New York Trip! Part 1

We had a fabulous week together as a little family, spending time in cool new places and getting to be with some of our far-away family. But before we met up with Nana and Grandpa and Marshall and Lisa and Max in New York, we stopped in New Milford, Connecticut to visit Dave and Tracie Bramhall and their four cute kids. We met the Bramhalls way back when we were both newlyweds in Draper, and they are still some of our favorite people. The long 9-hour drive to their house Sunday went amazingly smoothly (we only stopped once!). Monday morning Tracie took us to a beautiful place called Kent Falls so the kids could explore before we had to get back in the car to drive the almost 2 hours back to NYC.

Yes, we even found elephants near the park. :)

Tracie and Aimee

The boys

I love it when these two are best of friends

When we got to New York that afternoon, we checked into our hotel (which had an a less-than-scenic view of a graveyard across the street with, we were told, 220,000 Jewish graves--at least it was a quiet neighborhood!). Then Mark and I and our kids headed out to figure out the subway system and explore Times Square for the evening. 

Our awesome graveyard view from the hotel

Discovering Times Square!

Then, by Tuesday morning the fun had arrived. We packed as much as possible into every day with Nana and Grandpa and Marsh and Lisa and Max. Here's a quick list of what we did/saw in NYC together:

*Tuesday - Central Park, the Natural History Museum, lunch at Firehouse, Subway dinner at the hotel, get the kids and babysitter all situated, adults head off to see "Wicked" on Broadway (it was amazing!!!)

*Wednesday - Statue of Liberty tour, 9/11 Memorial, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, dinner at Burger Heaven then shopping near Rockefeller Square: the Lego Store, H&M


*Thursday - breakfast with Stan and Shirley Kauffman at their apartment, the American Girl Store with Nana and Lisa and Liza and me, Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwartz toy store, Central Park, hotdogs and gyros and pretzels for lunch in the Park, Manhattan Temple, dinner at Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square

*Friday - say goodbye, pack up, Mark and the kids and I drove home through Philadelphia and stopped there long enough to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, then got home a little after midnight.

Here are some of our favorite pictures...

Marsh and Lisa on the way to see "Wicked"

Mark and Aimee

Mom and Dad 

At Gershwin Theatre

The crew after the show. It was so fun to be out on a big date with all these fun people!

Popsicles in Central Park

Chillin' in Central Park

Cute Max Boy

Max was for sure the star of the trip

Grant loved to chase pigeons and scare them with his Hulk yell  

I am having issues with getting the pictures up on this blogpost, so I'm going to post this one and then start another as Part 2 of our trip. Thanks for looking!