NEW YORK!

WHEW! What a trip! :) NOTHING can top that! K, so I have to document with pics!
So off we go on our little trek on my first visit to the Big Apple!
Our first day, Channing's roomie Lexie and her friend Megan took us up to the Bronx.... we wont need to do that again, but the pizza was BOMB DIGGITY!

We left the Bronx and headed to Time Square. Since we lost our tickets to Wicked the night before, we heard of the Lottery for front row seats. We waited in line only to be disappointed again. BUT! We got in the cancellation line and got dead center seats on the 14th row, and I think they were PERFECT!
My very FIRST roomie Megan now lives in NY, so she came down and met us for dinner and took us to Vinyl in 'Hell's Kitchen' it was the cutest little place and SO good to catch up with her!

After the play we came out and it was DOWN POURING rain! BUT! We still got to meet Elpheba! She was AWESOME!

• After the play we wondered the couple blocks to Time Square.... AND.... as they say, 'A picture's worth a thousand words!' well, here's my pic....
• it couldn't have been more perfect!

That pretty much TOPPED my first trip to New York! :)
The rest was kind of a blur! We went to a NY Giants game (I've never been to pro football!)
We got tickets to a NY Rangers game! (Neither of us had seen NHL hockey!) and it was a BLAST! I LOVED it when they scored! Everyone was out of their seats!

We took a double-decker bus tour, which was pretty cool to see most of the touristy attractions in a short amount of time. We went to the Empire State Bldg, Macy's, Ground Zero, Rockafeller Center, Central Park, 34th St, Wall St, Time Square, Harlem, Hudson River, Apollo Theater, the Fashion district, etc etc etc... there's SO MUCH TO SEE IN NY!
Just a couple of my FAV pics that I had time to edit already:

seriously, how perfect is this picture?And who doesn't go to NY and 5th Ave without stopping at the FAO toy store?

and you HAVE to check out the famous BIG piano.

and I'm calling this PhotoShop meets Central Park... I LOVE the way it turned out!

NEEDLESS to say it was a VERY SUCCESSFUL first trip back east for me, and I had an absolute blast!!

Let's document, shall we?

OK, so I figure if we have as much luck on our ENTIRE NY trip, this could get pretty comical by the end of me and Cody's visit to the Big Apple, so since I can hear him sawin logs and I'm completely not tired, lets start with Day 1, shall we?!
I'll admit up front that we were late to the airport. Problem #1. However, I thought, shoot, how busy will Sin City be at 5:30am? FYI, the streets are busy that early in the morning. It didn't help that Cody woke up sick and puked in the parking lot. And it didn't help that I led us to Long Term parking instead of Economy (the difference of about $20/day) so we had to LOOP the entire airport AGAIN to find parking. And it didn't help that the shuttle driver was on a Sunday stroll to get to the terminals... Lets skip the details of how we RAN to check-in, back and forth from Delta to American and back again... only to have the realization that we're NOT going to make it to NYC in time for our $500 tickets to WICKED (the main intent of our trip...) bad, bad, bad realization to have at 7am at the beginning of a vacation....
SO we call Gershwin Theater, they advise us to call Ticketmaster, we call Ticketmaster who advices us to call the insurance co. that we got for our tickets, SO we call the insurance co. only to find out that you can't refund OR reschedule tickets unless we have PROOF that the airline was cancelled or delayed OR a Dr's note saying our illness was too bad to attend the event. YES, I pretty much HATE Ticketmaster and their lame insurance policies at this point!
Anyways, we got bumped to another flight and made it to NY by 7:30pm and made it to our friend Channing's house just fine (thanks so much Chan, we love your place!) but we're just sick that we had to flush our tickets. :( Lets all pray for a better day than today started out!
Guess I wont forget MY FIRST TRIP TO THE CITY eh? I keep telling myself, 'I'll laugh about this one day.' (just not today)

A GREAT Weekend! :)

SO! Friday night, Cody asks me if I want to go on a 'real date night' so I went home from work and cleaned up, and he came to my door and rang the doorbell and was dressed in his Sunday best and took me to dinner at a nice restaurant and after we were seated he handed me an envelope....
and inside .....
was....
A TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY!!!
It said:
One night stay in Las Vegas...
FIVE nights in NYC...
WICKED, NY Rangers, Central Park, sightseeing, etc....

SERIOUSLY?!!!

I've been wanting to go to NY since I was about 8 and I've just NEVER done it. I was telling Cody a couple months ago how I heard it's beautiful back east in the fall. And what does he do? Plans an ENTIRE trip! He even called my work and got the time off for me! :)
NEEDLESS to say, I'm a lil ecstatic and CAN"T WAIT!
Oh.... did I mention we leave next Wednesday?!

Sat Oct 10

After climbing on Friday, Cody's friend said, 'hey, we should set up a zipline tomorrow...' Cody and I looked at each other and said, 'heck yes, that would be awesome!'
SO, out we go again on Saturday for a picnic and zip lining!
It was another beautiful day in SG, and it was so nice to enjoy the sunshine!

Rockin Weekend In Dixie!

It was a PERFECT weekend to be outside!
I took Friday afternoon off at work and Cody and I asked Daniel and Jamaica to take us repelling! We went just north of SG and it was a pretty small repel, but they brought their kids and both Michael and Haleigh repelled, so that was fun!
I've repelled once, a few years ago, but Daniel refreshed me on all the safety of repelling... REPEL ON!
Cody's coworker Gabe came out with us too and he and Cody hung out on this other ledge and climbed like 'tough' guys do...
...so, after we were done repelling, Jamaica and I had to go show them that girls can climb too!
And it seems to be a re-occurring thing for me to make new friends while I'm outdoors... so why should this weekend be any different? My new friend, Cowalla (they're Cow Spiders, and we were at Chuckawalla):
It was so fun to hang out with family and be outside!
Thanks Hansens for taking us out!

Turkey Trot

My SG-BFF has been training since about April for the SG Marathon, and she completed it this past weekend! Hurray for you Carrie! Take a load off now and enjoy! It was so fun to watch her complete something that has been a long time goal for her and she did it all just over 5 hours!

Family Pics

Jamaica's friend Kristen recently took their family pics and guess who gets to mess around with them in PhotoShop?! THAT would be me... and I LOVE IT!
I love to see the before and afters.... Case in point:

BEFORE:

AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:

BEFORE:
AFTER:
SO FUN! I just love it.... I'm still a work in progress, but I completely lose track of time editing pics!