Day 5 New York City

This day started out by trying to find the right subway to get downtown towards the Statue of Liberty. On the way, a fire truck came racing by which Makenna loved! Daddy took a pic of it for her.

We found the subway and it was easier to navigate than I thought it would be. The girls loved it!! Definitely the easiest way to travel with them.

After going through the line of security to get on the ferry, we were finally on our way to see the Statue of Liberty.

Little did we know that we would have another line to stand in to actually go up in it!! Not fun! It was so long and this time we had to do the same thing along with an air test to make sure you don't have chemicals on you! I understand being careful but this was ridiculous. I have no idea why they didn't just do the chemical test before you got on the ferry! Such a waste of time!

This is my happy baby on my back while we were waiting in the never ending line. She took a nice nap while waiting, thank goodness!

Finally inside the Statue!!!

This is looking up inside of her. I'm glad that we didn't do the crown. That was a lot of stairs!!

Once we got up there, we only stayed like five minutes!!! We were all a little scared of the heights. I don't know if I'm getting older or if it's because I have kids but I can't stand being up that high anymore!! It was pretty crazy.

View of the city from the statue.

Mom and Dad!!! They wouldn't let us take their pic very often!!

Me and Trav. Not a great pic. We are both squinting into the sun.

We then took the ferry to Ellis Island. It was so neat to see where they checked in all the immigrants! This is inside the building.

Cuteness on the ferry back.

More cuteness.

Afterwards, we were all starving and we wanted some real New York pizza and NOT McDonalds. We were kind of wandering a little bit and not really going anywhere so I took matters into my hands and started asking people. (I have no idea why I'm the only one that will talk to strangers but it's the only way to find stuff out;) I asked this one guy and he just shrugged but then I found a cop and decided to ask him. He pointed to this place that was right by us and said it was great. I guess this is a huge cop hangout because there were tons of cops here. They had a dining area upstairs and there were tons up there. We felt very safe. Then all those cops left and a whole new group came in. It was great pizza!!! So yummy. I'm glad I asked!!!

After we ate, we walked down to Wall Street! It truly looks like a wall (of big buildings)!!

Next stop was the Trinity church. Alexander Hamilton (my mom's possible great, great uncle) is buried here and it's such a cool looking church in the middle of all these buildings. I think this is also the church that a lot of people ran to on 9/11.

Fire Fighters memorial

Trade center site. It was amazing to see in person.

A sculpture made from scraps of the Trade Center.

Looking at over the Hudson. When you turn around, you can see where the Trade Center was and it truly looks empty. I took a pic because it looked so empty but it doesn't show up in the pic. So sad.

As we were coming back across the Trade Center back to the subway, there was a fire station that was right across the street that had their doors up. It was fire station #10 and they had a memorial in their station that some people were already looking at. This fire fighter was sitting on the edge of the truck and asked Makenna if she wanted to sit in it. She was so excited and I think this will be the highlight of her trip. She will always remember it. I will remember the hunky fire fighter. He even turned on the lights and sirens for her and gave her some stickers. It was great.

The side of the fire truck.

After coming back on the subway, we got to finally relax. Our feet hurt so bad and were blistering. This is how the girls enjoyed their evening. We couldn't get them away from the window.

Day 4 New York City

It took us about 4 hours to get from Syracuse to New York City. It was a pretty easy drive and the girls were awesome in the car!!! They were either sleeping or just hanging out being good. They were even holding hands at one point...so cute!!

This is when we first saw the city!! There are so many trees along the highway that you can't see anything until you are right on it!

Giants stadium

It got a little hairy once we actually got into the city though! But my wonderful hubby did a great job driving and not getting us in an accident. It was amazing how many cars honked! It was like a constant thing. If you didn't move the second the light turned green, you had a few cars honking at you already. Travis said he wanted to honk at someone at least once while we were there and he got his chance. We were behind this guy and he was trying to turn right at a street where it said no right turns. The light turned green and we are just sitting behind him and Travis honked at him and it got him on his way;) I guess it works and it's so common that you don't get evil looks like you would at home;) We ended up having to circle around again because we went down the wrong street (or so we thought) and came down the right street only to not be able to see the parking garage our hotel told us to go to. I jumped out and ran down the street to ask where to park so we didn't have to circle around again. I asked the guy where to park and he said to just pull up in front like we could have in the beginning!! O-well!! We got all checked in and started off for Central Park. It wasn't very far from the hotel. A couple blocks down, we heard loud music and these helicopters were circling overhead. We looked down the street and I guess Paul McCartney was giving a concert for the David Letterman show. You could see the cameras moving around and the street was all blocked off. And then as we walked, we passed right by Carnegie Hall!!

We got to Central Park and they had these carriages all lined up and tons of bike riders trying to get you to take a ride with them. It was pretty expensive though and we would have had to take two!

