We woke up in Lancaster county and went to bed in New York City. What a contrast. The peaceful tranquility turned into pressing chaos. New York is beautiful and majestic in it’s own way. The lights, the crowds, the noise – the noise- were a bit overwhelming. A lot overwhelming actually. But to look up and see buildings that seemed to kiss the sky with nothing but shoulder to shoulder people and yellow taxis in between, and the bigger than life billboards and the bright lights and screens of Times Square are amazing. New York is nice to visit for a day or two but I could never live there.
To be a mom there would drive me over the edge in a New York minute. My main objective, which thankfully I met, was to leave NYC with all 5 children. My last venture into Times Square I lost Dallin and I did not want to repeat that experience. So I was a bit of a nut case trying to keep track of all 5. I don’t think there was a second that Rachel and I weren’t in contact. As far as keeping track of her It was easiest to carry her, but that was not easiest on my back, so we would hold hands for a while then when I got tired of fighting to keep a hold of her hand I would pick her up for a while.
The other thing is the questions. My kids ask a lot of questions and this morning it was, why do Amish men have beards, why do Amish people ride scooters. Can I quit school after 8th grade too. Tonight it’s, what’s a dick? Why are those men holding hands? What is herion, is it legal here? Amish questions are much easier and fun to talk about.
All my children are potty trained – which happens to be one of my greatest accomplishments – what a celebration when that day came. Well today Rachel wore a diaper again. I made her. Trying to find bathrooms in NYC is next to impossible. I have this little thing about using a bathroom where I havent’ bought anything. I had to just breakdown and do it today, the stress of tyring to find a bathroom when your kid is jumping up and down holding themselves was just to much for me to deal with. Rachel and Ryan both got into emergency time. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had half hour or so to find a bathroom before they wet their pants. Don’t normal people get little warning signals quite a few minutes before. Not my kids,or if they do they aren’t listening. We left a restaurant after dinner and got maybe 2 blocks away and Rachel started asking to go. We had not only asked her to go in the restaurant but took her into the bathroom and made her try. It took her less than 15 minutes to go from sitting on the toilet telling me she didn’t have to go to dancing so bad I almost pulled her underwear off her so she could pee In the street without getting everything wet. It was close really close. Same thing with Ryan. The nervous look on his face the moment we step through the subway turnstyle and the “but I didn’t have to go before” just drives me insane. We asked the kids, all the kids, if they have to go everytime we get near a bathroom. The answer is always no. Maybe it is the power of suggestion, because it seems like about 15 minutes after we ask them is when the decided they have to go, and quick. And that 15 minutes is just about the perfect amount of time to get far away from a bathroom. So now Rachel jus wears a diaper. She isn’t supposed to pee in it – but if she does it makes a lot less mess.
So we rolled into New Jersey a little after 1:00. We got all checked into our RV park and then we went over to Liberty Park where we caught the ferry to the Satue of Liberty for our crown tour. Kim and I took the kids – while Rick watched Rachel and Emma, who were to short to go. We got tickets several months ago. Rick got tickets for tomorrow so he could watch the little girls. Jim was supposed to go with him, but he decided not to come to New York so Rick will just have to go by himself. The tour was really interesting. It was great. We walked up 357 stairs to the crown. The stairs were narrow, steep and very short. I bumped my head a few times and it is narrow enough I got feeling a bit closed in and I usually don’t have any problem with being claustrophobic. But it was tight. It was awesome though. The ranger told us all about the Statue and we took a bunch of pictures . We could see the inside of her face, look down and see the inscription on her tablet and reach out the window and touch the pillars on her crown. It was amazing to see and feel how thin she is. She is made out of copper the thickness of 2 pennies stacked. We could feel the copper and pinch it between 2 fingers – it is thin, really thin. It feels like all you’d have to do it get a baseball bat and give it a wack and you could crack the whole Statue of liberty. We also visited Ellis Island. That is a pretty incredible place too. That time period in history really intrests me. It was fun to see the different pictures and stories of immigrants in the museum.
After the Statue of Liberty we rode the subway down to Times Square and looked around and had dinner in a pizza place. New York pizza is delicious – we just got cheese but it was great. It is fun to watch the stares and see the whispers when we walk by with our 5 kids. Not that many people have 5 kids in New York. We get a lot of comments. It is even funnier when Kim and her kids were with us. We definitely look like a “Utah” family. One Dad, 2 moms and a bunch of kids. In fact one man asked us if all the kids had the same Dad. We were all together and it was obvious that some were Kim’s kids and some were mine.
