End of the Schoolyear Party!

When we bought our house, there was nothing in our neighborhood but a of couple half-built model homes, surrounded by mud, dirt, and weeds for miles and miles.  We just had a good feeling about the neighborhood, despite it's sketchy beginnings when we bought our house.  Almost 7 years have passed and now it's obvious that those good feelings we had were right.  Our neighborhood is beautiful, huge, and has the most fun, friendly people.  Some of our friends started a tradition last year on the last day of school to have a big block party.  We did it again this year, and it was so fun.  We got a bunch of pizzas, the kids ate popsicles, and there was a water balloon fight.  One of our neighbors set up her huge blow-up water slide, and we organized some races with bikes and plasma scooters.  And us moms sat and chatted while our kids had tons of fun.  Perfect!

Big brother helping sister on the slide

Warming up after being in the cold water

She was obsessed with this scooter.  I don't know who it belonged to, but they were nice enough to let her ride it the whole two hours we were there.

Lining up for the races!

Dance Festival

I love Ethan's school's dance festival every year. They teach the kids such cute dances, and I am always impressed with how well everyone knows the dance. This year the second grade did "A Friend Like Me" from Aladdin. They all wore blue with red sashes like the Genie. Very cute!

Preschool graduation

Little Austin graduated from preschool last month, and boy is he excited for kindergarten.  He thought he was going to get to start kindergarten the day after preschool graduation and was so disappointed to find out he had to wait til September.  This year I decided to send him to a preschool that our neighbor down the street was running.  His teachers were so great and I am so glad I did it.  It was sooooo nice to be able to literally open the front door, hug him, and let him walk down there by himself.  And lots of the kids in the class also live in our neighborhood, so it allowed him to make more friends in the neighborhood (which is great for him, because he is soooo shy).  And he learned a lot! 
At the ceremony, each kid had a line to say that they'd memorized and they sang a bunch of songs they've been learning all year.  The songs all had actions, and the kids were soooo cute doing them.  I'm so proud of my smart little Austin, he is going to do amazing in kindergarten next year!

This girl LOVES to dance and was imitating all the actions the preschoolers were doing

He got a case of the giggles in the middle of the vampire song.

Miss Lizzie and Miss Mindy

NYC!

Adam had never been to New York City before and has been dying to go for years now. He was talking to his mom one day and she mentioned that her and his dad have been wanting to go too, so we decided to all go together.
Adam and I flew out to NYC on the red eye Wednesday night. Neither of us slept a wink. We got to the airport at 5:30 am and had time to kill til we were supposed to meet up at his parent's airport hotel they were at for the night. Once we met up with them, we shared a taxi into the city. We stayed at The Manhattan on Times Square.  We spent the day walking around the city: Rockefeller Center, Times Square, Radio City Music Hall, Magnolia Bakery, and lots of shopping.

That night we met up with a rep that Adam and his dad have known through Mr. Mac for many many years. Every time he comes to town he takes us out for a "dining experience"! And boy, it's quite the experience. He's a typical New Yorker: loud, opinionated, and demanding, but also very very nice and generous. He's always told us that if we ever come to New York, he'll show us what real good food is. He picked us up that night and took us to a little place in Queens called Elias Corner for Fish. You would never think it was an amazing restaurant just looking at it. And when you walk in, you kind of feel like it's run by the Mafia. They don't speak English barely at all and there are NO MENUS! But Jimmy and the owner have known each other for many many years, so Jimmy told the guy a long list of what to make for us and minutes later it started arriving at our table. I think we ended up with a total of 13 appetizers. Then Jimmy took Karon with her back into the kitchen and let see all the options for the main course. A while later, the waitress brought out a huge whole cooked fish on a tray. It was some sort of trout, which I normally would not like, but it was amazing. Everything we ate there was unbelievable good. 

It was fun actually having the hotel in Times Square because every evening after dinner we would usually just walk the streets in Times Square and do some people-watching. There's just something so fun and exciting about being in New York, and it's such a nice change from quiet Utah. 

Friday we spent the day at Ground Zero, shopping, going to Battery Park, 5th Avenue, Little Italy (where we ate a delicious lunch), China Town, Canal Street, Wall Street, and more. Adam and I saw the new memorial at Ground Zero, so beautiful and sad. That night we took the subway to the Bronx and went to a Yankees game. We had great seats and the weather was perfect.

Saturday we took a carriage ride through Central Park, which was probably my favorite part of the trip. We did some more shopping and sight seeing, then went to dinner that night at Ruth's Chris.

Sunday morning we went to church at the chapel that's inside the Temple. We walked through Central Park, and then ate lunch at our favorite pizza and salad place. Adam and I went over to China Town again that afternoon and ate some authentic Chinese food that Adam said tasted EXACTLY like what he ate while he lived in Hong Kong. That night we saw "Newsies" and loved it. The Winn's neighbor's son was in it, so it was fun to see someone we knew up on stage. Afterwards, we headed over to Serendipity for some dinner and frozen hot chocolate.

Monday morning our perfect weather ended and it was rainy all day. We did a little more shopping and went to Grand Central Station, then went to lunch at Shake Shack. Sooooo good. That evening we headed to the airport and after two hours in delays, finally got in the air.

Many many thanks to my mom and dad and Meghan Bodily for watching our kids while we were gone!