We saw Chip and Dale as soon as we got to the park. So stinking cool. Especially for a desert rat like me. You just don't see that!! They would eat right from this ladies hand.

We found a hot dog stand for dinner (not so great) and a playground right off the bat so the girls could get some of their energy out. Unfortunately, it didn't work for Jordyn....she was a screaming banshee the rest of the night!!! It was kind of a different experience at this park. There were nannies with some of the kids instead of their parents.

We had a hard time finding things. I wanted to take them to a carousel and never found it and wanted to see the fountain and didn't find that until after dark and we were leaving and walked into it by accident. It's just so crazy big that we couldn't get our bearings. O-well. This is one of the lakes there.

There were a ton of turtles sticking their heads out. All those spots in the pic are turtles.

Cool looking bird

Another squirrel at the bottom of the tree behind Kenna.

This is the best family pic we could get. Jordyn just wanted to get down and go!!!

Jordyn chasing after a squirrel.

This is the view of the bigger lake once we finally got there. Central Park is HUGE!!!

Just a view of some buildings from the park.

The stinker Jordyn going wherever she wanted to go.

We thought these buildings looked like candles;)

So, as we were exhausted and just trying to find our way out, we ran into the fountain.

It took us awhile and me asking for directions to finally get out of Central Park;) We were pretty tired and ready to relax in the hotel room. We got some milk at this little store on the way back (that we found only because I asked someone;) and it was so expensive just for a small jug. I have no idea how New Yorkers live. I never saw a grocery store. Just these little shops on the corners. I guess they just get a few things every few days or locals know of better places to go;)

This is the view from our hotel room. I wasn't sure if we would have a view since they don't have to do that for employee rates but it was fun looking out of our windows. The girls loved just looking out at the chaos down below. It was also neat to see how they parked the cars. We should have taken a pic. They had them stacked so tight on the roof and they even had these things to park cars on top of each other. Pretty crazy!! And this is the city that truly never sleeps. We would hear horns honking into the night;)

Day 3 Palmyra

These are a little out of order because we started and ended the day at Hill Cumorah but I put all those pics together. But anyway, day three was kinda laid back. We did most of what we wanted to see on our first day and we just had a few things left and then wait until the pageant started. We drove out to the Peter Whitmer farm where Joseph Smith organized the church. I think they said it is mostly original. We got to tour this by ourselves which was really nice since the girls decided to go crazy here for some reason;)

They all look so small from the outside but are pretty roomy inside.

Peter Whitmer farm

Inside the Peter Whitmer house. Makenna loved all these spinning wheels in the houses!! Just like Sleeping Beauty!

This is on top of the Hill Cumorah looking out to all the seats for the pageant. It was quite a hike up there. It must have been crazy to go down while carrying the plates. It was very steep. We also got to save our seats while we were there so we were able to sit where we wanted!!

Top of Hill Cumorah

After going to both the Hill Cumorah and the Peter Whitmer farm, we had some time to kill so we went back to the Palmyra temple and just let the girls run around.

Jordyn had a good time as she kept putting Papa's hat on us.

They also loved rolling down the hill over and over and over again;)

Family pic.

We wanted them good and tired for the pageant so we took them back to this park that had cool, old school play equipment. I can't tell you how nice it was to be able to take the kids to a park in the middle of the afternoon in July!! The weather could not have been better!!!

Jordyn seriously has no fear. She loved this big slide and kept going down it.

Oh the joy!

Finally at the pageant!!! We had to walk through protesters to and from our cars. They had bullhorns and yelled all this stuff to us like we were wrong and that our gold bible isn't going to save us. What dummies! It reminded me of Joseph having to walk through people yelling at him (though of course ours was on a much smaller scale). Thankfully the law enforcement is on our side now. The cops kept looking disgusted at them.

Before the pageant. They sold food there and the actors mingled with the crowd so it wasn't too bad of a wait.

We decided to sit at the edge in case Jordyn got fussy and I think they were great seats.

I got the girls all bundled up in their p.j.'s and sweatshirts (yes, it was cold when the sun went down!!) right before it was going to start. I think we wore them out just enough during the day. They cuddled like this for most of the pageant.

It was AMAZING!!! They really do a great job on it. Makenna loved Jesus in it. She really thought it was Him. There was also a statue in the visitor's center and they had a voice coming from that one and she thought it was Jesus talking to her. She thought that was cool stuff. She kept asking to see Jesus again and if He was going to talk to us again.

After the pageant, we drove to Syracuse so that we didn't have as much of a drive the next day to NYC. Everyone except me and Trav fell asleep on the way so it was a nice and quiet drive;) That was probably also the nicest hotel and we were in it for the shortest amount of time;) O-well. Next stop. New York City!