Aunt Jen

A few months ago, Jordan gave me an amazing gift: a visit from my sister. So now after 10 weeks of anticipation, my sister has come and gone and it was a week to never forget. Jenifer lives in Idaho with her husband and five boys (ages 12, 11, 10, 7, and 10 months), so you can only imagine what a sacrifice her family had to make for her to leave them for six days and come stay with me. I am forever greatful to both my husband and her family.

How much can you cram into six days? From sushi to the Statue of Liberty, we did it all- mostly.

Rubba Dub Dub, three babies in the tub. There is equal spacing between all three boys (Hunter and Henry are 14 months apart; Henry and Paxten are 14 months apart). My boys loved having Baby Paxten around.
Jordan arranged for me and Jen to spend a day in New York City; he kept all three boys while we had a girls day out. At first I thought it would be a relaxing day of sight seeing. We quickly discovered how wrong I was. Our 4:30am cab didn't show, the lines at the airport were crazy long, and they called "Final Boarding" for our flight before we were even through security at the airport. Have you ever seen those movies where the crazy people are running full speed through the airport yelling, "hold the plane"? Yeah, that was me and my sister. We sat down (no shoes, belts, our carry-on bag trailing gloves, scarves, hats, ...) and before we could even catch our breath the plane was off. But we made it and our day of adventure had begun.

New York subways are not like other subways through-out the world. But it's much cheaper than a cab, so we decided to travel the city by subway and foot. The wind was super strong and the Staten Island Ferry was no where in sight, so we opted out of our planned ferry ride and admired Lady Liberty from the water's edge.
I'm not sure what I expected from the World Trade Center site, but I felt more walking away from it- down the same streets I remembered from the news broadcasts - than at the site itself. I'm sure someday when the memorial is complete it will be powerful, but for me it was hard to see it as more than a construction site.

I love Grand Central Station. It's so sparkly and polished. I'm sure it's much busier during rush hour, but early on a Saturday it was pretty mild.

We found our way to Times Square a bit before our scheduled time, so we explored the three story ToysRUs (kids need proof that mama really was in NYC), complete with a full size farris wheel. Standing still in the middle of mayhem was fabulous- everybody in a hurry, everybody with somewhere to be (Chinatown was the same way!), and us two stary eyed Idaho girls just soaking it in. We shared a hot dog from a street vendor- not recommended. $2.00 for a silly hot dog on a bun with ketchup and mustard- what's so special about that? I somehow thought that a NYC street vendor hot dog would be magical.

Jordan got us tickets to see Phantom of the Opera; it was magical! The music was stuck in our heads for days.Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedral were beautiful. We didn't actually make it to the Chrysler Building, but we could well see it in the skyline-it too was beautiful.

The Empire State Building. We road to the top and somehow were surprised at how much colder and windier it was than down on the street. I have a crazy strong fear of man made heights, so a quick look at the view from each side and I was good to go- no need to linger some 82 stories above ground when it's windy and cold anyway!

Our return trip home (subways, air trains, and flight) was much more relaxing than our previous journey some 16 hours before- I was asleep before the plane took off. A day in the city- what a great day it was!

Even though we could hardly move Sunday morning, Jen and I loaded up the three boys and headed for Niagra Falls. (We thought Jordan could use some re-coup time) It was so cold and windy that we didn't last long at the falls, but my boys loved throwing ice chunks over the fence and into the water. We were all amused by the thick ice that covers everything from the mist off the falls.
Before Jen had to leave, we made the trip to Palmyra. It was too cold and slushy/icy to make it very far into the Sacred Grove, but it was very interesting to see the Joseph Smith homes. My boys were most awed by the fact that the missionaries were girls. Henry, " Girl missionaries?" over and over the whole time we were there. The Hill Cumorah is very pretty even in winter and without all the pagent galla. Sometimes I forget how close I live to our churches founding location- so much deadication and sacrifice and it all started in a place about 30 minutes from my little apartment.

"The Boo Babies" (Jordan only had one mis-hap on his day of the boys- a lost binki for Paxten, that turned out to not be lost after all. So my boys adopted the new ones he bought, but just for a little while. Surprisingly, Hunter re-latched on much more than Henry) We were very thankful to have Aunt Jen here for Henry's birthday. It's always fun to share with family and friends. My boys miss having baby Paxten to play with and Aunt Jen's magic bag of toys. I'm so greatful that Jen got to come visit; it was a great mid-winter boost for my soul! Thanks to all our friends and neighbors who made our mid-day habachi and late nite sushi runs possible!