New York, New York

Holy cow! I cannot believe it has been a week since I have written, a week! Okay, I can believe it, because life at this house is crazy. I know I say it all the time, but it is. So crazy that I accidentally blew off a friend for lunch yesterday, sorry Jen, and was gone today from 1p-7p. Ugh! We are on the go. I have all these things to write about but some of them go in and out of my head so fast I can't even remember them. I try to write them down to remember later but I haven't even been able to keep up with that lately. The kids are in school for two more days, two more days of trying to cram everything in, and then hopefully it will get a little better. But of course it won't because then it will be the week before Christmas and these kids will have the worst hyperactive behavior that they can muster all year. They can't help it, but it makes Christmas just that much less fun.

Anyway, on to the goodness. I took Andy to New York for the weekend. That's right, just the two of us. I hardly ever get to do things with just Andy anymore, and I've been wanting to do this trip for a long time. So Charlie stayed home with the girls and off we went. We flew First Class to New York. I could have ended the trip right then and just come home he loved it so much. First Class is awesome, great leg room, warm nuts, but this time we even got an ice cream sundae after our meal. He was over the moon.

Charlie arranged for a car to pick us up. Unfortunately it wasn't one of those cars where the guy holds a sign with your name on it, that would have been so cool, but it was way better than standing in the long, cold taxi line. When we got in the car I had to call dispatch in order to pay with a credit card. They put me on hold and the whole time they keep pushing their website address, www.carmellimo.com. I had to chuckle every time they would say it, because we were in a silver Dodge minivan, nothing even close to a limo. I drive a minivan everyday, not much excitement in that.

Saturday morning Andy woke me up early. Of course he did, nothing changes. That kid never sleeps in and always wakes up at the same time no matter what time zone we're in. We're going to London in March, I can't wait to see when he wakes up there. He was ready to go do things. After a brief chat with my friend, April (the April from New Jersey, not the April from Orlando), we decided we would do the Empire State Building first. One, because April couldn't meet up with us for awhile and she has sworn she will never go there again and two because we wanted to beat the lines. Smart move, because we got there and there was no line. We paid a little extra and did the Skyride where they take you on an aerial tour of the city before you go to the top. We also had the option of upgrading our ticket to go all the way to the 102nd floor, but I felt like they had enough of my money so we stopped at 86. Andy absolutely loved the top of the Empire State Building, but his favorite thing was the .25 cents I dropped in the view finder (somebody had nicely left the other .25 cents) so he could get an up close view of the Statue of Liberty. He was in heaven.

After getting Sarah a New York snow globe for her snow globe collection (Andy said we could only buy it for her because she had been to New York before, he's a stickler for the rule that you can't get it unless you've been there) we went to Rockafeller Plaza to see the big tree and go ice skating. It was very cool, but Andy was bummed there were only lights and no ornaments on it. Do you know how long it would take to put ornaments on that thing? Man. We wanted to ice skate but the line was about a mile long and luckily Andy is like me in that he is not willing to wait for anything with a super long line. He was very flexible and agreed we could come back first thing in the morning when all the tourists were still asleep.

April and her son, Riza, met us there and then we went to get frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity. I have wanted to go there since I saw the movie Serendipity, and was pretty sure that Andy would like something called frozen hot chocolate. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people in the city being tourists and Christmas shopping, so the line was over two hours long. Again Andy was cool about skipping and was easily appeased with a large bag of candy from Dylan's Candy Bar and lunch at California Pizza Kitchen (which we have about two miles from our house but he never gets to go to. Since it was his weekend I let him have his way).

After lunch we hopped into a taxi to Times Square to see the Lion King. A friend of ours had gotten us AWESOME seats and the show was fantastic. I saw it nine years ago with Charlie and obviously know how the story goes, but didn't remember a lot of the Broadway version. Fabulous! Afterwards we walked around Times Square in the dark, saw the ball that will be dropping on New Year's (I quickly realized that I never, ever want to go to Times Square for New Year's Eve) and visited the M&M store. Then we headed back to the hotel to meet up with April and Riza again. We were having a hard time finding a taxi and then one of those guys that drives the bike that pulls a cart (in Thailand they are called tuk-tuks) saw us and asked us if we wanted a ride. I was going to say no, but Andy was so excited so we did it. I'm glad we did because he really enjoyed it. The driver took us back past Rockafeller Plaza so we got to see the tree at night and we even drove by two cops on horses.

We topped off the evening with burgers and fries in the room and a few hours of playing the iPad and the child was in bliss. The next morning he woke me bright and early again so we could go skating. Unfortunately it was raining so skating was out. Instead we went back to Times Square to check out the Disney Store and Toys R Us. The Disney store wasn't that unique, just a larger version of the store we have here, but the Toys R Us was pretty cool. It has a little Willy Wonka candy shop inside, an ice cream parlour and a full size ferris wheel.

From there we went to the Museum of Natural History. We saw an awesome walk through about the race to the south pole and then spent a lot of time on the big bang theory and the universe. Andy loved the museum, which I love about him, and can't wait to go back. From the museum it was back to the hotel just to pick up our bags and then to the airport. Fast, fast weekend. I told him I'd like to take him somewhere about once a year, so he asked me if we could go to Washington D.C. in January (that's next year, right?). Smart kid.

It really was great to get away. Andy and I used to do everything together and went on trips all the time. Then his sisters came along, as happens to families, and now he doesn't get as much attention. He does fine, but it's nice that we can do things one on one with him every once in awhile. Charlie gets to do a little more, because he takes him to school every morning and they do scouting and sometimes practices together, but I don't have that. We do read together every night, but we spend that time reading, not talking. So I'm so glad that we got to be together and hold hands and talk and share and do something that's just us. I hope someday he'll remember these trips and think of them fondly, but if not, at least I will.