New York - Day 9 - The B E A C H

Since we got home from our trip, we both have agreed that our day at the Beach was one of our favorite days! We woke up, packed up, and headed over to Smith's Point Beach for the day!







We spent a good 8 hours at the beach that day! Nate & I pulled our chairs up right along the edge of the water and talked, literally, all day! Carl & Lynnette sat back a little ways under their massive beach umbrella (thank you Sky Mall :) and chatted and read! The waves were huge and the weather was absolutely perfect! It was such beautiful day and a great way to relax!

New York - Day 8!!

We headed back from PA around 10:30 in the morning! It was hard to say goodbye to the kiddos, but we are grateful that we got to spend time with them!

Our drive was quick and uneventful and before we knew it we were back at Carl & Lynnette's! We relaxed that day and through the evening and geared up for the next day at the beach!

New York - Day 7 - The OSOLU Family!!

On our full day withe Amanda's family, we headed to the Promenade to do a little shopping and to play in the splash pad! It was a very humid day, so it felt good to get wet! We came back to Amanda's and a little fashion show! Her girls are very girly and dramatic and they put on fabulous fashion shows!! I got to play photographer and "ooh" and "aah" er! After we put the kids to bed we headed to the hot tub and had a nice time relaxing and chatting with Obeta!





















Some things that made us laugh:

- the girls and their incessant TEASING of their Uncle Nate!
- Nate throwing Ada & Kaobe in the hot tub (fully clothed - with their mom's permission) as a result of some of that teasing!
- Snuggling with Leiah!
- Indy asking where Nate's mohawk went after he woke up in the morning!
- Popovers filled with chocolate & caramel!
- Getting soaked by Kaobe at the Splash Pad!
- Our marker tattoos from Leiah!

We had such a great time with the Osolu Family and we are so grateful that we were able to go and visit them during our trip!

New York - Days 5 & 6

Day 5!

Our fifth day in New York was spent re-couping from our time in the City! We slept in, helped Nate's parents unpack a few of their boxes and relaxed! Nate's mom wasn't feeling well and I started feeling a little sick myself, so we just took it easy!

Day 6!

This day was planned as a travel day to Allentown, PA to see my sister and her family! We woke up and headed to their house! The 3 1/2 hour drive wasn't bad at all (except for construction through Brooklyn) - we especially enjoyed driving over the Verrazano Bridge and seeing the view of the City!


(courtesy of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Verrazano_bridge_NY.jpg)

We arrived at Amanda's BEAUTIFUL new house and were showered with hugs and tickles and teases from her kiddos! My favorite part of the day was ringing the doorbell and hearing the screams of excitement from the other side!!

Because I was still feeling a little under the weather, we took it easy that night! We chatted and ate dinner and sat in the hot tub (which was heavenly) and played with the kids! It was a fabulous evening!

New York - Day 4 - Uptown Manhattan!!

Our second day in the city was spent on the Uptown Tour! We hopped on the City Sights bus again and learned quite a bit more about the city!

"The Uptown Tour"

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Uptown Highlights:

- Hitting the famous NY eateries (Gray's Papaya and Ray's Pizza)
- Rockefeller Center
- Today Show Studio
- Harlem
- Central Park
- F.A.O. Schwartz
- Walking through what we called "the Fashion District" - streets full of shops with cheap prom dresses

Again, this list is probably not complete, so it may expand!

The two days that we spent in the city were fabulous! We had such a great time seeing the sights and learning about the city! We were exhausted by the time we got back on our second day, but we wouldn't have traded it for anything!

New York - Day 3 - Downtown Manhattan!

On the third day of our trip we took the train into Penn Station to spend the day in the City! We hopped on the City Sights Bus Tour & spent the day hopping on and off at the bigger locations and learning about the history of New York City!

