there's no title for this post

Oh my.  It's the last day of January.  I best be getting on with a post...

One day I was wearing these socks and when i took them off, the shape stayed.  Looked so weird I thought I'd take a picture.  Weird, right?

Does someone need a haircut?  Um yes... it's just that we've not known where to go in this city to get an affordable and good cut.  No worries, we've got appointments later this week.

 My hair is getting way too long too... And my arms got chopped off.

 Over Christmas, dad was here and we went to the Natural History Museum one day.  It was so cool.  And SO big that we didn't even get to see everything.  This was the dinosaur exhibit.

 This one too.  Look at the size of that mouth!

My, what an iddy biddy head for all that neck...

Here's dad taking a picture in the African animals section.

 Giant squid, probably straight from the 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea movie.

 Here's a real slice of a tree.  Maybe it's not as cool in a picture but I was blown away!

 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.  A place that is WAY too overcrowded.  And cold.

 This is about as close to the tree as we got because of the hoards of people all over.  There wasn't much else to see anyway.  Except the rich ice skaters.  Who paid $75 per person to skate.

 World Trade Center Memorial.

 Really cool monument.  But this place made me really sad after a while.

 The Brooklyn Bridge.  We're so hip.  Haha.

 This was carved into a wall in Central Park.  We just thought it was neat.

 Here's an Egyptian Obelisk.  A real one.  Imported from Egypt.  In 18something.  A long time ago.

 Here's dad taking a picture of...

 ...this great skyline by the Belvedere Castle in Central Park!

This the sleeping arrangements you can look forward to when you come to visit.  Dad was a real trooper.

 Ok, here are the apt pics I keep promising.  There's not much to look at.  I am standing in our bedroom door.

 And this is standing by the front door.  Sometimes we use that ball as a chair.

 Here's our room.  Yes, our curtain is a black trash bag.  It came with the apartment!  And it keeps the cold out (kind of).

 Here's our bathroom.  It is like a hallway... That sink on the right side is about where the other wall goes to.  Eww, the tub looks dirty, I think we need to go clean it... pronto!!!

Holiday Festivities

Well Thanksgiving came and went and before Christmas does the same... well, here's November.

This has nothing to do with November but there are black squirrels everywhere in our neighbourhood and I am so fascinated by them because i've never seen a black one!

 Since we live in NYC, we decided to go to the Macy's parade.  It was a pretty day, we weren't too cold, we were surround by a billion people, and people brought ladders to see the parade.  When the parade started, suddenly all these kids in front of us were hoisted onto their parent's shoulders causing a lot of blockage.  Most of the parents got tired after a while and the kids slowly came down.

It's funny how you just start taking pictures of every single balloon and float... don't worry, I'll spare you the entire parade and show a few of my favorites.

Snoopy's balloon looked extremely overused and old.  He had patches all over him and he was fraying.

 Neil Diamond!

 Tim Burton's creation.  This was a new balloon.

Cute elves signaling that Santa's float was coming next!

 Santa!

Thanksgiving dinner on the Sunday after.  What was left anyway. We forgot to take a picture before cutting everything up.  But this is what we ate.  It was missing a lot of color but we're poor so we didn't have any greens.  And we don't like stuffing. Or yams. We did have a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving day but it was eaten by Sunday so we had pumpkin cookies for dessert.

We finally got a second bookshelf to get ourselves more organized and make some space for our Christmas visitor.

Our living room/dining room/kitchen room disaster area.  

Adam organizing the books (maximizing space)

It was a big production to empty those 15 boxes.

The finished product!  Yay us!

So I never took a picture of the spacious room we now have.  So stay tuned for the next post.  Which probably won't happen for another month.

where has time gone?!

 September came and went.  October came and went.  It's almost mid November so I thought I should catch up a little. Here's some of what has been going on since my last post... almost 3 months ago.....

Our first visitor, Clarence, came to NYC at the end of August!

 Above here is a corner of our living room/dining room/kitchen.  The way you see it now is still pretty much the way it still looks.... That cooler there, that's what we use as our kitchen table.  I've not put pictures up of our apartment because it still looks like we just moved in 2 weeks ago.  This pic below is the bedroom by the bathroom door.

 We went down to Battery Park and saw the Statue of Liberty. There she is! Yup, that little speck in the middle of the pic. One day we will hop on a ferry so we can see her at a closer range.

