NYC Day 2

As I mentioned in my last NYC post, we had to set our alarms and wake up verrrry early in order to make it down to Good Morning America! We got in-studio tickets to watch the taping of the show and perhaps get on live television!

Brandon wasn't so thrilled to be there, especially that early! I think he only showed up to humor me.

We were only allowed to see the street-level set. Most of the show is actually filmed upstairs (we didn't really realize that we weren't allowed on the "official" set when we got the tickets). It was fun to see how the show was produced, watch the teleprompters and see the hosts interact with each other.

Chris Cuomo and Robin Roberts did tape a segment with Melanie Oudin, the 17 year old un-seeded tennis player in the U.S. Open. Chris and Robin were so friendly and fun to watch!

Later, our buddy Sam Champion came down to tape a weather segment. We were able to stand to the side of him during one of the segments and actually made it on TV!! I was pretty excited, but Brandon was mortified!! He kept saying "I don't want to be on TV," and low and behold, there we were. We recorded the show on our DVR, so we were able to watch it when we got home. I wish I could link it, but I'm not sure I'm that tech savvy.

Sam really is as nice in person as he seems on TV! He was answering audience questions and just talking to us like normal. Now, I can't say the same for Diane Sawyer. She came outside to film the closing segment, did her part and ran back upstairs without speaking to anyone! I guess she is the star, but I had higher expectations for her.

After GMA, we headed down to Battery Park to get on the Staten Island Ferry.

Rather than spend a lot of time taking the Statue of Liberty tour, we decided to take the free ferry that goes right by the statue so we could get a couple of good pictures.

The entire time we were on the ferry, I couldn't get the Miss America song out of my head, you know the one "There she is, Miss America..."!

We also took the opportunity to get a few good photos of the NYC skyline - it sure doesn't look the same without the Twin Towers...

After the ferry ride, we walked to the financial district. Our first stop was Charging Bull. To keep up with my "scenes from a movie" theme, you might remember this from "Hitch"!

Somehow, I ended up only getting a picture with the backside...

We also made our way down to Wall Street, the Trinity Church, the New York Stock Exchange and Ground Zero.

We didn't get to see too much at Ground Zero. For one, there really isn't too much to see, but they were also preparing for the memorial service the following day, so there was a lot of staging being set up that didn't allow us to get very close.

After the financial district, we made our way to Chinatown! I was on the hunt for a good knock-off purse and Brandon was on the hunt for a knock-off Tag Heuer watch. Immediately when we set foot on Canal Street, we had people asking us "You want handbag? You want watch?". We told one lady yes and she led us to her shop and through a "trap door" that blended in with the wall. Once inside the back room, they slammed the door shut and locked it. I must admit, I was a bit scared, but I had been warned about this and knew that lots of other people had experienced the same thing. I quickly made my selections, did some bargaining and left with two "Coach" purses all for MUCH MUCH less than I would have paid for the real thing.

Brandon also got his watch, from a guy selling them out of a van. According to him, he can offer better prices because he doesn't have to pay rent. Sketchy? Yes! But, Brandon got a good deal and was happy with his purchase!

After all of that effort, we were HUNGRY! So, we walked up the street to Little Italy. We knew we wanted to eat one meal there and there happened to be a festival going on, so we browsed around and found Giovanna's, a great little place for lunch.

Even though we were having a big dinner, we had to indulge in some traditional Italian food. I had spaghetti and meatballs and Brandon had Chicken Parmesan.

After lunch, we made our way to DiPalo's, an Italian market, to buy olive oil.

On our way back, we saw this guy, cooking up sausage and peppers. The little festival was really neat and a fun way to experience Little Italy.

By this time, the afternoon was almost gone and we needed to head back to the hotel to get ready for our fun evening at the theatre!

If you know me well, you know I'm a huge fan of Food Network! Prior to our trip, I researched some of the restaurants that are owned by the Food Network celebrity chefs and knew we wanted to eat at one of Bobby Flay's restaurants. After some encouraging from our friends Megan and Kevin, we decided on Bar Americain and it was AMAZING!! This was our nicest meal of the trip and so worth it!

After dinner, we headed to WICKED!! This was, by far, the highlight of the trip. If you ever have a chance to see the musical, do it!!! The music is amazing, the story is entertaining and the costumes and sets were beautiful. And yes, Brandon loved it just as much as me, maybe even more!

