The Lawrence Welk Show

Alli and I have found these SNL clips to be some of our favorite things to quote this week. Kristin Wigg is the actress and she's probably our favorite SNL cast member. This should lighten your day.

New York: The Epilogue

It has been a while since I've updated our blog, and we are back in Dallas, but I can't leave our season in New York unfinished. So, here is the the last installation of our New York adventures...at least for now.

This was in Times Square right after we saw Mary Poppins on Broadway. Those of you who know us well, are aware that we are huge fans of "The Office," and in one episode, Michael Scott visits NYC and says he likes to go to the places that aren't so touristy, like Times Square. We joked about that every time we went there. Actually, we spend a lot of our time in general quoting The Office. That's what she said.

This was in Central Park on the North side. I didn't know this before living in New York, but the Northern part of Central Park is pretty different from the Southern. There are fewer people and some really beautiful waterfalls. Walking through the park was always a breath of fresh air for me, because its pretty much the only nature you get in Manhattan.

This was on top of the apartment building where our new friends the Asher's live (pictured below). Yes, it overlooks the front of Macy's, and they can watch the Thanksgiving parade from their roof. Yes, I am wildly jealous. I really like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, it brings back so many holiday memories! They also have a perfect view of the Empire State Building. Such a neat place to live!

This sums up one of our absolute favorite things about New York. Right before we got married, Mark asked to join a small group from Redeemer Presbyterian, and little did we know how much we would love our new friends. From the left, Aileen (her husband Josh couldn't make it that night), Kristen and her husband Adam behind her, and Elyse and Jordan on the right. We are so thankful we got to know these fun couples, it was such a neat community for us to be a part of for a summer. It was amazing how God provided us with great friends during our short time there. We miss them a lot! Oh, and Kristen and Adam are expecting a baby almost any minute now and we can't wait to see pictures!

I'm sure most of the things we did made us look like tourists, but I never cared. I actually really liked pulling out my map every where I went because I liked figuring out the most efficient ways to get places.

This was the morning I left for Dallas, and as Mark's dad commented, we made sure we fit every last thing in we could. We went to the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx and it was so beautiful. Such a sweet ending to our time together in the city, it was hard to believe it was over.

We had an absolutely incredible time in New York filled with memories that I know we'll always cherish. We learned so much from this experience, about marriage, each other, the joy of meeting new friends, what it means to help the poor, how people are so unique and yet still so similar, and how wonderful a new lifestyle can be even when it makes you a little nervous at first (that one was mostly me). We are both looking forward to a lifetime of new adventures for as long as the Lord allows us!

A few more favorites

My friend Kaitlyn came to visit while we were in New York! It was such a fun week and so nice to be able to spend time with such a great friend. She and her husband are having their first baby in February (Feb 14th is the due date!) and I am so excited!!!

We got tickets to Mary Poppins and loved it! I think we were getting more into it than the little kids around us. We stopped in Times Square for a picture afterward.

These next few are from our day trip to Coney Island. It took about an hour on the subway to get there, and I'm glad we saw it, but there was really not too much going on there. It was kind of a dead town, but pretty unique and made for some fun pictures. It was sort of like you stepped into 1950 or something.

Most of these are little stands that have displays of the food they sell and everything was fried. Everything.

Nathan's was one of the only places with non-fried foods, but pretty pricey for a hot dog. We decided to wait to eat until we got back to the city.

The Staten Island Ferry was one of the best deals in New York, its absolutely free! You wait in a mob of people and they open these big doors to let you on the boat and everyone rushes to get a good place to stand because you pass right by the Statue of Liberty. When you get to Staten Island, you run around the corner to try to catch the ferry that is going back to Manhattan. We ran up to the door just as it was shutting and the guy was not about to let us on. They run every 3o minutes though so it wasn't a big deal.

We didn't actually pay to go to the Statue while we were in New York, but this was close enough for me. I really liked that there was a pirate ship sailing by Lady Liberty.

Kaitlyn and I got up really early one morning to go see the taping of Good Morning America in Central Park because Kelly Clarkson was on! It was a good thing we brought an umbrella, because it absolutely poured on us.

Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts talking to Kelly after she sang. It was interesting because they kept taping quick snip-its of Kelly singing so they could show it as they went to commercials. It makes it look like she is giving a concert the whole time, but she really only sang like 2 or 3 full songs. Slightly disappointing, but still a fun experience and one of the last big things Kaitlyn and I got to do together. I was so glad she came to visit!

My grandmother was Italian and she had about 9 brothers and sisters, so my dad has quite a few cousins. My dad grew up in Connecticut and most of his relatives still live around that area. His cousin Marion and her husband Gordon got in touch with us while we were there and met us for dinner one night in Little Italy. It was such a neat experience to get to know another part of my family! They were both such a hoot and we heard some fun stories about my dad and the rest of the Italian side. Those of you who know my dad can imagine that the whole evening was pretty entertaining.

On one of our last weekends, we finally made it out to New Jersey to see my sweet friends Kate and Bethany. Kate is working in Jersey and Bethany lived with her this summer. It was the cutest little town and a really nice historic-type home. It was a welcomed journey away from the city, sort of like a vacation from our vacation I guess. This is where Mark and Bethany discovered the hilariousness of "Fail Blog" and watched videos for hours while Kate and I did some catching up. Miss you girls!

On our last night together in New York, Mark and I went to Serendipity! The desserts were humongous and SO delicious. Probably the best sweets I've ever had. We had the frozen hot chocolate (on the left) and some ridiculous sundae that had a piece of chocolate cake in it. We watched the movie "Serendipity" on our honeymoon (the selection of DVDs at our resort was mostly really intense dramas so that was one of the few fun ones) so I had been excited about going there for a while.

Despite what it looks like, we couldn't actually finish the desserts. Believe me, we tried.

New York Collage

While in New York, I collected just about everything. Ticket stubs, brochures, plastic bags, you name it, and I made a collage out of them. Finished it yesterday!