New York City! Tuesday- On our way!

Earlier this year Bruce called and said that he wanted to invite Lydia and a parent to fly out to New York to visit and see Frozen on broadway and wanted to know if we were interested. Of course we were so excited to go. We have wanted to visit Bruce for such a long time out in New York, but it is so expensive and hard to leave our kids for that long. Bruce also called Wendy and invited her and Aubrey to go visit. It worked perfectly that our kids were just the right ages. Lydia is old enough to be able to go, and Austin and Caleb were old enough to be left. We were trying to decide who should go, Shantel or I and of course we both really wanted to go and we decided we would both go with Lydia. We are so grateful to Bruce who said he would buy airplane and play tickets for Lydia and Shantel. He also paid for Lydia's activities and subway pass. We could never have made it work without that and are so grateful because it was such an incredible experience and so great to visit with Bruce.

We were able to leave Austin and Caleb with my parents for the first couple of nights and then they took them to Jenna's house for the next few days.

A general overview of everything:
Tuesday Morning: Fly out from SLC and land in New York
Wednesday-Friday: All day in New York
Saturday: Fly home really early.

We went to my parents on Monday night because we needed leave about 6 am to get to the airport.

Lydia was really excited about the trip and we were excited to see what she thought about everything (the airplane, NYC, and the play).

Here are Aubrey and Lydia just after getting through security.

It was fun for them to see the airplane beforehand.

Lydia got the window seat and then Aubrey was next to Shantel with Wendy and I behind them. It was fun to see Lydia experience flying for the first time. I think even more than being in the air, she just loved the experience of having someone bring a drink and a snack and having a movie to watch. 

It is hazy- but this is a great picture because you can see New York in the background.

We landed in New York around 2:30 and I figured we would not get to Bruce's apartment until around 5, by the time we figured out where to go and made the trip on the train. However, things took a little longer. We needed to take the air train and we were able to find that and get on. But after, you have to buy your ticket (super weird- when we found the train we were looking for where to buy the ticket, and it took a bit to figure it out). Buying tickets for all 5 of us turned out to be trickier than you would think. Then we also had to figure out how to buy the subway tickets and since we wanted to buy the weeklong pass, that was a little harder than we thought it should be as well. Needless to say, we were delayed and that meant we ended up riding the subway right at rush hour. It was crazy. Although, honestly, it made for kind of a fun experience. But we had so much luggage and then trying to get the girls where we needed made for an adventure.  

We ended up getting there around 6 pm and then went out to dinner. We went to Lombardi's which is known as "America's first pizza restaurant." 

On the way home after dinner we went to times Square and walked around for a minute and then headed back to Bruce's apartment. 

With how expensive things are in New York, Bruce has a 1 bedroom apartment, with a living room and kitchen, but it turned out to be plenty big to fit all the beds we needed. 

That night after we got the kids in bed we made a game plan for what we wanted to see the next day.

It would be impossible to capture everything that we did or how much fun we had, but here are the things I really loved the most from the whole trip.

1. Spending time with Bruce, Wendy (and Aubrey), Shantel and Lydia. It was such a unique experience to have that time with Bruce and Wendy. I enjoyed talking to them and seeing so many fun things with them. Then it was so special to have some time with Lydia and Shantel to just enjoy our time and have fun.
2. Just being in New York and walking around and riding the subway. It was not a specific thing that stood out, but just everything. I loved being in the City and experiencing the sights and sounds and smells. We were also super lucky to have Bruce as our tour guide because we did not have to spend forever figuring out which subway train to ride, Bruce just knew were to go.

On to Wednesday.