Emma is Ten!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful daughter.
We all love you very much.

Being nice brothers

It's going to be a cold, cold night. So Joey and Max are doubled up in Max's bed. There's no school tomorrow ( and possibly Wednesday!) So the fact that they will stay up later than normal looking at books and talking is not a factor.

New Year, new promises

My new year's resolutions are:

1. Fill out the paperwork for the will my neighbor will write. I live across the street from an estate attorney and she is even giving me "the neighbor discount".

2. Clean every cabinet and storage space in my house, and hopefully get rid of 10% in each location. I am most excited about this one. (evidence of boring life) I made a list of every cabinet, closet, garage, kitchen junk drawer, and I am picking one every day or couple of days. So far I've done the kids' closet, 1/3 of the garage (huge improvement!), and the cabinet over the guest bathroom. It feels good, although is completely invisible to a visitor to the house.

3. Walk Town Lake three times a week, increasing my ability to jog so that I can jog the three miles without stopping by the end of the year.

4. Not yell at kids. (already broke that one.)

5. Try not to say bad things about others. ie... no gossip. If I wouldn't be willing to say it with that person in the room, I won't say it. UNLESS I am talking about certain politicians.

That's it. Five. Five resolutions. Five hard for me resolutions.

Just got home...

Our hotel room view. We pulled chairs up to the window and just sat and stared late into the night, it was mesmerizing.

Central Park's Alice in Wonderland Statue

5th Avenue, and Central Park

We stumbled across so many things we didn't even know existed in New York, this sculpture just popped out of nowhere at us!

Peek a boo Chrystler Building view

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Walking in Central Park

RIP Godfather of Soul

Rockefeller Center Ice Skating Rink

Emma with Diana DeGarmo, former runner up on American Idol and the character Penny in the Broadway musical Hairspray.

Our first hour in New York, we stepped out into Times Square and couldn't belive our eyes.

Radio City Rockettes did a dance routine as these little soldiers.

Emma's walk through the city.

Our room looked right into Times Square, toward this end of the plaza.

We just got home last night from our wonderful trip to New York City! Emma, Gramma Lu and I stayed right on Times Square and were able to look down on all the action as the ball dropped. To be in the crowd with my 9 year old, would have meant parking in the square for about 8 hours prior to midnight, and we had too much to do on Sunday! I'm sort of disappointed we didn't stand in the crowd, but it was still quite an event to look down on.

There is way too much to report about all our fun activities. The highlights for me were getting to see Hairspray and getting autographs from the stars after the show, seeing the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and their Christmas show, walking in Times Square at night when the signs made it seem like daylight.

We took a long tour of Manhattan which included lunch at Katz's Deli (When Harry Met Sally scene was shot there), and visited the church that survived across the street from the World Trade Center. The church was remarkable. It not only survived 9/11 and had that story to tell, but also survived when much of the city was burned by the British during the Revolution. New York was the original capitol of America and that little church (Anglican!) and was the home church for George Washington, Ben Franklin and all those guys. It still had gouge and scratch marks from the tool belts of the 9/11 responders. I was very moved by the place.

We saw the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, the Statue of Liberty, and the different neighborhoods in the city. We stopped in Sardis to see the charactures of the stars, and I located Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball and hundreds of others. We went to Grand Central Station, about which I had written a paper in college. Our tour guide was unbelievable and although I thought it was very "touristy" to use a day taking a guided tour, it turned out to be such a great choice. Now I know my next trip will have a day budgeted just for wandering around Soho.

Rockefeller Center Tree and Ice Rink, Saks Holiday windows, NBC studios for Saturday Night Live and the Evening News studio viewing were all so fun.

Emma and I walked up 5th Avenue (she was a trooper!) and ate lunch at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we meandered through Central Park on a beautiful, clear, sunny winter day. The rain held off until our last morning, and we had crisp cool days in the high 40s.

I was determined to see a celebrity, and did! Bob Costas was in the building during our NBC tour and I was the only one to spot him. Kathy Genet:: Celebrity radar- ON!

We ate New York style pizza, Matzo ball soup, bagels, pretsils from street vendors. And lots of hot chocolate! We found a wonderful deli our last night there and we feasted on so much food.

I found New York to be safe, helpful and remarkably clean. And I can't wait to go back! I am a big city girl who was mistakenly born in Texas, and I just found the city to be so exciting... so if you are interested in travelling with me in, oh, 2008?, let me know.