Cinco de Mayo

 

Interrupting the very fascinating travel log for a little  

cinco de mayo partying! 

We so love this pretend holiday at our house.  The kids talk about it for weeks. . . I love that the expectations are as low as can be so anything I do is deemed awesome.   And really whats not to love about Mexican food, colorful decor, fake mustaches, sombrero's and a pinata? 

*warning: in the below picture it appears that I have had too much sangria. . . this is not the case.  It is trickier than it would appear to keep a stick-on mustache in place.

Past cinco de mayo partying can be found here, and here.  We love celebrating our Mexican heritage.  

(And by 'our' I don't mean mine.  I wish.  Then I would have lovely tan skin like the rest of my crew).

NYC Day Three

Of all our NYC days, day three was my favorite.  We woke up to sunshine streaming through our windows and were so happy to conquer New York without the rain.

Our hotel was right by Grand Central Station.  We got to walk through it every time we took the subway so we were able to see it quite a bit.  I was amazed at how many people were there no matter what time of day we were passing through.  And all of them in such a hurry!  I kept thinking how there was no where in Utah that was ever as crowded as Grand Central Station.  I could have stood there all day admiring what a pretty building it was and watching all the people hustle and bustle about.   I wish we had taken a decent picture of it because it really was such a neat place! 

 

We headed straight for China town and had such an adventure with all the Chinese people trying to get us to buy knock off purses and fake Rolex's!  

From China town we headed to Central Park.  Of all the things I was looking forward to seeing in New York, Central Park was the one I was most excited about. And it did not disappoint.  It was so beautiful and so amazing to me that they had had the forsight many, many years ago to set aside this land in the middle of these crowded, busy, city streets.

For $12 you could rent a cute little rowboat for an hour.  The sun was shining, and it was so lovely to row around the little lake.  While we were out someone was proposed to and a huge crowd of people on a bridge above us cheered.  So much fun!

This is as close as we got to the MET.  Nate and I would have loved to spend a whole afternoon there, but there just wasn't time.  Next trip!

We ate at the infamous Shake Shack for dinner.  I am not normally a fan of burgers and fries, but oh my.  It was the most delicious place ever.  And the shake.  The shake was the best thing I ate on the whole trip.  Salted caramel concrete. . . I dream about it.

 ...and just like that our NYC adventure was over.  What a neat place this city is.  I was so fascinated by everything about it. . . the people, the hurried lifestyle, the apartment living, the clothes that they wore, the subways.  There's no where quite like it.  And as much as I hoped I would leave there feeling like I could cross "NYC" off my list of places I've seen, it only made me want more.  I don't know if I could ever get enough of this city.

We picked up our suitcases from our hotel and then headed to the airport to pick up our rental car for our drive to Boston. . .
where the adventures really began.

NYC - Day Two

We woke up on our second day in NYC to the sound of pounding rain.  Not exactly how we were hoping to start our day.  I had brought a cute little umbrella that fit nicely in my purse in case it rained.  The second I stepped outside, I realized there was no way that little cute thing would hold up to a NYC downpour.  We quickly found a street vendor wandering around selling umbrellas, taking advantage of us poor, fool tourists.

 We headed straight to a cart to get ourselves a street bagel.  Holy yumminess...I could get used to one of those every morning to start my day!  We huddled in some random corner of a street to stay dry and somewhat warm while we sipped hot chocolate and ate.  It was actually quite disgusting that we were eating/sitting there.

Sam was most excited to find Dylan's Candy Bar which was owned by Ralph Lauren's daughter.  It was a perfect place to pretend it wasn't raining buckets outside and stay warm and happy.   

Because of the rain, wind, and freezingness it was hard to do much walking around so we ended up doing lots of window shopping.  Nate had his happy party in Nike Town, we checked out all the high end shops on 5th Avenue, visited the Apple Store, fantasized about buying something at Tiffany, and ended up frozen and starving and eating at the ever-glamerous Olive Garden in Times Square.  Who goes all the way to NYC and eats at Olive Garden?  Well. . . we were cold and they had soup.

