I {heart} NYC

For some reason, I've always had this magical fascination with the City that Never Sleeps (I'm guessing it probably stems from my sex and the city obsession, or from watching You've got mail countless times). I was able to take a girls trip there with two of my dearest friends: Jocelyn and Jane. Let me tell you, my first trip to NYC did not disappoint, the city was everything I imagined it would be! I seriously loved it enough that I came home and told Jake that we need to live there someday. Maybe not long-term, but how fun would it be to do an internship, or even just a semester of school there? I would love it. Here's a bit of our adventure:

Jocelyn & I took the red-eye flight on Thursday night and arrived at 5:45am. We stopped to say hello to my friends Traci & Steve in Brooklyn, then went to the apt we were staying in to catch a quick nap. Then we headed down to Pier 17 to take a cruise around Hudson Bay and see Ellis Island, Lady Liberty and an awesome view of the Manhattan skyline.

We were starving after that, so we stopped at a restaurant on the Fulton Street Seaport for some lunch. Since we were right by the ocean, I had to try the pasta with mussels, tomatoes and basil. Jocelyn had a yummy chicken penne with tomato sauce

Jane took a flight late Friday morning and got there just in time to meet us in the theater district for a show. We saw Billy Elliott - it was awesome!!

Just a few blocks away from the theater is Times Square. With those flashing lights in the background, it really looks like we're about to get arrested! Don't worry, that cop was just passing by.

The next morning Jane had a friend's baby shower to go to, so Jocelyn & I headed back down to the theater district to see if we could get some discounted tickets. We ended up getting student discount tickets for Memphis for only $27.50 - score!! We tried for the Wicked! lottery line, but after about an hour of waiting, we they didn't draw our names. Dang. Oh well, we still were going to 3 Broadway shows in 3 days - not bad! While in the Times Square/theater district, I met up with my cute little cousin Meg for a minute. She happened to be in the City on a high school band trip the same weekend I was.

After that we headed uptown to meet Jane at the Museum of Modern Art. Can I just say how impressed I was that Jocelyn & I were able to navigate the subway by ourselves?! Anyway, it had started raining outside, so it was a perfect day to peruse around the museum. This is an actual Monet, beautiful!

After the museum we needed to head back downtown to the theater district. But not before stopping for a sweet treat at Dylan's Candy Bar. This place was insane! 3 whole floors of just candy! Any and every candy you can think of, they had it all.

Just a few blocks from the theater, we met up with our friend LeAnna and her NY friends for dinner. Jane & I met LeAnna in our single's ward here in SLC and she recently moved to the Big Apple. It was so fun catching up with her. And the yummy pizza at this italian place wasn't bad either!

With full and happy tummies, we walked a few blocks to see another show: Memphis. It was SO good! If you are a fan of Broadway, you must download this music asap! And sadly, Jocelyn isn't in our picture at this show because she wasn't sitting by us. We got these seats at a student discount and weren't able to get them all together.

And I swear I did my hair that morning. It was straight, but with the rainy weather my natural curl started shining through and I got these crazy ringlet things going on. iew.

The next day was Sunday, so we went to the Manhattan Union Square singles ward, then a matinee performance of The Importance of being Earnest. It was such a fun, light-hearted show!

And since we spent so much time on the subway during the trip, we thought we needed a picture.

For dinner we met up with my old roommate Kate and her friend at Tartine in Greenwich Village. It's been over a year since I last saw my Katers and it was so good to catch up! Jane's friend Catherine was also able to meet us for dinner, she's going to school in NY, studying architecture. It was fun to meet her!

After having rain for 3 days, Monday morning finally looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. We started off with breakfast at this adorable little spot on the Upper East Side called Alice's Teacup. It was definitely my favorite meal of the trip! The place was decorated like Alice's Wonderland and just as adorable as it could be. They served teas in teapots with mis-matched china teacups. And their scones were to-die-for! I ordered their famous granola with berries and vanilla yogurt. Then we all ordered different scones so we could try each others. Jane and I shared a pot of mango tea. Really, this meal was heaven!


We had wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but unfortunately it was closed. So we decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and roam around Central Park. Being that it was a Monday, it wasn't very busy so we were really able to enjoy a relaxing stroll in the park. There were tons of happy yellow daffodils and we discovered that it is both mine and Jane's favorite flower. The magnolia trees were in full bloom and just gorgeous. And we couldn't leave without visiting Strawberry Fields.


And I couldn't go to New York and not stop at Magnolia's. It was one of the first cupcake shops that started the whole craze. I had a lemon coconut cupcake with milk. Yes, they serve milk with their cupcakes - brilliant!

After that we quickly visited Columbus Circle and Rockefeller Center. Oh, and another stop that we couldn't pass up that afternoon was H&M. Seriously one of the best clothing stores, ever. Our trip came to a nail-biting end when we under-estimated the amount of time it would take us to get to the airport via subway. We BARELY made our flight by the skin of our teeth! Just thinking about it makes me a little anxious. We got to the airport about 15 minutes before our flight was leaving. By the time we got through security and ran to our gate the plane had already boarded and we were the last people on - so lucky! It was a fabulous trip with two of my favorite ladies!

Oh, and I'm not sure if you noticed the t-shirt that I was wearing for most of our trip or not, but this was Jane's idea of making the vacation a bit of a bachelorette party. She custom-made a shirt that said, "This is your last chance to HUG ME, I'm getting married". She then gleefully documented as several random strange men took the opportunity to give me a little love. A few embarrassing moments, but it really was hilarious!

