New York: Part 1

April 9 - 13th, D and I took a trip to New York City! My dad and D's dad came up to watch the girls. It was wonderful to get away and do some sightseeing - though it should be noted, that New York in April is still not warm. Here is our trip in pictures.

We took the train up. Very fun and relaxing (and cheap!) way to travel. Disclaimer now: I took almost all of the pictures of the two of us, so please ignore my arm in the pictures and feel free to be impressed with my abilities!


D outside our hotel - which he was not a fan of. It was a small boutique hotel (read: did not have a bar or lounge which D did not enjoy). Our room was TINY. Seriously was a rectangle and was as wide as a queen sized bed. Not an exaggeration.


Saturday, our first night there, we had dinner at Tolouche - a Mexican restaurant- and then saw Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre. This is a picture of me drinking a blueberry margarita - delish! We really enjoyed Wicked a lot.



Sunday, we started the day with a run (a very slow run) in Central Park. D was pretty geeked up about it cause he was getting to run in Central Park and it was the first time we had ever run together. It was cute. (These pics are from my phone and I don't know how to make them bigger)

We spent the rest of the day touring around downtown/lower Manhattan on one of those hop on, hop off tours. It was cold on top of that bus! I am pretty sure that we kept Starbucks in business during our trip - we ate breakfast there everyday and had numerous drinks throughout the day to keep warm.

My tourist-y pictures of the major sights.

We ate lunch at Lombardi's in Little Italy. They supposedly are the first pizza restaurant in the US. It was so delicious. One of the best things we ate.


We walked about half-way across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Dinner that night was at one of Mario Batali's restaurants, Babbo. It was super yummy Italian food.

After dinner that night we went up to the top of the Empire State's Building. It was so pretty to see the city all lit up at night. Unfortunately it was so windy that you really only wanted to stand on 2 of the 4 sides!

This is now so long that I am going to split our trip into numerous posts!

Movie Morning

My friend Lanette just finished remodeling her basement and now it is this beautiful giant playroom - complete with a projector for movies...can you tell I am just a little bit jealous? Anyway, she had a playdate for the kiddos to watch a movie at her house. The kids were super cute sitting and watching the movie - as long as they had popcorn to munch on. As the popcorn ran out, so did the attention span of the kids. Brooke and Audrey were basically the only 2 to make it all the way through the movie. I was so proud.

Bear Bus

My friend Arria is the master at saving money and she found a deal to have a Bear Bus come to a playdate so that the kiddos could make a teddy bear. It was adorable - though extremely fast! Apparently 3 year olds like to work quickly and without slow careful consideration of choices.

Hopping on the bus. There were 8 kids making the animals.

Attacking the poor lady with all of their choices

The finished products: Oinky and Purple Bear Stuffy (not to be confused with a small green bear who is also named Stuffy) Not sure it is visible, but they also picked out little shirts for the animals.

Zoo

Since the weather is finally getting nice(ish), we decided to take a trip to the zoo with our friends (a week or two ago). We all loaded up in the van so that we could ride together, which turned out to be a wise decision considering the drive there was an adventure in and of itself. But once we arrived, the zoo was wonderful and we all had a great time.

Group picture outside of the Small Mammal House: Brooke, Audrey, Abby, and Nathan

Looking at the lemurs? meerkats? prairie dogs? Something like that

Much discussion about whether that alligator (crocodile?) is actually real or just pretend

Looking at the giant panda - this was actually the first time that we had ever been to that part of the zoo. For some reason I thought that the zoo had gotten rid of the pandas so we never went there. Clearly I was very wrong.

Excuses

She looks so angelic!

But look what can happen when she gets mad!

I am so far behind it is ridiculous. I feel like all these cute sayings are just passing me by without being recorded. And the excuse that I have is this: exercise.

I have been very fortunate to have been blessed with good genes or fast metabolism or something because heretofore I have not exercised...really, none at all. I played soccer in middle school and that was probably the last time I was moderately in shape. In college I took one aerobics class. And seriously skipped all that I could and still get an A.

As 30 passed me by several years ago, it because apparent that those good genes and metabolism had taken me as far as it was going to. So when you combine that with the fact that I really have no legit excuse (ie the girls are now in preschool two days a week and we still pay to get our house cleaned) I started my "running" program back in Feb. I am doing the couch to 5K program - though it claims to be for couch potatoes, it clearly does not mean 20+ year couch potatoes. Nonetheless, I have been doing the program every Tues, Thurs, and Sat morning for about 8 weeks.

In theory I will be running my first 5K on May 1st. I am certain that I will not be able to run the whole thing - the hills here are brutal. If only I had started this back in flat TX.

So this is a long explanation about why I am so far behind. I have lost a big chunk of my free time to this ridiculous pursuit of fitness. Can you tell that I am still not a fan?

A bridge by our house that the girls LOVE to run across.

Scootering Around

We have these little tiny bikes and trikes for the girls. Brooke really likes to pedal her bike around and Audrey is much less enthused. So I decided that I would get them a scooter and a big girl bike. My thought being that Audrey will scooter and Brooke ride her bike. A few weeks ago we got the scooter together and took it for a spin. As it turns out, Brooke is WAY better at it than Audrey. These pictures are from the first day and since then Audrey has hardly been on it at all and Brooke has gotten really good at it.

Brooke concentrating very hard!

Audrey scootering around the cul-de-sac.

Stopping for the all important make-up break! They love to carry their little lip glosses around in the pouch and stop frequently to reapply.

And of course for the die hard fans (grandparents mainly), I am posting the videos of them trying it out for the first time.

Audrey first and then Brooke. As you can tell by our clothes, it is still ridiculously cold up here for it to be in April. If you look closely, you may notice that the girls are wearing their ski helmets.

Princess Party

The girls went to their first Princess Party for their friend Lorelei's 3rd birthday. It was too cute to see all of the girls dressed up as Princesses. They first had a little dance party, followed by "the real Snow White", then some face and fingernail painting, and then some bouncing in the jumping castle. It was quite fun! The girls like the Princesses, but they really only know the names of 4 (Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, and Ariel) and they certainly don't know the stories or any of the songs that go along with the whole princess phenomena. I did learn all of the other princesses' names so I feel much more educated now. Who knew that Sleeping Beauty has multiple names?

Pre-party line-up. We learned the name associated with Audrey's dress, but she kept calling it her Tijuana dress.


Rocking out to some dance tunes

Audrey doing her version of the limbo!

The girls were not fans of the Real Snow White. And by not fans, I mean they hid and clung to my legs...far, far away from Snow White.

What they were fans of was the cake!


They did brave some interaction with Snow White to get their hands (rather than face) painted.