We drove up to Kansas City on Wednesday, spent the day with Rachael, Rowan, and Auden, and I took the girls' photos that evening. Then we all went to bed and Adam and I got up at 4am, left the kids with Rachael and drove to the KC airport for our 6am flight.
Here we are taking airport selfies because I didn't know what to do with myself, not having any kids with me. :)
I'm posting this one of us waiting in between flights because I bought this book to read on the plane and had NO idea that it was set in NYC, and we ended up seeing a ton of the places mentioned in the book. It was super cool!
Our layover on the flight up there was in Nashville and it was a pretty nice airport, so we explored a bit, grabbed breakfast at their Burger King, and just hung out until our connecting flight.
And I have to post this one to explain our tiredness. The night before we left, we were sleeping in the same room as Sutton and Ren at Rachael's house. Ren couldn't handle it. He wouldn't settle down and sleep knowing we were right there and he couldn't be with us. So he just kept crying in the pack n play. Adam and I both tried to calm him and nothing was working. So finally at 1:30am, we went down to the living room. I laid on the couch and Adam laid on the floor and sang to Ren through the monitor until he stopped crying and fell asleep. We maaaaaaybe got to sleep at 2am and then had to get up at 4am for our flight. It sucked.
We got to LaGuardia (not a nice airport, by the way), and got a taxi to take us to our apartment in Astoria. Here we are on our very first taxi ride!
We got our stuff unloaded in the apartment and went to explore our neighborhood. Astoria was a great place to stay...not as crazy as the heart of Manhattan, but lots of fun shops and eating places. We found this bakery that was right around the corner from our place and had to stop for a treat. There were ridiculous amounts of baked goods...it was like heaven.
I got some chocolate cheesecake and Adam got a fruit tart. MMMMMmmmmm.
After a nap and a little more exploring, we decided our first NYC meal should be from a food cart. I got a hot dog (had to...it's classic!) and Adam got some spicy chicken thing.
After awhile, Craig and Karen arrived. Craig is Adam's brother, who lives in Maine. Karen is his fiancé. We stayed together in a two-bedroom apartment. And since they had been to NYC several times, they were like our tour guides and totally saved our bums with figuring out the subway.
When they got there, we ate burgers at a place called Burger Joint right by our apartment. Then we took the subway into Manhattan and our first stop was...Times Square!! Great first photo in Times Square, Gina...
It was overwhelming. So bright, so many lights and signs and colors and PEOPLE. People everywhere, tons of costumes and people selling things. It was crazy.
Here's Karen and Craig. They're getting married in about 2 weeks!
Then we walked over to Rockefeller Plaza. The area down behind us is where they have the ice skating rink in the winter.
Some views of The Rock (Rockefeller Center building).
We went by Radio City Music Hall and had to grab a photo. We also walked down 5th Avenue, Madison Avenue, Park Avenue.
This was St Patrick's Cathedral. So pretty at night. (Adam did most of the photography on this trip, by the way...he's a rockstar.)
We walked to the Empire State Building and couldn't decide if we wanted to go up to the top. We decided to try it another day while it was light out, but took this photo in the lobby in case we didn't make it back.
Then we walked to Grand Central Station to catch the subway. Grand Central was gorgeous. One of my favorite buildings there. The ceiling inside reminded me of the ceiling of the Great Hall in Harry Potter. :)
This was taken right as we were about to go into Grand Central. It's the Empire State building, all lit up.
The next day, Craig made us breakfast in our apartment (eggs, turkey bacon, and pork n beans). Then we jumped on the subway to Central Park.
It was so pretty! One of my favorite places in NYC for sure. It was so huge, I would've loved to explore it more. We went to Strawberry Fields to take a photo with the Imagine memorial.
Adam's GoPro camera is a super wide-angle, so we took a few photos throughout the trip with that. Here's one:
We explored the Upper West Side (rich people town) a bit, and had some 99c pizza for lunch (that was the name of the pizza place!). We had another taxi ride somewhere in there, which is where we took this photo:
Then it was time for the whole reason we came on this trip! Craig is in cahoots with the amazing people at Final Frontier Design. These people are doing amazing things with space suit technology, and we had the opportunity to meet them, pick their brains, and Adam even got to try on a real space suit! How many people get to do that in their lifetime?
Here is Adam with Nik (Nikolay Moiseev), testing out some pressurized gloves so he could get a feel for what was about to happen to the rest of his body. :)
And here's Virgil Calejesan, who was our narrator, presenter, and general question answerer.
There's the suit, in all it's glory.
Here's Nik helping Adam get in the suit. It was quite the process.
They had him test a bunch of movements out. One thing he tried to do was push-ups, which are a lot harder in a fully pressurized space suit.
A little putt putt.