"Downtown New York Tour"

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Highlights from our day include:
- The Empire State Building
- Paying $8.00 for Chicken Nuggets at the McDonald's across the street from The Empire State Building so that we could use their bathroom before standing in line at The Empire State Building!
- The Statue of Liberty
- Our gigantic dinners from Roxy's Deli
- Passing "Ground Zero" on the bus tour and hearing the experience of the Tour Guide, who was six blocks east at the time of the attacks, starting his first day of High School. It was a very solemn moment on the tour.
- Time's Square
- The funny kids and loud New Yorkers on the train ride into the City - they kept us very entertained!
- Learning about Greenwich Village, SOHO, Chinatown and the history of the different parts of the city
- 4 floors of fabulous shopping at Forever 21 in Time's Square
- The M&M Store!

I'm sure there are more wonderful memories to add to the list, so it may grow longer with time, but that is all that we can recall at the moment! It was fun for me to go to the City with Nate (I had been a few times before with family and friends) and to watch him experience the "larger than life" atmosphere!

Next up! Day 4 - Uptown Manhattan!!

New York Day 2 - Montauk!!

Before our trip, when I thought of New York, I thought of things like the Statue of Liberty, Times Square and Taxi's! When Nate's parents told us that we were going to head to Montauk, I wasn't sure what to expect (except that in an episode of FRIENDS, Pheobe gets the gang to head to Montauk to find out some information about her birth mom! And YES, FRIENDS is applicable to everything)!

The drive to Montauk, although slow, was BEAUTIFUL! We drove through the Hamptons - which were absolutely gorgeous - and when we arrived at our destination, this is what we saw:


Typical New York sight? Nope! Absolutely and beautifully perfect? Yup!

The Montauk Point Lighthouse was the first lighthouse in New York and it was commissioned by George Washington! (There's your history lesson for the day)! We spent the afternoon there - eating lunch, climbing the lighthouse (137 super steep steps each way made from some wobbly legs) and enjoying spending time with Nate's parents.












After touring around for an afternoon, we drove back to Mastic and headed to the beach - just in time to catch the sunset!



Gorgeous? Uh yeah!!

The perfect beautiful ending to a wonderful day!

New York - Day 1

Finally some posts about our trip! First off - it must be known that we had a fabulous time! It was so great to spend time with Nate's parents and we are so grateful for their company and their generosity!

Because I didn't keep any type of journal on our trip, I'm going to use these posts partly for that purpose - so, if I get a little wordy and you get bored, just skip ahead to the pictures - I promise I won't feel bad! :)

We took a red-eye flight on Wednesday the 28th! Noal & Leslie (Nate's aunt & uncle) were kind enough to keep our car for us at their house near the airport and Toni & Brittney (Nate's cousins) are AWESOME and Rascal sat for us - we are so grateful for them and for their help so we could go on our trip!

Anyway, the flight - not bad except for our inability to sleep!! We were definitely ready to get off the plane! Our bags came through and we headed out from the airport with Carl & Lynnette! They took us to a diner/deli for breakfast, we dropped Carl off at work and then struggled to stay awake through the 40ish minute drive to their adorable apartment in Mastic Beach! We stayed awake long enough to take a little tour and shower, then took a little nap to catch up on the sleep that we lost through the flight! We headed back to Melville to pick Carl up for dinner at Bertucci's (yummy) then headed over to catch a sunset walk along the water at Smith's Point Beach!













We were graced with huge waves and, as you can see, an absolutely beautiful sunset! Although we slept part of the day away, it was a wonderful day to ring in the first day of our trip!!

*** NEW YORK *** NEW YORK ***

In case you didn't catch that, we are in New York! I've been avoiding blogging because we have been having such an AWESOME time, but things are pretty chill right now - we have finished packing and are ready for the plane ride home tomorrow!!

I won't chat long, just wanted to say that we are so grateful to have been able to come out to spend time with Carl & Lynnette and to get a break from the daily grind that we call life!

Here's a pic let you see we are still alive:


I'll post some pics & give some details about our trip later in the week!

See ya then!

New York, New York ...

Ready or not ...

Here ...

We ...

Come ...

See ya'll lata!