Mommy in the Moment: New York, New York

We decided to go on a vacation this year with just Tyler & Cameron. We started out thinking if we waited to take them to Disney World until the little kids were old enough, they would be too old to enjoy it. But after remembering that neither one of them is really into rides and such that maybe Disney World was not the ideal place, so the four of us agreed that New York City would be fun, and we could drive down to Washington DC for a day, too.

The original plan was to drive there, but that was re-thought when my sister told me about some very inexpensive flights to New York, which sounded a whole lot better than driving for 2 days each way! We were really starting to wonder if we made a mistake, however, when we starting hearing the weather forecast for the day we were flying out. So much so, that we even purchased trip insurance since all of our hotel rooms were non-refundable.

The plan was to leave on Christmas Day and return on New Year's Eve. I took our 5 kids up to my sister's on Christmas Eve but Chris had to wait until Christmas Day, as the respite care we had lined up for the 3 foster boys we have wasn't available until then. Christmas Day morning he got stuck in the driveway of the couple doing the respite care for us, and once he got pushed out, he averaged about 30 MPH on the freeway in the freezing rain. About a half an hour before my sister was going to drop the boys & I off at the airport, a car got stuck at the bottom of her driveway and it was looking like we might not be able to get out. But we did all manage to get to the airport in plenty of time for our flight. If the flight was able to get off the ground, of course.

Not only did our flight leave from Minneapolis, we also had a connection in Chicago, and with snow & freezing rain forecasted in both cities, we were not certain we would make it there until that second plane took off from Chicago. Amazingly, we made it, without more than a 20 minute delay. Since it was after 11 pm by the time we arrived, we got to the hotel & went to bed.

As luck would have it, I woke up the next day with a horrible migraine. So we just took it easy that day & hung around the hotel. I think it was very needed, especially given the amount of walking we would be doing the rest of the trip!

Our hotel was actually in Secausus, New Jersey, literally right next door to the Meadowlands, so we took the bus into "the city" the next morning. (That is if you use the technically definition of morning being any time before noon since we did have a teenager with us.) We were dropped off at the Port Authority and armed with a map of NYC started walking.

It didn't take very long before we came upon our fist street performer.