Engagements

Photos and stories of New York are coming soon, but I was so excited I had to share this first. The lovely and talented Megan from Easy Dreamer Photography just posted a few pictures from our engagement session in Spokane a few weeks ago. She took over 300 pictures that day so I think we'll have plenty to choose from for our invitations, but check these out and let me know what you think:
http://blog.easydreamerphotography.com/?p=1627

Loving new york

I'm in new york with these lovely ladies, waiting for our matinee to begin.  We'll be here for another two days, then i'll catch you up fully on our trip. 

on the bandwagon

I have only gone through 2 cell phones in the past 6 years. These two archaic pieces of technology have served me well.


My little purple Motorola I've had for about 3 years now and I can't even tell you how many times I've dropped it or gotten it wet. It just kept plugging along. Both phones, along with my Verizon network, did everything I needed them to do. They made totally reliable phone calls and unlimited texting/picture messaging. And maybe even the occasional photo-taking. Well, my beloved purple phone was on the fritz and my birthday was coming up, so Jake convinced me to switch to T-Mobile so he could buy me this bad boy:

This new-fangled piece of equipment is off-the-hook. Lightning fast with millions of free "apps" to play with. I've had it for over 2 weeks now and still don't really know how to use the thing. I've had several friends ooh and aah over it, saying that it's faster and better than the newest Iphone because of its Android operating system. Clearly, I really don't know anything about that stuff. I just hope that this lasts me as long as my last few trusty phones did. Don't worry, I went ahead and got the $5.99/month insurance plan that protects against any damage, including the operator-error variety.

Day of birth

As I mentioned before, I celebrated 24 years of life last week and I just wanted to post some of the pictures of the festivities.
The day started off with my cute roommate Katie leaving flowers on our bathroom counter and making waffles for breakfast. She is amazing - thanks Katie! Work was the same as usual, then after work I went with a few of my friends to the Airborn Arena tramopline gym in Draper. I love places like this because you really feel like a little kid again, I highly recommend it!


The boys started building towers with the foam blocks and jumping over them. Jake almost made it over this!

After we got all of our energy out, we went to get frozen yogurt {one of my favorite treats!} and even more friends joined us!

And I had to share this video because It just makes me laugh. Most days I can land my front & back flips, and I love jumping into the foam pit. But next to Jake's high-flying flip over the blocks, mine looks a little lame.

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes, emails, texts, phone calls, etc. It was a great day!

Our other {less adventurous} travels lately

We have been doing a fair amount of traveling lately and with the exception of last weekend, they have been very fun trips that went just as planned. I know I'm a little late posting these, but it's ok - this is my blog. Jake served his mission in Seattle, WA and a friend of his got married on March 12th, so we made a quick 24-hour trip up there. It was a blast meeting ward members that Jake had served with and driving around his areas. I loved having him show me around Seattle and tell me stories about his mission. So fun! We got this cool flip video camera for Christmas and decided to document the weekend motion-picture style, rather than with a still camera.

WARNING: THIS VIDEO WILL BE UPLOADED BY MIDNIGHT ON THURSDAY, APRIL 7TH. I'M AT WORK RIGHT NOW AND DON'T HAVE THE FILE WITH ME. IF YOU'RE READING THIS, PLEASE CHECK BACK TOMORROW.

Then the very next weekend we headed to Southern California. Our dear friends Curtis & Jenna Duty were sealed together with their baby Brooklynn in the San Diego temple. We had such a great time being there for their special day and meeting their families. Thanks for letting us be a part of it!
We actually flew into LAX and stayed the first night with my Aunt Dee Dee. My Uncle Ray made us this yummy Indian food. Potato & chicken curry

Jake, me, Aunt Dee Dee (oops, I think we caught aunt dee dee mid-chew. sorry!

And since I didn't get a picture of Uncle Ray that night, I stole this from his facebook page

And here's a picture of us with our friends at the San Diego temple!
Curtis, Jenna, Baby B, me & Jake

What an adventure!!

So we are FINALLY home from our little excursion to Washington, and what an adventure it was! Upon hearing about Jake's flight benefits, people usually comment on how lucky we are to fly so inexpensively. Yes, we do get great deals and have had good luck flying stand-by in the past but it seemed like this weekend our luck really ran out. Because of Southwest airline's disaster and spring break, the airports were jam-packed with stand-by travelers. Here's a rundown of the events that occurred:

Day 1:
Jake & I both worked 1/2 days in the morning, then got on an afternoon flight to Spokane, WA. Our dear friend/photographer Megan met us at the airport and we went straight to Riverfront park to take out engagement photos. Then we grabbed some yummy thai food for dinner with Megan, her husband Kent, and my friend Bryce.

After that, we headed back to Megan & Kent's house to make cookies, watch a movie & get some sleep.
Cute Megan making vegan snickerdoodles.

We made them into yummy ice cream sandwiches


Day 2:
The day started out bright an early. We woke up and got to the airport at 5am, hoping to make a 6:10am flight home to SLC. Well, we sat and watched while 7 flights came and left without us on them. We even looked at taking another route to get home. No luck. We talked to a gate agent and she said that there was no way we were getting out of the Spokane airport til Tuesday. Not wanting to sit there and wait for 4 days, we decided to rent a car and drive to Seattle, which is a bigger airport and more likely to have open flights. So we rented this sweet ride, and set out for the 5 hour drive ahead of us.

A few hours into the drive, we stopped at a scenic overlook of the Columbia river to stretch our legs. It was crazy windy, but so pretty!

Haha, this picture just makes me laugh. We're talking 50mph winds here!


It was smooth sailing til we got about 100 miles outside of Seattle. We were going over Snoqualmi pass and hit a blizzard. I'm talking 4-wheel drive or chains required storm. Clearly, our little car was not up for the challenge, so we pulled to the side of the road, waited for a snow-plow to drive by, then followed him down the mountain white-knuckled.

I am a snow lover, so I did have to stop and appreciate the beauty of the fresh snow for a minute