Visitors- 6

Our last visitors of the year were my sister and her family. It was so much fun to have them come visit us here, and do all the fun activities with them. They were here for only a short time so we quickly started doing things with them. So as soon as Spencer was out of school on Thursday we headed out the door to go to Macy's and show them Holiday Lane, which is this magical place on Macy's 9th floor to all things with Christmas. 

After spending some time there, and buying some ornaments we headed over to see if Santa was in so we could have the boys tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Surprisingly there was NO LINE?!!? It was awesome. 

Here are the boys during the walk through a wonderland before seeing Santa. 

Here he is!!! Spencer was telling him what he wanted while Wyatt waited.

Now it was Wyatt's turn to tell the big man what he wanted. 

After that we headed over to Times Square so they could see it at night. They loved it! 

I love this picture of them enjoying all the sights. :) 

The next day we headed over to the Today show, which all three of them were seen on TV!!! Along with my hand waving in the background. :) We got tickets to go to the Top of the Rock and also take the NBC Studio Tours, which was a very smart move, especially if you love NBC shows (which I do!). Before doing the tour we went and looked around the NBC store, and I found this AWESOME shirt!!! Love The Office! 

We could not take any pictures while on the tour, but it was really cool, no celeb sightings though.

Afterwards we looked over at the ice skating rink and saw they were shooting a commercial, show, or something? There was a choir there along with lots of cameras and directors and other people. 

Here we were waiting for the tour, and saw a familiar face in the wreath! :) haha! Wyatt and I were having some fun. 

View from Top of the Rock. BREATH-TAKING! This would be Central Park.

Other side of the island from Top of the Rock. That's the Empire State Building.

We walked up Fifth Avenue to go look at all the window displays, and walked through St. Paul's Cathedral. It was breath-taking too! 

Loved the stain-glassed windows.

Walked by The Trump Tower and went inside to see the lobby, remember the wreath from the last post?

Tall Trump Tower.

Finally made it to FAO Schwarz!!!! Look at those smiles!! 

That night we went to the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular! This is the lobby of Radio City Music Hall. Fancy.

A top view of the lovely chandelier.

After Radio City Music Hall we decided to head over to Juniors'. This place is known for it's INCREDIBLE cheesecakes. We heard about it from one of our other visitors (Thanks Deric and Stephanie!!). It wasn't too far away so we walked to it, and tried to figure out what to eat. 

Wyatt had spaghetti and meatballs, and look at the size of that meatball!!!! He had three of those, you definitely get a lot for what you pay for at this place. It was really good too. 

All you gotta do is ask Heath how his Chicken Pot Pie was. This this was as big as that plate and at least an inch and a half high! He wasn't sure if he would be able to eat it all, but then tasted it and was floored! I think they would come back to just eat at Juniors' again. We took two slices of cheesecake home, and Liza devoured those, and loved them. So NYC tip: go to Juniors'. 

While taking pictures Spencer wanted me to get a picture of him drinking through two straws. :) Funny kid. 

That was just a day and a half with Liza and fam. The next post will show you everything else we did. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

...everywhere we go!!!! 

It's Christmastime in New York City, and we are loving it!!! Everything is all dressed up, every restaurant, every store front, every street it seems. So we had to get our tree up as soon as our guests left after Thanksgiving.

Here's Tyler getting it all set up. 

 The finished tree!!! and Spencer, and Spongebob. :) 

 Beautiful tree!!!

 Here is one of Macy's store windows. Their store takes up almost a whole block, so on one side of the block they have these puppets in the windows that move, then on another side they have the story of Yes, Virginia, which Spencer loved.

Even the water fountains are all dressed up for Christmas!!!

A drummer over near Rockefeller Center.

A HUGE wreath and bow at Trump Tower. Pretty much every building has a huge wreath inside their lobbies, even the residential apartment buildings. It's so fun to walk by and see the Christmas trees, wreaths, lights and menorahs for Hanukkah. 

And here she is!!! The Rockefeller Christmas Tree!!! It is HUGE, this picture doesn't even make it look that big, but it is beautiful and gorgeous and big. 

Bergdorf Goodman with wreaths in most of the windows! There is also a huge snowflake hanging in the middle of the street here too. You can see the lower part of it right above the E 57th St. sign.

A closer look.

I also wanted to show you this video, but for some reason I cannot get the movie off of my iPhone to put on here. So I will just tell you the story. We were walking around Rockefeller Center when we saw up on the side of the Saks Fifth Avenue store this video countdown put up on the side of the building! We wondered what it could be counting down to, so we waited...for 6 minutes, and watched the countdown. While waiting we were worried that it would be for nothing, and it was all a little joke. But alas, the countdown was done and it was a not a joke. There was a little show of pipes going every which way and windows opening where the buildings windows were, and snow falling on the side of the building. Kind of like a movie being shown up onto the wall of the building, but the video windows fitting right where the real windows were. It was pretty awesome, and it had music with it. It lasted for about 2 minutes, then went right back to a 13 minute countdown. 

