I LOVE a girls trip, espeically when its in New York City with 7 of my favorite girls in the world.
This definitely goes down as one of the best vacations of my life!
Natalie - Me - Paige - Nichole - Kayli - Emily - Ashlee - Danielle
We planned the trip to be over labor day weekend and we decided to leave early friday afternoon and get home monday night. I knew there was a chance Dane might have to work on labor day and was a bit stressed about finding a babysitter on a holiday. But then a week before the trip Dane came home with his schedule for labor day weekend and was scheduled to work all day friday, a 24-hour-shift saturday morning through sunday morning, which meant sunday he would need to sleep and then was scheduled all day monday. So I was heartbroken and had to tell everyone I couldn't go. And then long story short Paige who is the best friend on the planet kept trying to help me line up babysitters for the weekend and when nothing was working her husband Kurt offered to watch my kids along with his 2 kids ALL WEEKEND LONG!!! I KNOW!!! I know I'm the most selfish person in the world for actually taking him up on it and I will FOREVER be in babysitting debt to him for doing that for me. I told Paige that I think I might like her husband as much as she does. Hopefully in 30 years when our student loans are all payed for I can send him a big nice expensive gift to show him how grateful I will forever be to him. All weekend he kept sending videos of the kids having dance partys, not only did he watch them he was probably the most fun babysitter they've ever had
I stole all of my picture collages off of Nichole's blog so thanks for those and I might plagiarize her blog cause she told about the trip probably better than I will.
The drive up was even a blast, all 8 of us piled into Ashlee's van and Danielle brought a CD full of every hit I could think of from my highschool years. I'm not sure if everyone was grateful she brough it, but we had a great time belting it out in the back seat.
The plan was to stay at Nichole's friend's apartment in NYC since her friend was going to be out of town for the weekend. So we plugged the address in the GPS and ended up in LITERALLY the scariest neighborhood I have EVER been in. It was past midnight when we got there and her friend said we would see a red van in front of the apartment and a grociery store on the corner which we did see both but what she didn't mention was that there were going to be cops standing on every corner (which could either be seen as really comforting...or really scary that they felt the need to do that!), and gobs of men standing together in groups in front of the majority of the houses. I made it known that I did not even want to get out of the van I was so scared but Nichole kept assuring us that if her friend felt safe walking through this neighborhood alone at night that we would be fine. So I said about a dozen prayers and then reluctantly got out of the van (this whole time I am seriously wanting to book a flight home I feel so unsafe). We go up to the address and the apartment is DISGUSTING and just on the half-block walk there all the creepy men in front of the apartments were saying things to us and asking where the sleepover is at. And then just our luck the key to the apartment isn't working!! Which means we get to stand on the unsafe doorstep with all these men watching us even longer! Me, Nichole, and Danielle all took a try unlocking the door and it wasn't working for any of us so while we played with the lock on the door Nichole called her friend to see what was up and while she was on the phone and we started thinking of things that didn't seem like they matched up like the fact that her friend said she lived on a 2 way well lit street and this street was neither of those things. Well while still playing with the door knob I look at Nichole and she looks panicked and startes motioning to get back to the van...apparently while she was describing to her friend where we were they somehow put together that we were in fact at the right address except for the small detail that we were at that address in Brooklyn and her friend's apartment is in Manhattan!!!!!!!
I got back in that van faster than I knew I was capable of and then I'm pretty sure I experience my first panic attack ever. I wasn't sure if I was laughing or crying but I couldn't stop and there were tears coming out hahahaha. We definitely all got a good laugh out of that one. And someone pointed out that it was a good thing the apartment we were trying to break into was actually locked because if it hadn't been we would have walked right in and got settled!!
I have never been so relieved when I saw the actual apartment we were staying at it was so nice....especially compared to where we thoguht we were staying
The next morning after we had recovered from the trauma from the night before we headed out to explore the city. We started by going to Times Square and going into a few stores
That afternoon we went on a food tour of greenwich village. It was way fun a guide took us to a few different restaurants and then just told us a lot of information about the area. We tried falafels (not a huge fan), artichoke pizza (waaaay goood), another pizza place that food network rated as best pizza place, and then a little cookie shop.
Pretty sure that between the 8 of us we had every color of colored jeans ever made
After the food tour we ate at Shake Shack and then we were going to split up because a few of the girls got broadway tickets for Jersey Boys and a few of us decided we didn't want to spend the money, but right before Jersey Boys started we decided to go see if they had any leftover cheap tickets and even though we had to sit seperate we got a sweet deal. I didn't know anything about Jersey Boys before we went but I LOVED the music.
The next day we went on a tour of Central Park it's fun to go with a tour guide who actually knows a bunch of interesting facts instead of just going through on your own. Unfortunately my mind doesn't retain factual info or else I would pass on some of the fun stuff he told us about. We did see where 27 dresses and enchanted were filmed which was a big deal to me!
We hopped on the subway after Central Park to go get something to eat and I don't know what happened but when we got to our stop we all stood up together to get off but they shut the doors before me and Emily could get off!!! I was in shock!!! I didn't know what to do so I just started knocking on the door haha and shockingly that didn't get them to stop the subway we just kept going while they all stood there and watched us! The best part of it was was that out of everyone in the group (sorry to bring you along on this one Emily) but I would say we were the 2 that helped the very least with figuring out directions from where we were and where we needed to be, I told everyone from the start that I was at all times clueless and would be no help at all when it came to directions. So of course it ended up being us two that got stuck on the subway! Needless to say we were laughing hysterically which created quite a scene for everyone to stare at. Since our cell phones didn't work on the subway we decided to go up a level because we thought we had heard someone say that that would take us the direction we came from but right when we got up there and ran to get on the subway the doors shut on us again so we couldn't get on and we both just started laughing/screaming again. It was awesome, luckily on the upper level our phones got service and the other girls just told us to stay put which we were more than happy to do and luckily they found us haha.
We went to the 9/11 memorial which was amazing. It felt really emotional to see all of the names on the walls and see how many people lost their lives that day. A lot of people that were there were shedding tears, I can't even imagine how 9/11 personally affected all of the people that were there.
After the memorial we split up again because the other girls were going to see if they could go to another broadway show so me, Danielle, Nichole, and Emily went and saw the Statue of Liberty from afar it was nice to sit and rest for a bit with the Statue of Liberty in front of us.
After that we walked to Sprinkles and I got my first Sprinkles cupcake and then we went to Dylan's candy bar and then FAO Schwarz toy store...I'm starting to think this vacation wouldn't have been much different if I had brought my kids along jk.
After that the 4 of us actually just wanted to go back to the apartment and get a frozen pizza and hang out there the rest of the night. Wierd I know but we all agreed that it sounded so good to just go back and eat and chat. We stopped at Walgreens to get a pizza and snacks and Nichole couldnt get over how cool their carts were, I think that might have been her favorite part of the trip haha. I loved our last night just chatting a ton, eating a ton, and laughing a ton...it doesn't get better than that.
Thanks to all these girls for such an unforgettable trip and thanks again to Kurt for making so I could even go!!!