The show got out late, so we headed back to the hotel. Thursday was a pretty fun and jam-packed day and we were certainly ready to get off of our feet (remember the blister story from Day 1, well, after all of the walking we did on Thursday, my feet were bleeding by the time we reached the hotel...) and get some rest!

Doggy Vacation

While we were on vacation, Koby took a little vacation himself! He spent the week in the country with my parents. Koby loves "the country" because he gets to help feed the horses, take rides in the truck with my dad, play and wrestle with Tucker (my parent's dog), roll in horse poop and much more. I also suspect he gets a few nibbles from the dinner table, but that is just a guess!

So, when my dad brought Koby back to our house on Monday, we got totally snubbed!! He jumped out of the car and ran right by me. Once he was in the house, all he wanted to do was go out back and reunite at the fence with the neighbor's dogs. The only toy he wanted, when he wanted one, was the chicken that my mom bought him during his stay - the dog didn't even want his ball (and if you've ever been around Koby, you know he LOVES his ball)! As the evening went on, he continued to be a little mopey and finally ended up sleeping the rest of the time. He didn't even try to get in bed with us!

As the week has gone by, he has definitely warmed up to us again (except for when we tried to clip his nails last night), but I do believe he got pretty darn spoiled on his vacation! Hopefully, there wasn't too much poop involved....

NYC - Day 1

We arrived in NYC on Wednesday, September 9th and hit the ground running. First stop, was obviously our hotel:

We weren't able to check-in when we arrived, so we dropped off our bags and headed out! We walked towards Fifth Avenue and stumbled upon this site:

Cynthia Nixon was filming a scene for "Sex and the City 2" outside of Bergdorf Goodmans. We knew they were doing some filming while we were there, but never expected to see it! There were tons of people standing around watching and snapping photos and there were also tons of staffers around trying to move the crowd along. It was quite a production!

By this time, we were pretty hungry, so we stopped at the Carnegie Deli.

Carnegie is known for their GIGANTIC sandwiches and their authentic NYC cheesecake! And, if you want to know what I mean my giant, take a look at this:

This was the pastrami sandwich that we split! The cheesecake was to die for and we are considering ordering one every year for our birthdays! So good!

After lunch, we headed back towards our hotel and walked back down Fifth Avenue towards the Plaza Hotel (the hotel where "Home Alone" was filmed).

Later that evening, we headed out to the Bronx for a Yankees game. They happened to be playing Tampa Bay that night and it was the night that Derek Jeter tied Lou Gehrig's career hits. This was a fun night and one of Brandon's favorite parts of the trip!

It was a late game, so we got back to the hotel pretty late and we set the alarm for 5:00 a.m. for our TV debut! We had to get our beauty sleep!

On a side note, if you take a close look at the shoes I am wearing at the Yankees game, they were the death of me and of the trip! On this night, I got a good set of blisters and they caused me (and Brandon) great aggravation for the remainder of the trip!

Back to the Daily Grind!

Well, we are officially back from vacation and exhausted! We arrived in Wichita around 4:00 yesterday afternoon and didn't receive our luggage until around 10:00 last night. So, needless to say, we have a lot of laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning to do this week! We have looked through our pictures, but have not downloaded all of them yet, so I'll be posting about our trip a little at a time through out the week. However, if you want to catch up on a few snippets from the trip, check out my Twitter page where I was able to post a few of the highlights!

Domestic Haven

I posted a new recipe over on my "domestic" blog! Check it out!

Let's Hope This Isn't Long-Term

Brandon has a lot of really great qualities, but one area that could use some improvement is his memory or listening ability (or a combination of both). For example, he will ask me ask me about plans for the weekend (or any event) and I will fill him in, explaining all of the important details and we'll go on. Then, the next day or even the next hour in some instances, he will ask me the same question and not be able to recall anything from the previous conversation about the same topic.

Fast forward to this week. I've been coughing with a sore throat, using the Neti Pot, taking Tylenol Cold, blowing my nose, etc. Last night, I asked Brandon to stop by Dillons on his way home to get me some nighttime medicine so I could sleep and he did. Then today, I was talking to him on the phone and my co-worker came to my office to ask what sounded good for lunch and we decided on pizza, to which Brandon replied "Pizza? Are you sure that will be okay on your stomach?" I paused for a minute, hoping he would recall the events of the past few days and then said something along the lines of "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" and then politely reminded him that I was not sick to my stomach and yes, pizza would be fine!

Friends, let's hope this memory loss is not long-term. If so, I'm in for a long ride!!!

LONG Overdue

I turned 26 last week and I've been meaning to blog about it ever since, but I've got to tell you, we've been crazy busy! We had a busy birthday weekend, then we had something going on pretty much every night last week and then we left for the lake on Thursday and didn't return until last night. So, I will start with my birthday weekend:

On Friday night, we went to Newton to celebrate with Ashley and Pam. All three of our birthdays fall within a week of each other. We had a bbq and played a little "yard golf" in Justin and Ashley's back yard. We had hoped to continue the game in years to come, but later found out that some of the "holes" didn't necessarily reside on their property...Oops!

On Saturday, Brandon and I got up early and went to Panera for breakfast. It was a nice treat to just sit and talk for a while. After breakfast, we went to the grocery store to buy supplies for an afternoon picnic at Buffalo Park.

After our picnic, we came home and laid around the house and then we got ready for dinner at Bone Fish Grill.

Brandon insisted that we dress up, so I wore a new dress that I had purchased the week before during my birthday shopping trip! Our dinner was amazing - we've only been to Bone Fish a couple of times and have been completely satisfied every single time!

After dinner, we headed downtown to meet some friends for a couple of drinks. This was supposed to be a surprise, but I somehow managed to work it out of Brandon :) In theory, I like surprises, but really I would rather know what is going on so I can manage expectations! We had a fun night out and I was so glad he planned ahead and arranged for friends to meet us!

Finally, on Sunday (my actual birthday), Brandon organized a family bbq with my aunts and my dad (my mom was out of town). He did all of the planning and even made me a birthday cake!

Later that evening, Brandon's parents came back through town and took us out for ice cream - the perfect ending to a perfect weekend!

Brandon gets major points this year because he really put a lot of thought into the planning of the weekend. Even though birthdays aren't a big deal to him, he knows that I really like to "live it up" on my birthday!

So, here is to another year! I hope this year is a exciting and fun as the past year. I already know it is off to a great start, so it can only get better!

Road Trippin'

Tonight, Coleman had an unveiling of their new Road Trip grill, designed by Paul Jr. from OCC.

Apparently, Paul Jr. has branched out of the Chopper business and formed Paul Jr. Designs (his website isn't up yet, so his Twitter account will have to do). He is partnering with different companies to re-design existing products and Coleman was his first "client" (click here to view a video of Paul Jr. talking about the grill). He took this grill...

...and turned it into this:

I can't say I was star-struck or anything, but it was fun to see him and be there for the event. We don't watch their show too often, but we may have to tune in soon to see how they developed the grill and to see if they air anything from tonight - maybe we'll get on TV (ha ha!). Here are a few other pics from the evening:

Brandon kept mentioning that Paul's girlfriend doesn't look as pretty on TV as she does in real life...

And sadly, we didn't get any pictures of the real star, my friend Ali, who helped organize and run the event! Sorry Ali :(

Five Day Challenge

For the past year or so, Brandon's grandma has been making a special hand cream with her friends at church. Almost every time we go to GC to visit, she brings me a small container of the lotion and every time, I politely accept. However, I haven't ever really used the hand cream. I'm not sure why I haven't used it, but I just put it in the closet and use what I already have.

Well, a few months ago, Brandon's mom, sister and I were discussing the lotion and his mom was telling us how well it works and that she really does like it, especially on her heels (I hope I'm not divulging too much here!). So, this past weekend, Brandon and I were in GC and his grandma brought me over a small container. Pam and I exchanged a smile and I proceeded to place the lotion in my purse. Later that day, Pam and I were again discussing the lotion and she told me I should really just try it and I might be amazed at the results.

So, starting this past Sunday, I have decided to apply the lotion to my dry feet (I walk around barefoot pretty much all of the time) before I go to bed each night for five days, just to see how well the lotion works. Once the five days are up I will re-evaluate the state of my dry feet and make a final decision. If it actually works, I will pull out my stashed away containers and make them a part of my bedtime routine. And, if I don't see that much of a difference, I will continue to collect the small containers and re-gift them to Pam! But, if I can make a prediction, I'm going to predict that I won't be re-gifting anytime soon!