Then he got situated in the simulator. (It's like he's giving birth!!) He tried flying the simulator with and without the suit being pressurized, and it was much harder when it was all blown up.
Virgil and Adam :: hero posing.
We took a photo with the whole team. It was wonderful of them to be so accommodating and for sharing their day and their knowledge.
Adam and Craig took a bunch of video. I took a lot of photos, and Adam asked several questions. He plans on building a curriculum for his 5th grade class around the space suit and has all kinds of ideas for lessons he can base on it. That was all Craig's idea and the reason for our trip! Here's a wide shot of their office where all the magic happens. This makes it look bigger than it is.
We left there and I was spent, so we made a coffee run to Brooklyn Roasting Company. Good coffee, but they didn't have any sugar to put in my drink, ha. I guess that means they only do authentic coffee and not frufru drinks like I like it.
We then made our way to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across the length of it back into Manhattan.
It was a long walk!
A view of the city from the bridge. That tallest building with the pointy thing is the newly finished Freedom Tower.
We decided to go back to the Empire State Building before dark, and we made it up before the sun set. Here's a view from up top.
It was hard to squeeze into a spot by the railing to take photos because there were so many tourists!
There was a brewery in the bottom of the Empire State Building called Heartland Brewery, so we sat down there and had some food and drinks.
We made our way back to Grand Central and took the subway home. If you can't tell, this trip involved a LOT of walking. Like over 10 miles of walking every day. One day I think we did 14. It was more than exhausting. We packed so much into each day.
I must also mention that the apartment we were staying in had one toilet. Correction...one NON-working toilet. It wouldn't drain/flush, which made things interesting with 4 people living together. We bought 4 plungers, and Craig ended up fixing it at 4am one morning with a wire coat hanger. He found a large piece of plastic in the drain. After that, we were good to go. Craig saved the day!!
The next morning we got coffee at a place in Astora called Cafe To Go. We rode the subway back to Manhattan and to the Central Park exit again, we had to take a picture at Tiffany's. We walked past all the fancy 5th Avenue stores.
And of course a Breakfast at Tiffany's reenactment. :)
Then our first real stop was the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). This was the first exhibit we saw. :)
It was an apple. A real apple. Just sitting on a pedestal. It was part of Yoko Ono's exhibit and we quickly came to find it was ALL weird. But then we saw Starry Night and the MoMA TOTALLY REDEEMED itself (name that movie).
Craig had the idea for us to create our own modern art. It was funny because people kept coming over to see what we were looking at in this bare corner.
Craig thought it would be funny to make fun of my Kansas-ness and have me act like I was the dummy trying to hail a subway train.
We had lunch at the famous Katz's Deli. Quite the full house and quite the experience. But apparently we have no pictures from that. Lots of people, lines, and they put LOTS of meat on their sandwiches. Pretty tasty. Then we headed to a toy store called Toy Tokyo and got Sutton a little gift.
And I got a hug from an ewok.
We happened upon an outdoor market. They'd blocked off the street and had a bunch of vendors selling various things. We all got a cold lemonade because it was HOT that day. I also got a hat and a new iPhone case.
Craig found the perfect hat to wear for his wedding. ;)
Craig and Karen headed back to the apartment so Adam and I were on our own for a bit. We got some gelato in a little place called Crave.it, and went to the biggest Old Navy I've ever seen to try to find me a cooler outfit to wear. I had no luck and just endured the heat in my long sleeves.
We took the subway back to Central Park and walked a million miles to the Natural History Museum only to find out it had just closed. I collapsed on the steps because my feet were killing me (I'm a smartie who only brought sandals on the trip since they went with my outfits much better than tennis shoes). We decided that we would try the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) instead. But it was all the way across Central Park. So we started walking. And walking. I think it was 0.6 miles. But when your feet are already in intense pain, another 0.6 miles is torture. We emerged from the long and winding walk across the park and I just broke down. My feet hurt so bad I can't even explain it. And I didn't know what to do because NOT walking was NOT an option. Adam realized that this was a bad situation and not just something I was being overly-sensitive about, so he found a place for me to sit and said he'd be right back.
I ended up getting up and making my way into the Met so I could at least be in air conditioning. I sat down in the lobby next to a guy who totally leaned away from me, and tooted at me!! It smelled so bad but I had to laugh. Adam came back with an amazing new pair of tennis shoes. I put them on and they made all the difference. They look completely terrible with my dress, but I didn't care by that point. Adam saved the day!
I was able to work up enough stamina to walk around the Met for an hour or so. This was one of our other favorites of the trip. SO COOL. I don't even know how to describe it, but if you go to NYC, you MUST go to the Met. Way cooler than that MoMA. In our opinion. Adam liked this statue's beard.
This was one of many rooms throughout the museum that was made too look like a room from a different century in a different country.
Adam had to see the medieval exhibits...you know since he's King Dreher and all.
