Wife.Mother.Runner: liverty and cupcakes for ALL!

liverty (not a typo - this is how Jillian pronounces Liberty as in the Statue of Liberty)

This year we opted for a very non-traditional Thanksgiving - on Wednesday the 6 of us boarded a plane bound for New York City! I'm not going to lie - I was probably more excited than the kids about viewing the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade IN PERSON! I can remember watching this parade on TV every year as a kid as my mom prepared the Thanksgiving turkey and we waiting for eggdish casserole, some kind of sweet roll, and orange julius for breakfast.

After checking into our apartment, we headed up towards Central Park to watch the balloons being inflated for the Macy's Parade and stopped at a place called Shake Shack for dinner. The restaurant was so crowded that we opted to take our greasy burgers and fries outside for picnic. We found a spot a few blocks away - the bleachers that were set up for the parade. All the kids said that they enjoyed the burgers/hot dogs/fries/shakes so much that they wanted to come back every night for dinner here! I enjoyed my pumpkin pie shake but decided that it was enough pumkin to last me until Christmas and probably exceeded the calories that I burned during my 2 hour workout at the gym that morning! :) After dinner, we stopped at Whole Foods (I love Whole Foods!) for some breakfast items and proceeded to lose our youngest child somewhere in the store! I had stopped to inquire about pre-ordering a Thanksgiving meal and took Jillian out of my backpack carrier so she could push around a little basket. She was standing next to Jayden and near Ross. Then I proceeded to the fruit section for some apples - not even thinking twice about Jillian because she was next to Ross. About 5 minutes later, I turned to Ross and said "where's Jillian? He replied - I thought she was in your backpack!" Panic Immediately set in for me - I began running around the store looking for Jillian. The store was so crowded - I could barely walk around. I was sure that we had lost her! I found someone who worked in the store and said "I've lost my daughter!?!" - she proceeded to help me look and I continued to RUN around the store looking for Jillian. Apparently, in my panic, I did not hear the loudspeaker announcement "a little girl, Jillian, is looking for her mother, Sara". Jillian had walked up to the service desk and stated her name "i'm jillian jayne randolph and i'm looking for my mother, Sara". Counting my blessings that we found her!

Ross claimed our spot around 6:45am and I brought the kids down around 8:15 for the parade. We waited another 1:15 minutes before the parade actually reached us. It was amazing to view the parade in person but both Ross and I agreed that this would be a ONE-TIME event for us :) The parade lasted about 2.5 hours then we walked about a block back to our apartment for lunch. Ross and the girls layed down for a much needed nap and the boys and I set out to find our Thanksgiving dinner. We rode the Metro up to Whole Foods near Columbus circle (near Central Park) and then took the long way home, walking around the city. We stopped for a strawberry lemonade and wandered through the Rockafeller Center area where I spotted Martha Stewart getting into her black SUV! We picked up Ross and the girls and headed to the Empire State Building to get tickets for the tour. The line was about a 2 hour wait, so Jillian and I decided to walk around while Ross took the older 3 on the tour of the Empire State building. We walked by Macy's and looked in the windows, then we pretty much walked in any store that was open that night to browse around..... we had to kill about 3 hours :) I was amazed at how many stores were open on Thanksgiving! Although we had our credit card in hand, we didn't buy anything! We made our way around the block near the Empire State bulding and sat on a bench and watched the taxi cars and taxi bikes pull up and drive away from the Empire State Building. Then I sat in the umbrella stroller and Jillian tried to push me around - I'm sure people thought that was a pretty funny sight!

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving feast in our apartment (that was really more like a 1 bedroom hotel room with a small kitchen). I personally thought the food was better than anything I could have prepared. We had orange-cranberry sauce, roasted turkey, grilled tofu (yum! - i was bummed that they were out of my favorite almond crusted tofu!), cornbread stuffing, brandy sweetened sweet potatoes, wheat rolls, and cherry pie! As we sat in our small quarters and ate our Thanksgiving dinner out of take-out containers and watched some sort of Shrek repeat on the TV, I was reminded that you don't need anything fancy to be reminded that your blessings are all around you if you take the time to look around :) After dinner, we walked down to Times Square to check out the sites.

On Friday, we opted to sleep in a little bit instead of getting up early to see the beginning of the Today Show. We arrived on the set around 8:30 and it actually worked out pretty well - we were able to sneak a spot in the front and made it on TV! After the show, we walked up to Grand Central Station and St. Paul's Cathedral. After another lunch in our apartment, we rode the Metro down to the 9/11 Exhibit. Trying to explain to the kids what happened on 9/11 was difficult. We tried to show them where the buildings were and what happened on that day. After the exhibit, we walked down to Battery Park and looked at the Hudson River and the Statue of Liverty (Liberty). I tried to pull up some video clips of the 9/11 attacks on my phone to better explain to the boys what actually happened on that day. (thank goodness for technology!). We walked over to the NY Stock Exchange building and then hopped back on the Metro towards our apartment. We had authentic NY Style Pizza for dinner and a cupcake from the Magnolia Bakery! Yum! The kids and I went to bed and Ross went to the NBC studios tour.

I couldn't believe our trip to NYC was over! My second time in NY and I STILL haven't made it for a run in Central Park!?! Guess I'll have to wait for November 2013 when I run the NYC marathon! Although Ross and I both agreed that NYC was a nice place to visit - we could not live there. We had to catch a 9am flight - so we hopped on the Metro at 7am to get to the airport. Unfortunately we experienced a true "joy" of public transportation in a big city. Let's just say there was someone on the train who was passed out because of "too much" the night before. I won't get too graphic because it's making my stomach turn and my heart ache just thinking about it but I will say he didn't exactly make it to the bathroom in more ways that one. My immediate reaction was that I wanted to shelter my kids from this experience. I wanted to even shelter myself from this incident. But later I realized it was another gentle reminder of what I have to be Thankful for and an opportunity to explain (in a very modified manner) to my children that we must count our blessings and be thankful for our home/food/education opportunities/etc. My stomach turned almost the entire flight home and I could not stop thinking about many things. Before bed, Jayden asked me if he could say a prayer for this man and my heart melted! I was reminded that God speaks to us in many ways and sometimes when we least expect it!

So for a pretty non-traditional Thanksgiving - I was still reminded that I have many blessings to be Thankful for!