Escape to New York

Right after Thanksgiving, Daniel came home saying one of his partners really wanted to go to a course being offered in NYC in December. Dan seemed like he'd like to go but didn't really know if that was a good idea. He'd been gone for 9 days in November and this would be a Saturday in December, which we all value our Saturdays in Dec a bit excessively.

I excitedly told him that he should go - we all should. We have the dearest of friends, David and Laura, that live just north of the city that we don't see nearly enough. For those of you unaware - David was my best friend in high school and my next door neighbor, Laura was my great friend from Spain that I did exchanges with all through high school and lucky for me they married so I get a two for one when I visit!

So we had a date (Dec 7-8) - it worked for them as well. Then with Piper's burned hands, sick kids and threatening weather it didn't look good at the beginning of the week. But the kids were reasonably well by Friday - and we braved some slush and snow but by the time we got to New Jersey the weather was fine. We left right after school on Friday and were able to visit some on Friday night.

On Saturday morning, Daniel hopped on a nearby train and headed into the city for his course and the rest of us just enjoyed visiting. David is always at the helm with electronics and so of course he has a Wii. The boys were in "little boy heaven" and couldn't stand to sit at the dinner table one extra minute because they had to get back to the Wii. We let them stay up until mid-night on Friday and Chase was awake at 6am ready to play again. I threatened him that he'd never play again if he didn't stop making noise and go back to sleep.

David and Laura have a little boy, Pau, that is one week older than Piper and a little girl, Amelie, about a year and a half younger than Ainsley. So our little ones were more than entertained as well. Ainsley and Amelie were the best of friends and had a great time!!!

You can create your own players on the Wii and so David created a Wii-me for each one of us. So when it was our turn we had a player that looked just like us. He kept looking at me when he was creating my character trying to get the right nose, right eyebrows in the right size and then he says, "Britt, I can't get the forehead big enough" - you know you have a close relationship when someone can say that to you, be serious about it and yet it doesn't hurt your feeling a bit. He then said, "Ha - I just moved your face down toward your chin and now the forehead looks right" He's lucky we go way back!

Mostly the boys played the Wii but Laura, David and myself joined in for a few games of bowling. You hold the controller and make the movements of the sport you are playing. I thought, no problem I can do this and I rolled my best ball with my best follow thru. David asked, "How did you DO that? I've never seen the ball roll soo slow!" It was rolling about an inch every 10 seconds and then the pins would fall one by one. I guess I'm not the best Wii bowler but my form looks good.

Daniel returned about 3pm. We visited for a while and then Laura treated us to some of her gourmet cooking. I am serious - she is a gourmet cook and pastry chef. We lucked out because she had hosted the dinner for her "Gourmet Club" the night before. So she had fixed extra knowing we were coming. Yummy!! I told her I want to take the train up sometime with just the baby and I want her to teach me some specific recipes of hers that I love. These are recipes that I have to learn by watching. She couldn't just read them over the phone!

We left around 6pm, got caught in a little traffic in the city but were home by 9:30pm to tuck the kids in bed and get ready for church the next day. It really wasn't that much work and it was totally worth the effort.

I am so glad we made the trip and we'll have to do it again soon.