Times Square never ceases to amaze me. There is so much color and light and movement and just “wow”. But it is so much it is overwhelming and exhausting. I could never live like that. We just looked around till we thought it was time to catch the subway back. We needed to get to our ferry station by 10:00 to catch the last boat. So we hurried and made it there by 9:46. Problem was last boat left at 9:40. Talk about terror in my heart. I had no idea what we should do. I didn’t really know any other way to get across the river. The ticket agent said the captain usually docked at our stop so he might let us ride with him on the rest of his route and then he could drop us off when he docked. We agreed, it only took about ½ hour longer to make another stop so all was well. We made it back. The ferry was extremely convient the pier is literally in our RV camp. It is also pretty expensive. We decided that the next morning we would take the path train in to the city. We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the Path train stop but it was about ¼ of the cost of the ferry- times that by 7 and the walk isn’t so bad.
We arrived in New York around 10:00 on Friday morning. We went to ground 0 and saw the new Liberty tower they are building and then we walked up to Canal street and met Kim and her kids. We walked down Canal street and bought some tee-shirts for the kids. Dallin found one he loved – it has Calvin on it, who is one of his hero’s. Problem is the smallest size we could find was an Adult Large. So he, and Taylor, absolutely swim in there shirts. Hopefully they will shrink when we wash them. We then went through China Town and bought some fruit. We had dragon fruit, and red and green Leeche’s (or something like that) They were pretty good. Not my favorite fruit ever but they weren’t bad at all. We decided to eat lunch in Little Italy. We found a nice little Italian restaurant that was having a lunch special we thought would work out for us. It was really nice to go in and sit for a while. I am not sure how many miles we walked but I felt like I should be getting a marathon medal. Lunch was really good. We let the kids order whatever they wanted and Rachel didn’t want anything so she didn’t order and I knew the kids wouldn’t eat all theirs so I just planned on cleaning up their plates. Which I did and greatly enjoyed getting a taste of several different things.
After lunch Kim and her kids headed home, Rick and Taylor went to the Statue of Liberty for Rick’s crown tour. He took Taylor with him and Taylor just pretended to be Jim Carter. The rest of the kids and I went to Central Park. I was a bit nervous to have them all by myself in NYC so I thought the park would be a good place to hang out. And it was for a while. We walked around and looked at the pond, climbed on some big rocks and then played on the playground. Then in started raining, then pouring. It rained harder than I have seen in a long time. We were all wet to the skin. I am not sure I could have been more wet if I would have jumped in a pool. Being wet made us cold. The lightening and thunder made some of us a bit nervous. There was really not a whole lot to do about the rain so we just got wet.
We gave up on the park and went to Lincoln Center where we were supposed to meet Rick. We hung around for quite some time waiting. We took pictures of the temple and played in the fountain at the Julliard. We walked around, chased pigeons, used the bathroom (three times) and then finally Rick came. We took pictures of the temple and than began our very wet walk back through central park, to times square.
We got some food from a vendor for dinner, which was delicious, and stopped for some gelato on the way home. The kids really wanted McDonalds. I really didn’t but my feet hurt so much from walking and we were all tired enough we just said – whatever- so we went to McDonlads. We decided to be at the station early tonight just in case we read the schedule wrong again – we did not want to miss the last train, like we missed the last boat last night. We went down to the subway “dipped” our cards and went through the turnstyle walked about 10 steps and Ryan says, “I have to go the bathroom” and he holds up 2 fingers. Seriously. We were at McDonalds not 15 minutes ago where everyone went. Apparently he didn’t have to go then but now in the subway tunnel where there are no bathrooms he was “brown capping” (my kids are so eloquent) Anyway I was not about to pay to go out and come back in so we told him to hold it. we made it to the our stop raced out of the station and found a bathroom at Starbucks. I have huge issues with using bathrooms where I am not a customer so it was kind of hard for me to take him in there. I really didn’t want to buy anything so I just gritted me teeth and prayed no one would stop us. I figured Ryan was dancing enough anyone could tell it was an emergency and who would rather clean up a mess than let a little boy use their bathroom. So that done we headed off for the Path station. We got in around 10:00 walked our 15 minutes back to the RV and collaspsed. New York was just as exhausting as it was awesome. And it was pretty awesome.
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