That night, we bundled up and headed out to Yankee Stadium for a baseball game.  I have to say I wasn't ultra excited, considering how cold and rainy it still was.  I kind of hoped all day they would cancel the game. . . but they didn't so I layered every last thing in my suitcase and we were off on a most exciting subway ride.  I have never in my life been so close to so many people as on that ridiculously crowded subway train.  It was quite an adventure! 

 

These poor people were pure crazy.  It was kind of like going to a really sad show!  Drunk, stoned, passing out on each other.  Nuts.

Nate was in heaven walking in to Yankee stadium and I am so glad he was able to see his team play!  It was a beautiful stadium and I'm sure we would have loved it if it hadn't felt like we were in the arctic.  Apparently New Yorkers are fair weather baseball fans because we pretty much had the stadium to ourselves.  

We lasted till the 7th inning and headed back to the hotel for long, warm baths to try to warm our chilled bones.  It was such a fun day though, despite the rain and cold!

NYC - Day One

 Nate and I were lucky enough to go to NYC and then Boston with our good, good friends Sam and Jared Holland.  It was a dream vacation for me and so fun to finally see all these famous East Coast landmarks.  We left our cute kiddos home and left the SLC airport at midnight.  When we landed in NYC at 6 am eastern time, we were all a bit groggy, but dropped our luggage in the hotel lobby and headed out to explore. 

 

The New York Public Library was beautiful.

 

We took a trip to the top of the Empire State Building. . . so pretty up there.  And so fun to see the whole city from above.

We stopped off for a quick hot dog stand snack.  And by we. . . I don't mean me.

 

So much fun walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.

 Our next stop was the 9/11 Memorial.  It was quite a walk as we tried to find it, and we were getting pretty tired from our all-nighter followed by massive touristing, but it was definitely a highlight of the trip.  What an amazing, reverent feeling was there.  We felt goosebumps as we walked into the square where the beautiful memorial was and where those towers once stood.  Looking at the names engraved in the stone and realizing that these people had lives, and loved ones and people who come there to mourn them hit me so hard.  None of us wanted to leave.  What a beautiful and peaceful tribute this place is.

 

We finally were able to check into our hotel room after this so we headed back to take a little siesta and clean up a bit.  Our hotel room was so pretty and had the most beautiful views of the city.  I couldn't help looking out the window and smiling at the fact that I was actually there!

 

For dinner we headed to the famous Katz Deli in Soho.  It was such a fun walk through Soho, even though most of the quaint shops were closed.  The Katz Deli is famous for their pastrami.  I didn't really know what that was. . . nor did anything else on the menu look like my kind of food, so I just went ahead and ordered it.  I'm pretty sure that was my worst decision of the trip.

Thankfully we chased that pastrami down with the most delicious cupcakes at Georgetown Cupcakes.  Why are cupcake shops the cutest things ever?  The lovely colors, the tiered platters of pretty cupcakes, the pillowy mountains of frosting, the pink bakery boxes.  Ahhhh.  Such a happy little place.

We headed back to our hotel exhausted, but so happy at all we accomplished on this first day. 

Bear Lake

 We had such a fun weekend in Bear Lake with my family.  My in laws shared their wonderful cabin with us and it was such a great time.  We sure missed my dad who was home working hard getting ready for tax season. 

 

We headed out to sled the golf course as soon as we had unpacked the cars.  The kids had so much fun flying down the hill.  Asher was a bit unsure about why this particular activity was considered fun, but he had fun trying to walk around in the deep snow.  Stella loved sledding, and would throw her hands in the air and shout, "WHEE!" as she cruised down the hill.

 

 

Marcus and the boys played sled derby and would try to push each other off the sleds while careening down the hill.  It was pretty funny to watch and only ended in tears a few times.  

We played games all night, ate lots of treats, and stayed up way too late. On Saturday morning we packed up some lunches and headed to Beaver for a ski day.  Granny was awesome and watched the 2 babes so we could all ski.  It was a beautiful, warm, spring ski day and it was so fun to be together on the slopes.

 

 We finally captured a picture of these 2 cute cousins holding still.  

It was such a fun weekend and so great to have a little weekend getaway!