 Clarence didn't actually stay with us.  He was here for an oral surgeons conference.  He would've stayed with us before he left but the threat of a hurricane approaching caused him to skip out of town a day early.  The hurricane was graded down to a tropical storm by the time it reached us.  But it still managed to do a little damage in our area. 

 We went to the park nearby and there were lots of downed trees.

 One day we took a walk around Central Park and there was a lot going on all over the park.  We saw this delightful man dancing with a whole lot of other random people.

 And his dog.

 We went to occupy wall street on day 1.  Adam had heard that it was going to happen and wanted to just check it out.  There weren't a whole lot of people on day one, maybe a couple hundred at most, and I didn't actually think it would get much bigger.  But it did, and it's still going.  I've not been down in the area since so I don't know what the scene is like these days.

We also wanted to go to the new 9/11 memorial site.  But when we got there we discovered it was indeed free but you had to get passes online beforehand to enter.  We had no passes and we haven't been back since, but we'll get there.  Maybe when the freedom tower is done.  Here it is in construction.   

A few weeks ago we went to The Cloisters.  It's a branch of the Met in northern Manhattan displaying art (mostly religious) and architecture from medieval Europe.  It was pretty cool.  This pic is a view of the George Washington Bridge (i think) from outside.

 Inside looking into one of the chapels.

 Part of the structure outside.

 

One of the courtyards with original and replica columns.

 We also went to North Carolina for a family event one weekend in October.  We flew in a small plane and Adam experienced his first time boarding from and getting out on the tarmac at JFK.  Unfortunately, I failed to take any pictures in North Carolina.  I know, shameful.

So that sorta catches up our lives to this point.  We've enjoyed the city thus far. Although we really haven't been able to do much that has any costs attached to it.  One day we'll make it up to ourselves.

east coasters once more

So we moved. Here's our 6'x7'x8' cube before leaving Provo.  It had too much space for all our things.  But it's ok because in the end, we don't have a ton of space in our apartment.

 Adam listening to a pod cast while driving through... Wyoming?

 We didn't take a whole lot of pictures on our drive.  Basically the first day we drove to Des Moines, IA, slept a few hours at a rest stop and drove on to Ann Arbor.  We stopped in Michigan for 2 days to hang out with Clarence, Annie and family.  I guess I didn't take many pictures here.  But here are the kids at the raspberry picking farm we went to.  The van key mysteriously disappeared while we were here and we had to hang out at this farm for an hour before Clarence arrived to bring another key.  The girls at the barn gave the kids otter pops while they waited.

Then the boys happily watched Adam play a game on his phone.  And James took comfort in Adam's fluffy hair.  hahahaha.

Meanwhile, Annie attempted to hot wire the van from instructions she found online.  In the end, there wasn't enough information (and we didn't know what some of the car parts were) to make this successful. 

 After those two fun days, we headed down to North Carolina for a week to visit family.  And uh, I apparently didn't take any pictures while we were there. But we had a great time anyway.  We arrived in New York on a Saturday afternoon.  That evening we took the metro to The New School mostly for the parents so they could see where the school was and what it looked like.  This is just one of the buildings spread out around a few city blocks.

 Through our first week here we did some unpacking and some exploring each day.  We visited Central Park, Chinatown, our own little neighborhood, and also ran errands around downtown for things we needed in our new place.  Pictures of our place to come when we are a little more organized....  This past Saturday we went to Times Square.  The busiest place of Manhattan we've seen yet.  The first thing we saw upon entering the area was a free Syria rally happening.

Times Square!

And just in case you were wondering who Hello Kitty really is....

We actually came to see a Broadway musical called Memphis.  We got tickets from some friends who were unable to make it.  This show won a Tony for best musical last year.  And it was really good.  

So far so good.  Now I just need to find a job...  Today Adam went to orientation.  It's been... oh never... since we've been apart for so many hours at once since we've been married (almost a year!).  I'm not sure what to with myself.  Pathetic huh?  haha

bug bites

Does everyone get mosquito bites that swell up? 

And if one of those bites happens to be on your ankle does it makes it look like you have just one cankle?

 Meh, it's probably just me.  I don't know if it's clearly visible in this picture, but my right ankle swelled up and was much fatter than the other.  The worst is having the bite right on the parts that bend, it makes it hurt.  Boo hoo to me. Oh well.  It's one of summer's downfalls... for me anyway.

PS. We're leaving Provo (forever maybe?) in the morning and will be off on vacation on our way to new adventures in NYC!