New York City

Quite a long while back, when my friend Natasha started massage school, she and her husband, James, came to us to inform us we were accompanying them to NYC the day after she graduated. The second they mentioned it, we were in. It seems like just yesterday we were shopping airline tickets, etc. (we planned and paid for everything 6-9 months ago) and now the whole trip has come and gone so quickly.

These are completely out of order, but here are some highlights:



Steve and I won Yankee tix on eBay (I hate how it's normal to say you've "won" something on eBay, because these tickets were incredibly far from free). It was an amazing game - Yankees swept the Red Sox. If you know me at all, you know I care very little about sports. But even I couldn't deny the excitement of being in that stadium, witnessing the biggest rivalry in sports first hand. For a split second, I could almost picture myself getting in to baseball. That second has now passed, but I'm pretty confident I could conjure it back up in the future if needed. That was really, really fun.



This is James and Natasha, underground... below what I will henceforth and forevermore call Natasha's Happy Place: China Town. The woman can shop. The end.



My husband is a hot chocolate connoisseur. Here he is drinking Max Brenner's hot chocolate (for breakfast! Travesty.) in one of their famous "hug mugs". He shall now require a set of them in his Christmas stocking; please note, Santa.



This would be the pictorial verdict of said Max Brenner hot chocolate (for breakfast! Travesty.) Steve's words, "You can slice it!"



Natasha and I in Central Park. Can I please take another weekend just to play in this park? It was gorgeous, and I really wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I should because Canal Street and Little Italy took everything I had. Or, I should say, everything my feet had. Very upsetting when you want to do so much more, but your feet and legs hurt so bad from walking miles and miles whilst hauling approx 400 extra pounds on your butt.



Us in Central Park, trying really hard to smile through the foot-pain. I think Steve was doing much better than me at this point, though.



We decided to wait on buying Broadway tickets, knowing we'd be able to stand in line at a TKTS booth to get them cheaper. After just a few minutes in line, we got in to Mary Poppins for $85 bucks or so, which is about 40% off. Mary Poppins wasn't on the top of my list, (even though it's one of my favorite classic Disneys) but I was very surprised at how great it was. Disney knows how to do Broadway. It was a musical and a magic show all in one. The casting was brilliant. My only complaint is that one of my favorite songs from Mary Poppins, Stay Awake, was entirely left out for the Broadway rendition. It's the song I have sung to Carter almost every night since the day he was born, so I was really excited to hear it. Poo.


As close as we got to The Lady. She wasn't our top priority, so we just snapped a few far away shots while on the ferry to Staten Island.

The food was fab, the shopping was glorious, and the people-watching couldn't be better in any other corner of the planet. I am now five handbags richer. And p.s. - one of them is a diaper bag. But that means entirely NOTHING. Other than Isabella Fiore designs a delicious diaper bag and I couldn't leave 5th ave without one. Amen.

And it's kind of pink, which also means nothing at all.