New York, New York

Over President's Day, I was able to take Maddie on a trip of a lifetime. We went to NYC and met up with our friends, Barbara and Alex, from Georgia. It was such a special trip to be able to take my daughter on a girls weekend.....to NYC no less.

Here are our NYC girls on the last day. Maddie cried and cried when we parted ways with Alex and Barbara at the Subway.



Empire State Building -

This is the Statue of Liberty as seen from the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building.

We went to see Freckleface Strawberry. It is based on the book by Julianna Moore (the actress). It was the perfect play for our girls. Singing, Dancing.....and only 70 minutes. If you haven't read this yet, it is a cute book about being happy with who you are and how you look....even if you have freckles.

No girls weekend to NYC is complete without going to the American Girl Place. We ate brunch (with Hannah -Maddie's doll and Samantha - Alex's doll) and had a shopping spree while there.

We visited the largest Toys R Us that is located in Times Square. While at the ToysRUs, we rode the 3 story Ferris Wheel and toured the life size Barbie Dream House.

Alex had always had wanted to go ice skating. She doesn't live in the frozen tundra like we do. What better place to ice skate for your first time than Rockefeller Center. What a neat experience to ice skate as the lights came on at 30 Rock! Maddie out skated us all!

We walked or took subways or buses everywhere. That allowed us to see things like NBC Studios as we were going to our scheduled activities.

Maddie and Alex on the NYC subway.

We took the girls to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was a cold and windy day and the water was VERY choppy. But so worth it in the end. We had tickets that allowed us to go in the Pedestal and Museum at the State of Liberty.

After we met up with Barbara and Alex at the airport and found our hotel, we took the girls to see Times Square at night. The look on their little faces with all the lights was priceless. We also made sure to take them into the M and M store and the Hersey store.

Of course I have to end this post by thanking my wonderful husband and Scott, Barbara's husband for keeping the little kids at home. We couldn't have taken this wonderful trip without them.

New Reality

Since we don't have enough excitement in our lives, Jackson decided that he needed to add some. On January 1, 2011, he fell down our basement stairs. He had just gotten really good at crawling. The big kids left the basement door open after coming up from the playroom and in just a split second he fell down the stairs.

He has a fracture to the right femur......leave it to my kid to break the biggest strongest bone in your body from a fall down carpeted stairs onto a carpeted floor.

He is in a Spica cast. This goes from the toes on his right foot up past his hip and around his torso. Because of this cast, he can't sit up. So, we have had to "rig" everything from car seats to high chairs to allow him to use them. Oh, and since the cast goes completely around his waist....diapering is quite the challenge. Let's just say, buying Depends at the ripe ol' age of 31 has gained me quite a few funny looks. We use a Depend to stick under the cast as best we can and then use a regular diaper on top to hold it in place.

We go back on February 4th with the hopes that we come home with a cast-less child. I am already planning on packing a cute outfit (since we only have 4 that he can wear now....and only 2 PJs with the right foot cut out), soap wipes-that when you add water to them they sud (he has only had sponge baths since the accident and is starting to get a bit ripe), and his snowsuit (we can only swaddle with blankets to go out in the cold). Woe be unto the doctor, if they have to tell me we can't take the cast off!

Hopefully, I will get up a Christmas post complete with cute pictures of the kids.....but that will probably have to wait till the child attached to my hip is cast-less and able to entertain himself.