Traveling as Two - Blessing the Babies

We arrived back in New Jersey on Saturday, and the twins were blessed on Monday morning.  Twiz did such a great job even though his circle only consisted of 3 people. I'm sure my sweetie was there in spirit.

After church, we spent a quiet evening at Teach's home...except for Twizlet. She fell while she was riding her roller blades and broke her arm!

Here is a cute pic of her, but you can't see her arm. These are after she got her hard cast.

We had a nice, quiet downtime here. On Monday, Teach and Twiz brought out all the baby quilts so they could identify the makers. We got a little silly.

Teach took pics of all the quilts and we also made a little video about each one.

I made these two bunny quilts when I was just a kid.

I have done SO much baby-holding! 

I guess Twinzee2 wanted to share her first laugh with me too. It's just a little one.

Such beautiful babies.

Traveling as Two - Back in New Jersey

Saturday was a traveling day. We got up pretty early and checked out of the hotel. After we paid the somewhat ridiculous fee to get Teach's car out of the parking garage, we stopped back at the hotel to pick up our luggage. We had done everything I wanted to do except try a New York slice. So I asked the doorman were to get good pizza. He recommended Ray's. 

Scout struggled a bit to drive and eat one at the same time. I kept trying to convince her to fold it...

We got back to Teach's house without incident. Then we ate dinner and played a game.

But mostly, we held babies.

I even got Twinzee1 to laugh for the very first time!

Good times.

Traveling as Two - Lady Liberty

We had such a busy day today! Can I first just say that both Scout and I are still on Utah time? We were up late and then we had to leave before 9:30 to get to our half-day bus tour.

I know I usually stay away from these, but the heel broke on one of Scout's boots and she ended up with blisters, making it hard for her to walk terribly far.

Honestly though, we had an amazing tour guide and I learned so much about the area! Ok, photo bomb.

The 9/11 Memorials were beautiful and heart-wrenching. Even our guide had a personal story.

Sorry, we were facing the sun in this one.

Then we were on a dinner cruise. The music was so loud! The food was good.

Then they invited us on deck and scout took all these. Such an amazing view of the Statue of Liberty!

Such a great day.

Traveling as Two - Wicked

We had an appointment to visit Top of the Rock or the top of the Rockefeller Center in the morning. The M train was so different from the others. It was clean and well maintained. At our stop, the first thing we noticed was a Duncan Donuts, then a Jamba. There were stores and eating places, all beautifully laid out underground.

The entrance for Top of the Rock was also down there. Clearly, all of this was beneath the Rockefeller. My only regret is that I wish we would have taken time to see the ice rink, but I suppose I have seen it in plenty of movies.

We watched a short film before riding the elevator up 67 floors to the Top. The views were amazing!

I had a couple of quarters, so we put them in the machine and Scout got her first view of the Statue of Liberty.

Scout also spotted a girl with long black hair in a white coat with a Gold Olympic medal around her neck. She tried to sneak a pic of her, but none of them were very good.

Then we decided to go up to the very top floor. They had  beam ride, but Scout had set her heart on the Skylift. They had lowered the price to $15 each. Things were pretty slow and we only had about a dozen people in our group. There were way more workers than that and most of them had very little to do.

But I digress...

They led us to a circular room on a platform about 10 feet across and made out of glass. After locking us in, they raised the room up about 20 feet and then it slowly turned so we could see the whole city.

Even though our hotel is only a few blocks from Central Park, we had not really seen its enormity until we were high above the skyline.

It was time to leave. We stopped at the gift shop and briefly contemplated eating in the cafe, but Scout wanted something a bit more relaxed, so we picked a little place downstairs called Ace's Pizza. No. It wasn't a "New York slice," but the pizza was good and we finally had a place to sit for a few minutes. 

With all the walking, Scout's feet were killing her since her boots had very little support, so we decided to go back to the hotel for a little while and rest before the show.  Unfortunately, we accidentally got on the wrong train and had to walk about 8 blocks back to the hotel. 

New York is not for the old nor the young. I was counting kids while we were out and about. In 3 days, I had seen only 18 kids out with their parents. The only time we really saw older people was last night when we tried to walk past Carnegie Hall after a performance. So many of them were trying to get the attention of taxi drivers. We just weaved through the crowd. It was only about a block away from our hotel and it was the place that oriented me when we were out and I was feeling a little lost.

While Scout was sleeping, I ventured out on my own to the Walgreens next door and I bought some inserts for her. Hopefully, that will help her poor feet.

There was definitely some walking involved to get to the theater tonight for the performance of Wicked. We were a bit surprised to find the theater roughly twice as big as the one from Hamilton. We had great seats and I even had the aisle.

Wicked was every bit as good as Hamilton! Scout said that since it was our shortest drive back to the hotel, instead of the train, we might want to take one of those little bike carriages.

Although it was fun and enjoyable, and less than 10 minutes to the hotel, the driver was not quite honest with me when I tried to pin him down on the cost. We were stunned when our short ride cost $108!!!! I strongly recommend staying away from them unless you simply want the experience. Scout and I split the cost and figured we each would have been ok paying $54 so we let it go. Everything is expensive in New York.

Tomorrow is our last full day here. We have some big plans! I hope Scouts inserts are doing the job.