5 Year Anniversary Cruise: NYC

When we got to the airport in New York April called her dad to come pick us up and take us to her house. They only live about ten minutes from the airport so it was perfect! We originally thought we'd take a short little morning nap when we got there but by the time we got our luggage and actually got home we decided we might as well just get a start on our day. The temple was our first stop and it opened at 6. April and I went first with a bunch of the luggage and then her dad went back for Tyson and Jack. They stopped at a store on the way home and got yummy breakfast for us all. April's parents were so nice and welcoming and it was fun to get to know them a little bit in the short time we were there.
After we had unloaded and filled our bellies we headed to the city. We did sealings in the beautiful Manhattan temple and were amazing at how silent it really was. We had heard stories about all the work that had gone into soundproofing it but it was still really neat to experience it for ourselves. It reminded me of when I heard some general authority talk about how after it was built people who had grown up in the noisy city their entire lives were completely astounded to hear the silence...something they had never really experienced before. One of the coolest things during our session was that we got to seal an entire family together. Usually it's just one son or daughter to the parents, but the sealer told us that if it's apparent that the children are siblings and you can tell the order of birth then they can be sealed together all at the same time. It was a cool experience.

The beautiful temple. The first three floors are for church, institute, and family history etc, then the top three floors are the actual temple. I never knew that. It's "theme" is The Tree of Life and it was amazing. All temples are beautiful of course but this one had such unique patterns and design work. I really loved it. The chandeliers looked like giant bunches of fruit hanging from the ceiling.

All bundled up and ready to walk our legs off all around the city. It was SO cold and windy!

Inside the huge Toys 'R' Us store. This was a giant three story ferris wheel! Aiden would have LOVED to see that!

I went a little crazy every time I saw these huge Les Mis billboards. I was SO excited for the movie! Tyson was the same way with The Hobbit ones but we didn't get any good pictures of those.

Times Square behind us

Also LOVED these awesome Mormon.org billboards!

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. It was HUGE! Maybe I'm the only person on the planet that didn't know this, but it's not the same tree every year. They choose a different one just for the season and bring it in to decorate. The ice-skating rink was right below us and we considered going since it was free, but the line wrapped all the way around it so we thought we'd spend our time elsewhere.

April and Jack Marsh - our awesome travel buddies!

Obviously we had to try some authentic NY pizza! This was the "white pizza" that everyone was crazy about. It was pretty dang yummy! Tyson thought I was a nerd for taking a picture of it and given my mid-blink face he might be right haha!

Waiting to ride the subway. A first for both of us.

The train was moving so it's blurry but we had to get a group picture somewhere!

The Statue of Liberty in the background. Once again we decided to move on instead of spending time riding the ferry to see it up close.

More of Times Square

The Brooklyn Bridge. Walking across and back was another thing we skipped since it was so cold and we had already walked several miles by this point in the day.

One of our last stops for the day was to see the new towers they are building to memorialize the twin towers. There are going to be 5 or 6 new ones and they are all very cool looking like this one. I loved the fog this day. It made everything look so pretty.

After we felt like we had seen a little bit of everything we walked through Central Park and then to the Natural History museum. Sadly, Central Park was dark and cold and not that great since we hadn't gone earlier in the day. Plus it was the middle of winter so everything was dead. We did see a cool castle thing though and it's just fun to be able to say we've been there. Someday we'll go back to New York in the spring or summer to see it in it's beauty and really walk around all over. When we got to the Natural History museum (which we had planned for the end while it was dark) we found out that they close at 5:45!! They let us in and we tried to do a speed walk through the floor we were on but each time we turned a corner they'd shoo us out and tell us it was almost closing time. We were so disappointed because it was something we had been extra excited for. :(

After leaving the museum we walked back to the temple. After our night of no sleep and our long, cold day walking non-stop in NYC we crashed on the couches on the ground level while we waited for April's dad to pick us up to go home.

After loading into the car we stopped at a NY favorite place for real pastrami and corned beef sandwich meat to take home for dinner. It was pretty dang pricey very definitely worth it. It completely melted in our mouths and was SOO yummy on a bun with spicy mustard. After dinner, April and I went to get ice-cream from one of her favorite places just down the street from their house. Needless to say, we had YUMMY food all day! After talking and having fun we decided to crash for 4 1/2 hours before getting up to head to the airport again.