Harrison Happenings: August 2011

Well I went back to work and it was really hard, especially since I deal mostly with leisure world population and I was still dealing with all my moms affairs. After much prayer and talking with my boss I was fortunate enough to go part time. I now work one or two days a week which has really helped me deal with my mom's affairs and being able to spend some quality time with my family since our family had to readjust our lives when my mom was here. It was really hard and now that it is summer we wanted to spend some fun time together. Some fun thngs we have done this summer are:

We went to Palm Springs on the last day of school. That was a lot of fun.

Nicole, Chelsea and lauren

Chelsea and Nicole under the waterfall

I was fortunate enough to go to girls camp with Chelsea. It was here first year up. We stayed at Camp moringstar in the San Bernadino mountains. It was so cold, the coldest I have ever camped in. It was a lot of fun. Hopefully pictures will come later.

Then we went and visited my sister and brother in Utah. That was a lot of fun also because we went to Park City and went on the zip line, alpine coaster, and alpine slide. That was amazing and so much fun. It is something that we will be doing again. We had fun just visiting with everyone. The last time we saw everyone was at my mom's funeral, so this was much better circumstances. We weren't very good at picture taking for this trip, sorry. But Ben did videotape me coming down the zip line which I will post later when I figure out how to post it.

Then I was fortunate enough to tag along with my best friend Linda Coleman and her daughter Kaylene Skaggs to New York City. Kaylene was there to learn from Bumble and Bumble haircutting techniques and her company paid for her hotel, so we stayed with her. It was amazing and the first time I had been there. So this was our itenary while we were there.

Friday - flew into JFK and stayed in Yonkers because Kaylene's hotel wasn't until Sunday, so we stayed in a Marriott I got with points.

Saturday - We went to Times Square, saw a Broadway play "Spiderman". Went to China town and shopped and ate at Little Italy. To get back and forth we took the train to Grand Central Station and then took the Subways.

Sunday - Went to our new hotel in Manhattan the "Affinia" across from Madison Square Gardens. Then we went to the Empire State Bldg, which was amazing at the top. We ate at the famous Shake Shack. Great shakes, burgers and fries. We then rented bikes and rode completely around Central Park which is 6.5 miles. I just about died. Then later we ate at Cafe Habana in Nolita which is famous for their Cuban corn on the cob, very spicey.

Monday - Kaylene had her class, so Linda and I ventured out ourselves on the subways to the Statue of Liberty, and Wall Street. We then met Kaylene later in East Village (scary part of town) for dinner and ate at Caracus which is a Venezuela restaurant. We ate arepa's which were yummy.

Tuesday - We got up early and went to the Today show. We got their early enough that we got right in front. I was on T.V. standing next to the weatherman Al during a segment.(you can see the video on my facebook) It was a lot of fun. We then ventured out to the World Trade Center which is still closed off but there was a museum right next to it that we visited. They are suppose to open up the special tributes of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011 which will be 10 years from the crash. We then met Kaylene at Skyline near the meat packing district. It is a really cool walking park they made from where a railroad used to be. We then walked around Chelsea Market and shopped. Then we went all the way back to Park Avenue near Central Park and shopped at a 6 story Forever 21, and Lindt's Chocolate store. We tried to eat at Eataly a famous Italian market and restaurant. It was so crowded the wait was an hour, so we ended up eating somewhere else.

Wednesday - Today we went to FAO Schwartz and then Linda and I ate at Serendipity for lunch. We shared the famous frozen mint hot chocolate. I had their french toast. It was so good. Then we shopped again at Park Place. For dinner we met some of Linda's relatives and ate at Gramaldi's famous pizza place in Brooklyn. After dinner we had ice cream at the creamery on the pier and then walked in the pouring rain across the Brooklyn bridge. Everything was lit up and it was so beautiful.

Thursday - We shopped one last time in China Town, tried to cram all our spoils from the trip in our suitcases and headed home.

It was so much fun, exhausting, amazing and now that I have the lay of the land I would love to come back next year and bring my two older daughters. We shall see. The bummer part is I came home so tired and not feeling well. Oh well too much fun!!!! A trip of a lifetime.

Here are some of the pictures that I took and I am not very good at picture taking but Kayleen had her camera and hopefully I can download her pictures later: