverland. The cast was amazing and I loved the show. We were 2 for 2 on picking great musicals! We meandered a little bit through Broadway and then headed back tot he hotel. It was a great first day in NYC!

Lil' Swimmers!

I taught swim lessons and coached swim team every year between the time I was 15 till I was 20. It was such a fun part of my life. At the time, I swore I would never be one of those parents that had a 6 year old that couldn't swim. I didn't understand it at all. How could you just not teach your kids how to swim?! It didn't make any sense to me. Well, here I am. I have a 6  year old who doesn't know how to swim. Not only does she not know how to swim, but if water gets on her face... forget it. Last year I put her in swim lessons and it made her not freak out so much about water on her face, but she still didn't swim. Every time I was at the pool I would try and focus on getting Macy to swim that I didn't teach the other two how to either. So here we are- a 6 yr old, 4 yr old, a 2 yr old and not a single swimmer. I swore this was the year- the kids WERE going to learn to swim. We put them all in swim lessons and I was surprised at how well they did! I fully expected that none of my children will ever swim- but Macy is actually swimming! With her face in the water and everything! The other two are on their way, but Macy by far has made the most progress. Yay! 

I don't remember the name of Macy's teacher, but she was great. London had one of the students in Kyle's choir named Levi and Bentley had pretty much his favorite person in the world, Jedi. Jedi is the son of his nursery leader and has been his little buddy ever since. Bentley pretty much runs the show where ever he goes and not knowing how to swim didn't stop him at all from wanting to go off the diving board. The lifeguard in me kept saying this is a really bad idea, but if that was the way to go in order to get his face wet I was okay with it. Jedi jumped off the board with Bentley the first time and then Bentley wanted to go by himself, but that didn't really work out. He turned around instead.

 

I know I need to keep working on getting them more comfortable in the water. With the pool only being open 2 months out of the year it's a struggle, but hopefully by next year they will all be little swimmers.

Ballas!

I don't know about anyone else schools, but I feel like our kids come home with tons of papers all the time. Even London in her little preschool is always coming home with sign-up sheets for just about anything you can name. The girls both came home with t-ball sign-ups and with it only being $20 a kid I figured why not. We told Macy we were going to sign her up and she burst into tears. Not really the reaction we were going for. She said she didn't know how to play and didn't want to play. She was scared. We had a good talk about how just because something is new doesn't mean it bad. (I have to give myself the same talk sometimes). We basically told her that she was going to do it either way, we needed to get this girl into some new experiences. We signed up in April so I figured it would be starting here in the next month or so and just waited for a phone call from the car. In May I kind of forgot about it, but as soon as school ended I started getting worried about when this thing was actually going to start. I got a text from the girls coach that introduced herself and let us know their first (and only) practice would be the following day and they would be having a game after that. 

I still hadn't bought the girls shorts and they both needed a glove- so we took a quick trip to Show Low to go get the stuff we needed. We got home and rushed the girls to practice. On our way there Macy kept saying "But Mom. You know I don't know how to play tball right?!" I reassured her that that was what tball was all about- learning how to play. After practice I asked Macy how practice well. She hoped in the car and said 'That was really fun! But I still don't know how to play tball." :)

The next day was their first game, so Kyle went over some in and outs on how to play the game. Apparently he forgot to mention that once you hit the ball with the bat you are supposed to run, because neither girl did that. Macy finally figured it out, but even at the last game London's coach was having to push her toward first base. She sure had a cute little pose there at home plate with the bat sitting on her shoulder though. All the "rules" that Kyle went over didn't really matter anyway- tball has it's own set of rules that I had no idea about. The kids all bat in order of their jersey number- we had London with #9 and Macy at #10. Poor London always got passed up by Macy though by the time they got to home plate, when the last batter bats all the other kids just run home. The games are either 5 innings or an hour, whichever one comes first, and no kids ever get out. It makes for a pretty easy game.

Kyle kept telling people that our team was the "bad news bears"- and the only reason it's funny is because of how true it is. The other teams had all kinds of gear, baseball pants, and parents that were all into the game. Our team on the other hand had the little kids sitting in the infield and thought it was much more fun to see who could get the ball first after it was hit then to actually throw it to first base. I AM glad though that the girls had a low maintenance team and coach though, they were all just out there having fun.  

Family Names

For about a year I have trying to be really good about doing family names when we attend the temple. I have lots of family that has been doing tons of geneology so we are a little behind on the temple ordinance side. I counted the cards that I still have and we have done 143 ordinances in the last year! I think there are a little more then that, but those are the ones I have proof of. I feel like doing family names brings a whole different feeling with going to the temple. It is more meaningful to me knowing that these savings ordinances are for people that are directly related to me. We have lots to do, but I'm happy with how much we've been able to do.

Moms day out!

We have a group of young moms that get together once in a while for crafts and play dates for the kids and decided we needed a little Mom playdate of our own. We found a Saturday that worked, left the kids to the husbands, and took a day trip down to the valley for some shopping and girl time. We left early that morning, enjoyed a car ride full of music and chit chat, and then ventured off to the stores. We ate way too much at Cheesecake Factory and spent more money on our kids then ourselves, but it was so fun and so nice to get away for a whole day.

Our Box Troll

We rented "The Boxtrolls"and it was obviously a much bigger hit with the kids then with the adults. Kyle and I figured it was a one time watch- and the kids aspired to be a Boxtroll when the grew up. Why wait?! London wanted to be a Boxtroll NOW! After 3 weeks of begging and pleading London was dubbed "a boxtroll". She wore it all day for about 3 days and then learned it was a lot harder to stand up after falling down when you're stuck in a box.