See!!!! This is what New York City has for Christmas!!! Such fun things!! If you can ever come up here during Christmas, please come!! It's a most wonderful, fabulous time of year up here (as is pretty much every other time here). 

One day in Central Park...

One Saturday we decided to go out to Central Park and walk around. We stumbled across this:

The New York City Marathon set up!!!! EVERYONE was already out running, but it was just them doing some last runs I guess before the marathon. 

It was pretty cool though.

The walking around in Central Park in the fall was BEAUTIFUL!!!!

Look at these trees! I loved it!

And of course, we had to go to the carousel, so Spencer had to get a ride in. He was excited, even if he doesn't look like it in this picture.

Waving to us as he zooms by, we did not realize how fast this carousel went. It was great though, because it was moving faster than regular carousels, and the ride was long, so perfect combo. 

We then found Heckscher Playground. It's a pretty awesome playground, even with a rock to climb all over, perfect for little boys (and their dads....okay and their moms too). 

Random photo: saw this outside our window one day, because these workers have been working on this building for a while, but I know that when my mom was here, and she saw any worker near the edge of a building she was nervous for them. So I had to put this up to show my mom how close to the edge this worker was!!! Crazy, right?!?! 

Visitors- 4

Before our visitors we had during Thanksgiving we had some other family members come to stay with us! Deric, Stephanie and cutie little E, their son. :) We had never met him before, and he's almost 2!!! So we were just a bit excited to see him, and see if he liked us....I think he did. :) 

Such a sweet boy!

Spencer and E got along great, and they soon learned to sit on top of the Lincoln Logs tin...it was perfect sitting for him. 

Ummm...adorable, right?!?!

Okay so, I guess I should tell you that E really only loved "Uncle". He called for Uncle numerously every day!!! He would say my name every now and again, and he still liked me, and liked Spencer too, but Uncle was his favorite. The only one he would cuddle with too. 

This Uncle is so lucky. 

Spencer and E sharing snacks. 

Love this smile!

He had a genius plan of putting the plastic tub on his head, and then pushing his face against it, it cracked me up!!

While Deric and Stephanie were here, we were able to head over to Brooklyn and try some great pizza. Grimaldi's!!! Now, you know a place in NYC is great because there is a line, or it's filled up with people. This line is ALWAYS long at Grimaldi's, we waited for 55 minutes before being seated. Was it worth it? Some of us say yes, others say a different kind of pizza is better. To each their own. 

Here's our cute company! (with Manhattan in the background, that building to the right of them, that is halfway built is the new World Trade Center)

Stephanie is having a baby!!! So we took some pictures of her with her small belly. She's so beautiful. 

Cute mom and dad hands that made hearts. 

They were having a party in Utah after they left our place to find out what gender the baby was. This was part of a cute little movie she put together. 

Spencer loving on his cousin. 

And of course, Uncle getting the kisses. 

Had to take a picture of my boy's beautiful blue eyes. :) 

Since we were in Brooklyn I decided to take some pictures of the sights. It was fun (and a little cold) to be over there! Here's part of the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Downtown Manhattan skyline.

Statue of Liberty with a sunset.

Another one with the ferry in front. 

Loving these sunsets here!

The East River and downtown Manhattan. 

Thanks so much Deric, Stephanie and E for coming to stay with us!!! We had lots of fun with you, and were glad you got us out to some more restaurants that we are eating at more now. You guys are so great, and we hope you get a chance to come back and visit sometime.

Visitors-5 and Thanksgiving Dinner

Yes I know that I'm skipping our 4th visitors, but our 5th visitors were here during Thanksgiving and I wanted to post about that before it was too late. We had Tyler's brother and family come visit us for Thanksgiving and it was so fun!!! Spencer loves his cousins when they come to visit and they all had so much fun playing together, and I'm pretty sure they were all so sad to say good-bye to each other today. It was kinda cute how much they hugged each other. 

We did some of the same visitor things with them, and ate at some great places too. It was fun to have them here to do things and play games with at night. 

So you are wondering how my turkey turned out?? Here's a video to show you our yummy dinner, and the fun we had going to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. YES!!! We went to it and it was actually really fun, even though it was quite crowded. We did the showing of the balloons and blowing them up the night before also. That was REALLY crowded so I don't think we'll do that one again. Hope you enjoy our video and that your Thanksgiving was filled with good food, and good company.