NYC - Part 1

4 days of shopping, touring, eating, drinking, walking and great people watching and that sums up our trip to NYC last month. Nope, didn't take Grant it was a girls weekend thanks to my mom. She set everything up and all that I had to do was show up at her house bight and early on a Friday morning in order to drive to the airport. Of course I took so many pictures that I had to break this post up into two separate post and in order to share just a few of the great pictures I was able to take.

So there are some things that you will learn about my mom throughout this blog and one of them is that when she is planning the trip there is no skimping on things to do or the way that you get there. Kari had a direct flight from Orlando and my mom and I left from Jacksonville. I always tease Mom that her "special place" is at the airport because they know her by name and she always gets the best service. I guess that is the perk for being a million miler and platinum flyer year and year after year. SO here we are arriving in NY and no we didn't take a cab to the airport, Mom had a car waiting for us.




Check it out, I took an opportunity to jump in a picture versus always being behind the camera. We took a ferry ride to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (EI pictures will be in the next post).








20 stands later and we finally found a t-shirt stand that had a Tootie shirt, not a bad $2.99 investment.

Yes, that is my geek of a sister doing Soldier Boy with the FAO Schwartz soldiers. Surprisingly these guys seemed to really enjoy their jobs. I haven't been to FAO since I was in High School and this time we had an excuse to go browsing and of course walk out with a few guilt gifts for leaving A at home.



Lady (man) of Liberty probably having a very thought provoking conversation with Willy Wonka. I wonder if more people would visit our State Parks if there were replicas made of chocolate...just a thought.

Dog walkers on the Upper East Side

J Crew bridal on Madison Avenue, no worries you won't see any potential dresses in this post or the next. Any dress that is a current contender in Kari's wedding dress shopping extravaganza will not be in any posts until the actual day. However I will be posting as many silly shots as possible...see below.

Kari - the notorious nose picker.

color blind...maybe.

Great dresses and great prices, we were impressed especially since we had just left Kleinfelds.

The view of Times Square from our hotel room.

So as you all know, I live in the South where things are slower and friendlier which is why I don't always enjoy visiting larger cities since I always feel like I am in someone way. This store security officer saw us eyeing up the posters in the window and decided to make sure we had a really good look at it. Check out the smile on his face!

Do you see the two people waving in this photo and another hiding behind a camera? That's us on the screen below in Times Square.


Always something going on in NYC, we couldn't figure out what they were filming but we do know the host and to try her lines over and over and over again.


Fab dinner at Becco, my pork chop or dinosaur leg was ginormous and fantastic.


Mom's Mecca, MACY'S!

The original escalators in this confusing pieced together store are still working and I love the way that they look.

Kari buying bags from a vendor, no surprise there.


We have arrived...Kleinfelds! I'll go ahead and answer the important question first, no we are not going to be on Say Yes To the Dress. Our style or budget wasn't gaudy enough. They were filming when we got there an d the dress chosen was AWFUL! So if you see a Ru Paul look alike wearing a silver dress that is short in the front and a long train in the back, we were there.

According to this we aren't supposed to have any pictures available for your viewing pleasure, but no worries I'm not very good at following directions.

The show makes these dressing rooms look much larger than they really are.



That's us hanging out in front of the post office.


Obviously I have been living in the burbs too long, because I was fascinated with car parking lots.

Go Vols

It is not football season without a bunch of Orange and White!!


Notice the chocolate, definitely my child.


She was jumping around doing her touch down pose! Unfortunately we don't predict seeing too many of those this year from the Vols.


Go ahead and fall in love with Tootie's outfit, she got it as a gift from sweet Leah. Leah may be living in Texas, but she will NEVER confuse the true T with the other T!

Labor Day Lake House

I'm one of those lucky people who have friends all over the place and I don't mean just acquaintances, I mean really good friends. The kind who even though you only get to see them once or twice a year they still know exactly what is going on in your life and are there for support and love. Well my long time friend Elizabeth (little sister in my sorority, bridesmaid in my wedding, blah, blah, blah) lives in Charlotte and is so very fortunate to have a fantastic weekend lake house about an hour outside of the city. We have been talking about spending a weekend at the lake house for literally years, but this is the first time we have actually gotten in the car and made the drive. After 7 hours, three potty/diaper stops and a DUI check point we finally made it! The fun part in waiting so long is that now we both have babies who get to see each other once or twice a year and will be thoroughly embarrassed when they get old enough to look back at pictures like these.




Believe it or not there is a year difference in these two, both August babies but mine is way little for a 2 year old and Elizabeth's is a good little eater. This photo was taken right before a spat over Kix cereal started. You will notice a recurring theme over the post that the only time that they didn't get along was when food was involved.

Jason is pure entertainment for the babies. Adelaide loves loves loves Jason, always has and this time when Jason walked into the house for the first time A dropped what she was doing and ran over to him. So he spent time walking around with two babies in his arms, maybe this is what twins would feel like.

Baby pool on the pontoon boat, spoiled kids!

Kyler was going to town on some goldfish, Elizabeth spent most of one of our boat rides keeping peace between the babies over goldfish.

Karen and Jason - the newly weds.

Good thing it was a big boat, because we had a bunch of people in and out over the weekend. Notice this is where Elizabeth was the goldfish monitor.

Jason jumping off of the dock.

Karen and Adelaide - new BFFs.

Grant jumping off of the dock, I think for the second time.

Swimming in the lake.


Adelaide and Kyler being sweet, holding hands and singing row row.

...and then Kyler was tired of singing and decided to pull A's hat down, too bad A was still in the hat. Pretty sure we all showed our stellar parenting skills when this happened, we were all laughing too hard to help the poor kid out.

This was taken right after trying to assemble all of the extras on the pool on the dock and soaking everyone in the process, yet another moment of laughing too hard to fix the problem in a timely manner.

Another beautiful night over Labor Day weekend. It was as though the weather man knew it was a holiday weekend and everyone needed a break from the heat. The temperatures dropped into the 60s at night and topped out at 80 during the day. It was perfect for swimming, boating, lounging and lots of eating!


We discovered that Jason could juggle. Oh and to clarify, there were two Jasons at the house and I'm pretty sure only one can juggle.


Elizabeth and Kyler driving the other boat to a friends house. You will see that we never got back on this boat, but that's a whole different funny story that led us to a third boat for the weekend.


Please don't ask what is up with my smile, because I have no idea.

There is a better picture of Elizabeth, Karen and I where you can actually see our faces, but I don't know if we had had too much wine or lack of sleep at that point so I'll save that one for evil purposes later.

I could watch this sunset every night of the week, but instead we headed back home to Florida to our own house where the golf course will have to do instead.
Thanks for a great weekend Elizabeth and Jason, we love you!