Day trips to NYC

This year, we/I ended up with 6 day trips to NYC. While that doesn't sound like a lot, it's not always easy to have a full day of time to travel there and make the most of it.

May: Last fall, before Chase’s Van Gogh obsession, his art teacher showed him a book apparently called “The Big M” (can’t seem to find it by that name though) about the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book prominently featured this blue hippo so Chase has been talking about seeing it for a while. Thankfully, with my mom and Chase, we had chance for a day trip to the Met, not only to see the hippo but also to see his favorites (Van Gogh and Monet). 

August: On another open day, my mom, Chase, and I decided to go the MoMa and the Top of the Rock afterwards. Our library has a cool program where you can check out tickets to NYC museums and enter for free. We took advantage of that this time, even though we had been to the MoMa last fall. The Top of the Rock was pretty cool -- I had never been!

September: Marina visited with Bee and we did a day trip together -- just the 3 of us. We went to the Met, walked around central Park to Seneca village and visited the upper west side (to see the area Taza lived). 

November: Thanksgiving weekend, my mom, Chase, and I had another free day so we decided to go the Hudson Yards area of NYC. We went up to The Edge (such nice views around sunset!), walked the High Line to Little Island and finally checked that out. This area of NYC was built up and opened around 2019 so not a place we've spent much time yet. The weather was perfect! 

The Edge's gimmick is that there is a see-through area going straight down -- but it's quite small and there were a lot of people taking pictures. 

Little Island was so cute! Not much to it but it was fun to check out. 

December: Nate and I traveled to NYC twice in December. Once to go to a reception for our college (HMC), and once to go to a show and eat good food. We saw Book of Mormon (finally!) and enjoyed that, had some yummy dim sum and some cocktails, and walked around the city on a nice night. 

Making ornaments with Chase

Chase was very excited this year to make some ornaments for the tree. Because of my parents' move, I had received some of the old ornaments I made (years and years before I started this blog) so he wanted to make similar ones. Also because of that move, I now have all my old ornament crafting stuff with more than enough materials to make some nice ornaments. We went to Michael's to grab the ornaments themselves -- which are now plastic unlike the glass ones I was using 20 years ago -- and stumbled upon these larger ornaments that looked like snow globes. Chase was super excited to decorate one of them and made a whole wintry scene for a tiny kitty, complete with presents (a yarn ball) and snow balls. He liked making the snow globe so much that we actually went back to get a second one so he could decorate a wintry scene with some trees for two tiny lizard figurines he had. It was so fun to make ornaments together and definitely put us in the holiday mood!