Oops here are a few leftover October pics....
Annie dressed up for her Halloween party at her school. She went as a ballerina.
Precious girl!
That week of the Hurricane- our downstairs neighbor finally called and complained about the girls being too loud. MY GOODNESS we've been stuck inside for week... what do you expect?! (I may have gone down there and gave him a mindful...)
Here is Annie trying so hard not to get her breakfast all over her shirt.
Something very cool is that our dentist office happens to be... on the top floor of the Chrysler Building! For real. It's so awesome.
The 69th floor to be exact. (A dizzying elevator ride!)
This is the view from the lobby.
And when you sit in the dentist chair you are looking right out those little triangle windows in the top of the Chrysler building. So surreal.
I finally got to stop into Grand Central Station. I hadn't been in there yet and it was certainly on my list of things to do.
In case you didn't know this- for some reason there are a TON of random mascots in Times Square. Elmo, Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, etc... you name it- it's there. So weird to me.
Just an everyday picture of Jamie and the girls waiting for the train.
(by the way, whenever we say 'train' we just mean the subway- not sure if that was clear or not)
Jamie reading Annie one of my favorite books, The Giving Tree.
Every week Audrie has homework for school. It's really cute to see her working on it.
We got our first snow of the year. It was only about 2-3 inches but it was pretty. It started while I was still at school- this is the view from my classroom door (my school is in temporary trailers).
Walking home that evening I got a few more pictures.
It was very pretty snow but I hadn't planned ahead and did not wear good shoes- so my pants and feet were soaked with frozen wet snow by the time I got home! A miserable walk home!
A very sweet message from a former student....!
We like to try new restaurants every chance we get. We had heard that Amy Ruth's was supposed to have the best southern food in town.
It was pretty tasty (I had fried chicken and waffles. But $2.50 for a cup of Kool-Aid??).
I probably shouldn't post this, but it's frightening how many times we've had to tell Annie not to lick the pole on the subway....!!!! EEEEeeewwww
Empire State Building lit up for something special.
Jamie and I got a rare date night and went to see the Knicks play the Mavericks at Madison Square Garden. It was really fun!
Jamie and the girls hanging out at the park.
This is the green space at the park in front of our apartment- the girls love to run there.
I took Audrie out for a fun afternoon- just the two of us. We played in Central Park (her favorite spot), went Ice skating while we were there. Audrie did AMAZING at ice skating. She actually fell several times- but she would NOT give up and kept wanting to try again. I was so proud of her.
Then I took her out for a huge slice of pizza
and we shared a root beer. Such a sweet date with my Audrie!
Jamie's mom was in town so he and I got to sneak away to see a special exhibit at The Met.
"The Scream" was temporarily on display there (and it's one of Jamie's favorite paintings) so we had to stop by.
And the ironic story of the night was- as we were walking around the museum I asked Jamie "I wonder where the painting The Starry Night is on display? Maybe Chicago?" So Jamie looked it up on his phone and ta-da it was there at The Met just on the next floor. So we just strolled over and looked at it, too. The specialness of living in NYC, right??
We did some shopping and grabbed a quick dinner before heading home.
It was so nice having Donna in town so we could have a little break.
The girls were so excited to see her!
We all went to see the Rockettes and it was a hit!
Afterwards we took Donna to the Olive Garden in Times Square. It's one of her favorite restaurants so we assumed the one in Times Square would be a fun memory.
Audrie and Grandma Cornett.
Annie seems to be loving artwork more as she gets older.
I keep meaning to take a picture of how she spent about 30 minutes coloring ALL OVER the walls next to her bed. It's really quite impressive.
Annie's personality is just too perfect sometimes. She is one funny girl!
I tried to go back and find all the Playbills from our time here in NYC but I think I'm missing a couple. We've seen about 15 shows in the first year. Pretty awesome!
We have a chalkboard in our hallway and Audrie decorated it for Grandma Cornett's arrival.
Ok this next line of photos really deserves it's own post- I hope I never forget these few hours of my life!!!
Audrie got invited to one of her classmate's birthday party. So we said yes and were excited to go.
There is no way I can capture in photos the madness that ensued here. First of all, we LOVE the culture that we have all been exposed to here. But there were about 50 people squeezed into this one bedroom apartment and not one person was speaking English. Not even the clown!
They had magic, games, pinatas, face painting, tons of food, etc, for many hours- and no English. We just went with the flow and I did a lot of smiling and nodding.
The girls had a blast. They couldn't have cared less what language was being spoken.
I even got my face painted. But I'm pretty sure the clown was poking fun at me all night in Spanish. I do speak a little and I could catch a few words and phrases every now and then.
Ok, the kicker was- the party started at 6pm. We got there about 6:20 and were the first ones there... for an hour. People started to trickled in about 7:15ish and then the party was still going strong at 9:30pm....!!
I kept trying to make excuses about needing to get the girls home to bed, but no one seemed to understand me and I felt bad about just walking out! So finally after about 4 HOURS of non-stop partying- I managed to get the girls out the door and that mama sent us home with two HUGE bags of door prizes and lots of kisses all over our faces. It was insanely awesome.
For Thanksgiving we took the girls down the night before the Macy's parade to see the balloons being aired up. It was fun to let the girls see them, but the crowd was almost too much for me to handle.
We stopped at our favorite bakery on the way home- Levain Bakery is just perfection in a cookie!
I don't have many pictures from Thanksgiving, but we had a cozy dinner at Jason and Sam's house.
The girl's were their normal hyper selves. Here they are climbing all over poor Josh.
I don't know what my problem was but I was in a bad mood on Thanksgiving and couldn't shake it. We had a tasty meal with loved ones, but maybe I was just homesick? And then Audrie threw a massive tantrum as we were leaving which was just the icing on the cake for me.
I did swipe this yummy photo from our friend Caroline's instagram of our dinner.
Annie and I braved the day after Thanksgiving sales and went to Target. It actually wasn't too terrible and I saw her favorite movie in the clearance bin. She was so happy!
A random photo I took while walking in Soho (I found an awesome yarn store there and am smitten with knitting).
The girls having fun at 'our' park.
Ok that catches us up with November. Almost there! Hang on.
