In another attempt to truly experience the East Coast, Steve and I packed up the children and headed down to New York for Thanksgiving. Our weekend began on 79th Street and Central Park West for the Macy's balloon inflating event. We braved the cold and the crowds to watch Buzz Light Year, Smurf, Kermit the Frog and others become much larger than life!
The kids were excited each time they identified a new character slowly taking shape, but the highlight of the evening was being live on New York City's Channel 5 News! We realized that the cameras were about to roll, just feet from us. An NBC news reporter asked Emilie, Jonathan, Annelise and Sophia to shout "Happy Thanksgiving!" on cue -- definitely the highlight of the night!
We then wandered down Columbus Avenue in search of New York Pizza. We ended up tucked in a small shop with hardly enough eating space, but with pizza well worth the sacrifice.
It was then to Central Park and a night of ice skating. As we left the streets of Manhattan, full of holiday crowds, we found Central Park beautiful and peaceful. We circled around Tavern on the Green, with its trees full of twinkling lights, walked through a tunnel with a lone saxophone player, serenading couples wandering the park, and listened to the clopping feet of horse drawn carriages in the distance. When we reached the ice skating rink, Steve and the kids slipped on skates and headed for the ice. Ezra and I made our way back to the car by way of various shops and a stop at Starbucks for hot chocolate. We picked up the ice skaters and listened to reports of their immense progress, with Emilie and Jonathan now able to skate alone, Annelise much more confident, and Sophia surviving her first skating experience with no injuries or tears. As we headed north out of the city, all five children fell asleep before reaching Matt and Ruth's apartment, our destination for the weekend.
On Thanksgiving morning we drove into Manhattan to experience the Macy's Day Parade with Matt and Ruth and Ruth's three sisters who were also visiting for Thanksgiving. Although the crowds were thick and the view from Matt's big screen television would have been much better, we loved every moment of being at the parade in person. We happened to find the perfect spot for the kids, inside a gated area, where they had an unobstructed view of the same balloons that they had seen the night before, along with marching bands and dancers. Steve and I both agreed that this just may have to be our new Thanksgiving tradition.
After the parade, the Perkins returned home to prepare Thanksgiving dinner while Steve and I took the kids to the Bronx Zoo. (We all knew that too many cooks in the kitchen along with little helpers would be more than one small apartment could take!) With each recent trip to New York, I have wanted to take our family to the Bronx Zoo, the setting of many children's books and movies. Finally we made it and our expections were met! The buildings and grounds were more like a Neoclassical European estate than a city zoo, with columns, domes, fountains and groomed lawns. Due to the holiday and the cold, there were no crowds, which was perfect for a family with five young children. We saw huge boa constrictors, an impressive Madagascar exhibit, the famous gorilla habitat and the bug carousal. However, the children all agreed that the highlight of the day was a tiny blue poison dart frog in the amphibian exhibit.
We joined Matt and Ruth for Thanksgiving dinner. Ruth successfully prepared her first turkey and the dinner included Matt's famous mashed potatoes, a sweet potato dish, made from a recipe that I just had to ask for, hot rolls and a pomegranate fruit salad, followed by a pumpkin roll and chocolate cake for dessert.
The next morning Ruth, her sisters, Annelise, Emilie and I headed into the city for the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular. We donned our 3-D glasses as we followed Santa's sleigh on a ride around New York City, watched the Parade of the Soldiers, an original Rockettes scene, a scene from the Nutcracker and the elegant living Nativity to end the show. This turned out to be the perfect over night transition from fall celebrations to the Christmas holidays!
We did a little shopping on 5th avenue, walked past the Christmas windows and then left the Perkins, as they headed to Serendipity and we wandered through Central Park and then met up with Steve to search for Jonathan's street vendor Gyro's that he had been desperately requesting since we had arrived in New York.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent at the South Street Seaport. We took the kids into the Body Exhibit, where they were most facinated to learn and see that tumors, made out of teeth, hair and fingernails can grown in random areas of the body. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge as the day was ending, along with all of the commuters heading home for the weekend. And then we watched the tree lighting at the Seaport, proceeded by a men's chorus and Santa's train wobbling up the cobble stone street.
We then returned to Matt and Ruth's for dinner and Wii playing, complete with High School Musical III competitions involving each house guest, young and old alike.
All of us fell asleep before the night was over. After Steve finished a card game and a night of conversation he returned to our room to find us all fast asleep!
The next morning the Perkins joined us for the movie Bolt!
We began our drive back home, but not before we had to replace two shocks that blew out only two miles into our journey. The experience proved to be a perfect "glass is half full" teaching moment for our kids. Fortunately we were seconds from a Sears auto shop, rather than on a desolate freeway, a huge mall with shops and restaurants was next door, the auto part store was still open for 45 minutes so that our part could be quickly picked up, we were not inconvienced during a work day, and the bill was in the hundreds, not thousands! Despite this minor inconvience, our trip was a huge success!
