New Jersey - New York -- Part II

On Day 1, Saturday, we met in the city around 2:30. Some of the group is originally from Connecticut and New York so the NY style pizza was something they wanted to have... every day. Last time Alicia and I went to NY City, we found this good little pizza place right by Port Authority so that was our first stop on Saturday night.

Our next stop was going to be the Museum of Natural History.

We headed down to the Subway, got our subway passes and waited for the train. We got onto a train that we thought was the one we wanted until we heard the word "express" - at that time, we immediately got OFF the train. (no wonder the millions of people waiting for the train didn't seem as excited it arrived as we did).

After waiting for a while, we decided to just forget about the Museum for that night and just head up to Times Square. The Museum would have been closed anyway by the time we actually found it (it was after 5 at this point).

This is just a goofy picture on a set of red stairs in Times Square

Cruising down 5th Ave, we saw this statue so we did one of those things where it

looks like you are holding it up... well, we tried to make it look that way.

Across the street from the statue thing was this awesome church building.

And of course, we had to take a picture of the Plaza Hotel. We waited around to see if any celebrities came out, but none did. Oh well.

Ok, if anyone can tell me how one of these things work....

it's some sort of parking structure where the cars are all stacked up...

I have no idea how it works!

As we were approaching Rockefeller Center, Alicia and I spotted a Christmas tree and started freaking out because we thought it was "the" Rockefeller Christmas Tree. As we got closer, we learned it was just the tree on top of the Radio City building... it was like, half a tree. It's hard to tell in this pic, but it was definitely NOT the tree we thought.

So, apparently this is what a chesnut looks like. I had no idea what these things were so I finally asked. I wanted to try one but you had to buy a $5 bag; you couldn't just try 1. Oh well.

At the end of the day, we stopped at another pizza place and made a list of all the things we wanted to do over the next few days (on a paper plate).

More to come...

New Jersey - New York -- Part I

I just got back from a trip to New Jersey and New York. I stayed with my Aunt Lori and her family in New Jersey. I spent part of my time with my family and another part of it hanging out with my friends in New York City. I will be posting pictures in segments because I have so many pics (over 150) and I need to sort through everything.

This first post is a few pics of my family: Lori, Jana, Ellie and Audrey (I stole 2 of the pics from their blog). I had a blast hanging out with them and getting to know each of them a little better! I also was able to celebrate Aunt Lori's birthday with her! And Ellie turned 3 the day after I left, but it was fun to see her excitment in looking forward to her 3rd birthday!

(oh and Lori tried to convert me to a liberal democrat but I stood strong hehe but we had great discussions and played "find the biases" while watching Fox and CNN)

Jana, Lori, Ellie and Audrey right after Lori's birthday dinner

Little Audrey!

Ellie and Lori

Ellie and I

Take A Nap!

As if I needed anymore excuses to take naps, my friend Erin sent me this link to an article about the benefits of taking naps!

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/2008/11/07/why-you-need-a-nap.aspx

Set aside 25 minutes, read this article and then take a 20 minute nap! Or take a 2 hour nap, whatever works best for you!

=)

For Halloween, Taylor and Hannah went Trunk-or-Treating. Basically, the church asked people to show up at the church parking lot with their vehicle trunks decorated and full of candy and the kids went and trick-or-treated to each trunk. There were also fun games for the kids!

Hannah was a Pumpkin for Halloween and Taylor was a UPS delivery girl, just like her dad (except, obviously her dad is a UPS delivery BOY). Instead of a regular Halloween bag for Taylor's candy, Tiff and I used a box and ribbon for her candy to go with the UPS theme =)

The two little cuties.
Getting ready to go!

Taylor got her face painted at the Trunk-or-Treat

(my camera's battery died so Tiff has the pictures of the butterfly painted on Taylor's face).

Hannah and her Pumpkin hat...
She looks kind of bald,
but she is still super cute!


Just playing... she's such a happy little kid!

Hannah is usually smiling!

Taylor... getting ready to Trunk-or-Treat!

The Poll

I find it kind of neat that 17 people have voted on my poll already.

I didn't even know I had 17 readers.

Maybe people are voting twice? hehe

Anyway, it's nice to see that so many people are going to vote in this

historic and important election.

Happy Voting!

Pumpkin Carving

Last night, I went to a pumpkin patch with two of my roomates, Jenny and Angelene. Today, we carved them! Here are a few pictures of the final results from the pumpkin carving. I didn't have my camera last night so unfortunatly I don't have pictures of the pumpkin-picking-out adventure or the hay ride.

I can't get this pic to move down, but here are the results all lit up!

