I Heart New York

I will not be able to give justice to our trip to New York in a blog entry. It was awesome! We weren't quite sure how it was going to be when we left since we had a contract on a house to purchase, but had zero showings on our home the weekend before leaving. We were walking around with giant pits in our stomachs, wondering what a trip to New York would be like if we felt like we had to watch every penny. Seth suggested we walk across the Brooklyn bridge while we are there since "walking is free."

Ned and Ann came in to stay with Norah, and after giving them a crash course in her routine we were off. A few hours after arriving Wednesday afternoon we received a call from our realtor to let us know that we had a offer...a good offer! We were ecstatic. Seth couldn't stop grinning, and we thoroughly enjoyed the rest of our NY weekend.

Wednesday afternoon, Thursday and all day Friday was a perfect mix of experiencing New York and having a relaxing vacation. Highlights include walking in Central park (with trees and flowers in full bloom), visiting ground zero, walking around Greenwich Village, East Village, West Village, SoHo, and Times Square at night. Not to mention an awesome list of food: Ukrainian, Thai, Japanese, burgers, French, pizza in Times Square, and Belgian fries. Seriously.

We also explored Brooklyn and spent time with cousin Luke and girlfriend Jess on the Gunden side and cousin Matt and girlfriend Amanda on the Garber side. We enjoyed figuring out the subway system, and then letting them take over when they were with us.

Meanwhile, Norah was having a great week with her grandma and grandpa Kauffman, including a trip to the zoo with TJ and Luka and their Schmucker grandparents, multiple walks and park visits, and the Butterfly exhibit. She changed over the short time we were gone. Her "Oh" for "yes" is now often replaced with "Yah" and she pulls on her diaper when she has taken a poopie and needs to be changed. And I swear her hair got longer.

As Norah played with rocks and read books with grandma and grandpa, our wedding festivities began on Friday. (The whole point of the trip was for my cousin Renetta's wedding to Mike Wong.) Friday evening the Garbers had a memorable dinner at a French bistro in Brooklyn and then, due to the rain, hopped in cabs to a bar in SoHo to meet Renetta and Mike and the rest of the wedding guests. We fell into bed for the third night in a row.

The wedding was incredible. I can't possibly find the words to properly describe the setting, but hopefully the slideshow of pictures will help a little. It was at an art gallery called Smack Mellon with a view of the Manhattan bridge. It was artsy and laid back, yet elegant. The food was amazing and the DJ kept us on the dance floor for hours. We had a great time celebrating the occasion with family. With the exception of our three kids everyone was able to make the trip.

Today I am home with the little Peanut, doing laundry, getting groceries and preparing for another week. I couldn't stand the thought of barely seeing Norah last night and then taking her in to daycare today. In between my productivity (laundry, cooking, sorting mail, etc.), we are playing hard. I think I have kissed her about 328 times today already.

We have a lot ahead of us in coming weeks, but we are hopeful that everything will go through on both homes and that in about a month we'll be settling into our new place.

Enjoy a slew of photos from our week in NY and Norah's at home with grandma and grandpa. One note on our NY pictures is that we only had our small digital camera, not our nicer SLR (hence the grainy look to some that are in low light). Also, I noticed that between the two of us we failed to get many pictures of G&G Garber. Gasp!! Hopefully Lisa and others will have some to add to our collection.

New York 2010