our little trip to NYC

I've been wanting to blog about our fun little weekend in New York for awhile now...we went a week ago from this past weekend. But this past week I got lambasted by the flu. No fun! I'm still not feeling totally well yet, and neither does Marlowe who has this perpetual runny nose whine going. Poor baby. But we slowly rise above the trenches of illness. And before much more time passes, I will still blog about our trip.

I've been dying to go to NYC since we moved here three and a half years ago. My sum total experience with this great city is basically a day in ninth grade. It was a bleak, rainy day, but I got a token picture on the ferry in front of the Twin Towers. So my little piece of history. Anyway, it's so close to Philly, yet we never go. FINALLY, we went. My MIL had a trade show and went up Friday and Saturday to set up for it. She said that we wanted to come up she would watch the kids on Friday night so that C and I could go on a date, which was just the incentive we needed.

When Chris got home from work, we drove over to Trenton, parked the car, and took the New Jersey Transit the hour and a half ride into Manhattan. This was the beginning of awesomeness for Ellis. It's not like he never gets to ride a train, but he still loves it every time. For him the weekend was one long "when's the next train?"

We got there past bedtimes, walked to the hotel, got the kids settled with Grammy, and went off on our own. We wandered around a bit taking in the lights of Times Square. I had found a restaurant on the internet a block away from the hotel, so we ended up our wanderings there only to find it closed. By then it was so late we just needed to eat and found a generic Asian restaurant that wasn't that great. But it was just nice to hang out. We did go to Starbucks after that, and that helped some. And Walgreens on Times Square after that, because I was stupid and forgot to pack extra diapers for M.

We had a leisurely morning looking out our windows on the 29th floor and eating breakfast. And then bundled the kids onto the taxi to take them to Kid Mecca, aka FAO Schwarz. I had thought about taking them to a children's museum, but then thought, why bother when we could go to the toy store for free? (Though, of course, we did get them a couple toys.) We spent hours there and the kids had a ball. Ellis didn't get that into the big piano which surprised me a little. We had the most fun in the baby section, where Marlowe took his first steps!!!

After we finished at Kid Mecca, we went to Adult Mecca, aka the Apple Store. We wandered around a little soaking in the awesomeness and getting a turn on a machine. Ellis played a little game that was set up on one and he thought it was the most hilarious thing ever and kept giggling at it.

We spent a few minutes soaking in the sunshine in Central Park. Got some lunch and then began to make our way back to the hotel to get our things. We stopped off at Times Square so that Ellis could see the big TVs. Then we met up with C's mom and hitched a ride back to Philly, picking up our car in Trenton along the way. We were home by bed time.

We had such a nice weekend. It was a nice breath of fresh air in what has otherwise been a pretty dreary month. It was kind of a bummer that we came home and then I promptly got sick for a week, but at least I got sick afterwards and didn't miss the trip because of it. And now I know how easy it is to get to NYC, I can imagine I will be going a little more often. At least I hope so.