My finished work

This is Jenny with her pumpkin (on the middle step).

Angelene with her pumpkin (on the top step).


My pumpkin is on the bottom step.

And a close up of mine. I'm not going to lie, we used stencils...

My pumpkin all lit up!

Broomball

As I've mentioned before, I joined a Broomball team this winter. Our first game is December 2. I learned that there are special shoes you need to play that help you avoid slipping as you are running across the ice; the soles are spongy and have holes to provide traction. So today, I went out and bought broomball shoes and a broomball stick.

Here is a pic of my broomball stick and shoes...

And this is a close up of the shoes so you can see the spongy sole with the holes.

They are super light and the spongy part is really squishy!

The good ol' days

Although I feel like I am settling into Minnesota life, I would not consider myself "settled" yet. On days where I feel less settled, I tend to think of the good ol' days in CA and figured I'd write some of the memories on my blog. Not because I am dwelling in the past though; I have plenty of things to look foward to (broomball, ice hockey and snow!!). I am writing these because it is just nice to think about the past memories sometimes.

Most of them probably won't be interesting to anyone but me, but I am going to make the list anyway...

-I miss playing poker every Saturday night! And I miss the fact that David got tired of me bringing the same "Snack to share" every week (taco soup... he liked it but didn't share the same passion for weekly servings of it)

-I miss watching CNN with Brandi every day at lunch at State Farm in Roseville and talking in the break room about our faith and what we thought about the current events (this, by the way, is how Brandi and I started to become really good friends)

-I miss hearing Alicia say, "I'm saying..." when she agreed with someone and felt passionate about the issue.

-I miss losing hours and hours of sleep staying up late talking to Jon. And watching 24 with him (this is how Jon and I started to become really good friends)

-I miss making Rachel crazy by making empty threats that I was going to hurt her cat, Bauer (this is when Rachel started to question the strength of our friendship haha j/k).

-I miss paying Rachel $20 to clean my bathroom (I know this is my cousin Rebecca's favorite room to clean, but it's definitely not mine)

-I miss living with one of my BFF's.

-I miss all the yummy things Alicia would cook (especially her Tortilla Soup... I was the only one who liked it... go figure that the picky one was the only one who liked it!)

-I miss playing hours of Dr. Mario with Alicia

-I miss David blasting the cold air when it got a little hot in the apartment on poker nights (did I mention I miss poker nights?)

-I miss walking with Brandi on our morning and afternoon breaks at work.

-I miss In-N-Out and Round Table

-I miss having the option of going to see my Turlock/Modesto relatives when I had time

-I miss being able to ask Rachel "does this outfit look ok?"

-I miss being able to just sit in the same room at the same time with all my CA friends

-I miss knowing my way around town

-I miss watching American Idol and Hell's Kitchen with Rachel

-I miss having my own bathroom and huge room and huge closet!

-I DON'T miss my neighbor who played the piano at 9am every Saturday morning!

-I miss talking to my mom every morning on my way to work (in CA when I was on my way to work at 645am, my mom was already up because it was 845 in MN so we actually talked on the phone a lot more then... now I get to see her more, which is better, but I do miss the morning chats)

-I miss the hot tub at my old apartment complex

-I miss carpooling to school with Rachel

-I miss church shopping with Brandi (we never did find one... boo! to seeker-sensitive movement in CA)

-I miss the summers!

-I miss tubing on the American River

-I miss Alicia's 3rd-party perspective on politics!

-And her snowman shower curtain and hand towel that was still up in March/April haha!

-I miss Jon's Chevy Cavalier. Oh wait, I mean his music, wait, neither. hehe =) But I do miss his poker advice

-And I miss discussing with him any and every topic that came up at school

-I miss the nights we'd all hang out at Rach and I's apartment and then realize that, yeah, we like hanging out at Alicia and David's better.

-Alicia and David lived about 100 yards from the train tracks (the tracks were up on a hill) and I miss picturing the train derailing and rolling into their apartment every time it went by (no one probably knew that one!)

-I miss mojo bars-mountain mix!

-I miss the amazing shower water pressure in my old apartment!

Well, I could sit here all night and think of stuff. I am sure there are big things I miss that I didn't think of (maybe my friends will comment on those things; who knows).

As I said, I do have things to look forward to here, like the Broomball team I am playing on (starting in December).

Good times...

Just Taylor

5 Hour Nap

I took a 5 hour nap today - well, 4 hours without interruption and another hour, waking up periodically. It felt great and was much needed.

I just figured I would post this useless information since my blog title is about naps, and this nap was a great one!