New York Part I

Dreams do come true! Over thanksgiving my husband granted one of my biggest wishes and that was to take me to my homeland, NYC (Oh you didn’t know? I have an East Coast Soul, so it’s about time my west coast body reunited with the rest of me) I will start this journey from the very beginning.

We had planned our vacation from Wednesday-Wednesday so we would be there over Thanksgiving. On the day we were suppose to fly out (flight scheduled for 11:15) the East Coast decided to throw a party in the form of the first snow storm of the year! Expect Delays! That’s what I kept hearing. About 30 minutes before we were suppose to leave for the airport (I didn’t have high hopes) Jim got a text that said our flight had been delayed 6 hours. I have a toddler. Schedule is priority!!!! So we went to breakfast. Over the next few hours our flight was delayed again, moved up, moved up again, and then we were nearly running through security with our lunch in hand to make our flight. It was crazy. Once we finally got in the air things were fine. We lucked out with an empty seat on our row so Nixon had room so play. He is really an A+ flier, he doesn’t really have melt downs as long as you have the next game or activity ready for him. As we were approaching for landing Nixon finally fell asleep (at like 7:30 in his world) and wouldn’t you know it they had to put us in a holding pattern for the next hour. That’s when I got anxious. He couldn’t sleep too long because he wasn’t going to get much sleep as it is, but you NEVER wake a sleeping baby. Well we woke him up with about 30 minutes to go and he cried for a good 15 minutes. Jim finally got him to calm down and he did fine the rest of the night. Cody was ready and waiting (waaaaaaiting) at the airport and we got the heck outta there. It was so so so nice to come “home” after a long day of traveling to a clean home with dinner waiting. My sister in law Nicole, Hostess with the mostess I tell you. We didn’t get there until around 11pm I think so the kids were all asleep, but it wasn’t long before we were too. We had an early early morning headed our way.
Alarms went off around 5:30 AM (that’s 3:30 AM for us, YIKES!) but let me tell you, I would do it all over again. I woke up with a head ache go figure and the one thing that got me out of bed was the sound of Nicole shaking the pill bottle upstairs. Funny story, I was 8 weeks exactly at this point and morning sickness and all those fun things were kicking in. I went upstairs and asked Nicole if she had any Tylenol. She was holding the ibuprofen and offered me some and I asked again if she had TYLENOL.  After a few attempts to get her to understand that I can’t have ibuprofen without coming straight out and telling her that I was pregnant I just gave up. I can’t even remember if I ended up taking some or not, but I’m guessing that I did. Anyway, we got everything packed and ready, kids in the car, and headed into the city at 6:30 for non other than MACYS THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE!!!! (!!!!!) Seriously, the excitement!

We lucked out. It’s not what you know but who you know. There’s a couple in Cody and Nicole’s ward that that has gone every year for the past 20ish years. They have a system and we were lucky enough that they were still going even with the snow and rain that was suppose to come. They had an area taped off for all their friends. They pulled some strings for us and we were able to park on the street about 20 yards from where we were sitting. We got there at about 7 but there was no room for us in the taped off section. Luckily the streets were pretty empty and we just set up camp right next to them. It worked out perfect! We kept warm with the mega amount of hot chocolate Nicole brought and doughnuts. We weren’t even cold and the babies stayed warm. Nixon fell asleep for about an hour until the parade actually started and then it was noisy and just amazing!

Things wrapped up around 10:45, and I’ve never been so happy to see Santa! By then we were cold, and very tired, and it started raining/snowing. Luckily we were towards the beginning of the parade so traffic wasn’t an issue, and we weren’t wet and cold for long.
We got home and got right to work in the kitchen. Pies, shrimp dip, stuffing, we did it all. I like to say we took a nap, but I think that’s a lie. The boys and husbands got naps! It was nice to spend the day with family and just relax after being up before the crack of dawn. Plus, Friday we had some BIG plans and more dreams were about to come true!!