This is us outside on the steps of the Met. Wish we could've spent more time there.
Adam and I found the nearest subway station and started heading that direction. We had to stop at an ATM for cash and saw a Panera across the street. We knew they'd have bathrooms and normal food, so we ate dinner there before jumping on the subway to meet Craig and Karen back at Rockefeller Center.
I have to just brag and say that figuring out the subway is HARD. Especially when several of the trains aren't running. So the fact that we made it where we wanted to go was a big deal. And then we had to walk around a mile to Rockefeller Center after we got out at Grand Central. And we figured out our way there as well. GO US. Here I am with The Rock in the background.
We took the see-through-roofed elevator to the Top of the Rock. It was pretty cool to be up there at night. We could see Times Square and all the lights of the city.
After we got to what we THOUGHT was the top, we found out we could go up two more decks. We were a little loopy on the escalator. (Like my tennis shoes?)
Woohoo! Top of the Rock!! Right before we took this picture, a guy just to Adam's left got down on one knee and proposed! Adam tried to get a photo for them, but the camera was set wrong. :(
After we left the Top of the Rock, we were all too exhausted to walk anymore. So we took an Uber car to the Times Square subway station. Except it was a Friday night. In Times Square. We were at stand still traffic. So we got out (but along the way, our driver said he saw Ray Liotta! I saw which guy he was talking about but he had his phone to his ear and I couldn't tell if it was him or not. But I MIGHT have seen a celebrity!) and walked. But we walked the wrong direction. UGH. So then we had to push our way through people all the way across Times Square. Adam stopped for ibuprofen for us both along the way. Trains that we needed were shut down. It was one of those 'everything that can go wrong will go wrong' moments. We finally got back to Astoria sometime after 12:30am.
The next day, Craig and Karen left to go home in the morning. Our flight out wasn't until 7:30pm, so we spent the morning at the Statue of Liberty. We had bought this NYC City Pass that included tickets to the Empire State Building, the Top of the Rock, the Met, the Intrepid, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. We definitely saved some money by doing it in a bundle like that. So we took the subway to Battery Park, which is on the very south part of the Manhattan Island. From the park, we took this ferry to the statue.
It's cool because the ferry drives you around the statue a little so you can see it from different angles. This was the angle as we were getting off the ferry.
And our first selfie with the Statue of Liberty!
Had to do one with the GoPro.
This is in pretty much the same spot, but pointing the opposite direction, back towards the city.
And one of THAT view with the GoPro.
I was totally over the whole "looking cute" thing by this point and was all about the tshirt. It was glorious.
I couldn't believe how big it was. Like one of those fingers is WAY bigger than a person.
Looking back at the city.
We rode the ferry over to Ellis Island after getting Sutton a snow globe in the Statue gift shop. But we didn't get off at Ellis we were hot and tired. We just hung out on the ferry til for about 15 minutes before it took us back to Battery park.
Some views of the city from the ferry.
Back on dry land and ready for some lunch.
We went to a nearby place called Flavors for lunch. I got a Turkey Cuban sandwich and Adam had some pancakes and a lemon cupcake. It was all really good. Then we took a taxi back up the coast to the Intrepid. I fell asleep in the cab and I'm sad I did because we passed the High Line which was something I had wanted to see that we missed. Oh well.
We went inside the museum in the Intrepid and saw several planes. We thought this one looked like Skipper from the movie Planes.
On top of the Intrepid is the flight deck with a bunch of planes.
There was also a space shuttle area that we walked around before sitting down to rest a cool off a bit.
From the Intrepid, we took an Uber car to the subway. We took the subway to a bus stop, and the bus took us to the airport. (Seriously...aside from bike, motorcycle, or segway...we used every possible mode of transportation that day.) We arrived at the airport pretty early and had like 4-5 hours to chill. We figured it would be a cool place we could just sit and not have to walk. Well...the air conditioning there wasn't working and there was a chair shortage. Ha! But we made it work and I fell asleep and apparently snored and Adam took a video but I am not posting that because it's embarrassing.
We flew to Chicago and had some annoying delays but got on our last flight and made it into KC around midnight. We drove back to Rachael's house and crashed. The next morning we got to see our kids! I can't describe how much I missed them. It was ridiculous. I hugged Sutton for like an hour when I saw him. I would've done that with Ren too but he can't sit still that long. We drove home and it was so good to be back. Here is a goofy picture of Sutton after we got home that I had to include.
And I have to give a gigantic THANK YOU to Rachael and Matt for taking such good care of our precious babies. They kept them so busy and loved them so well while we were gone...I think that they were a little sad to come home. We showed Sutton how to send voice texts and pictures while we were gone and that helped us get through the days away, as well as knowing they were in such capable hands. Thank you Clarks....we love you!
