New York, New York

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I've been reading yours. 

Had a great time in New York.  Saw the broadway show the Adams Family - it was a lot of fun.  Last year we saw Rock of Ages and that was fun too.  It can be tricky trying to find a show that an 11 year old, a 14 year old and a grown man and woman all enjoy, but we lucked out 2 times in a row.

The first night we stayed outside of New York to save a little bit of money.  We ended up lost around the docks of New Jersey.  Hopefully nobody takes offense to this but my girls were a little nervous because the area looked a little shady (also known as industrial to an adult) and my husband was irritated because he was lost so I needed to crack a joke.  (If you want to know how I knew my husband was irritated, when I asked him if he wanted me to turn on the voice for our GPS system thinking that might help get us on track he said very dryly that he didn't need another voice.  I was pissed at the moment, but we laughed about it later)  Okay, back to the docks, I told the girls there was nothing to worry about because this was the place where murderers would take their bodies to dump.   The good thing is that they already had their murder for the day so we were safe.

We did the NBC tour and thought it was super cool to see the Saturday Night Live set.  Looks a lot different than on tv.  Also went to Madame Tussauds was museum.  It was pretty cool and got took some funny pictures of the kids with the "celebrities."  I thought it got a little boring after a while, though.  (Above picture is not of my kids.  I am terrible at downloading photos as you may have picked up.  I still owe you pics from Ocean City.)

Had one bad experience while there.  We were walking in Time Square and of course it was pretty jammed pack so jostling is to be expected.  However, a large man - he was well over 6 foot - was walking along with his arms out and swinging - talking to himself - so I noticed him right away.  Luckily he turned into a store so I thought he was gone.  Unfortunately, before I picked him up on my radar again he barrelled into my 11 year old daughter almost knocking her off her feet.  My husband was up front and didn't see it happen, but I yelled, "Hey!"  to the guy and, to my surprise, quite a few other people on the street started yelling at him for knocking into my daughter.  He said, "I didn't do anything! Fuck you!" and stormed off.   I turned to my daughter and realized she was holding the back of her head and crying.  My husband looked at her and said, "Oh, he made her cry!?"   I have to say, David had a look in his eye that both scared me and excited me at the same time.  Then he took off running after the guy.  The two things running through my head were that either he was going to pound the guy or the guy was going to pull out a weapon.  So I started yelling after him to come back.  I swear - it was just like a movie.  Luckily he just said some choice words to the guy and it ended with the guy saying "Oh, she is your daughter.  Tell her I'm sorry."  Whatever - I think he did have a screw lose.  Ultimately what we got out of it was the good from the experience and how great it was that so many people jumped to my daughter's defense. 

Lastly, we went to an awesome restaurant called Carmines on 200 West 44th Street.  It's a family style italian restaurant so the portion sizes are huge.  In my experience, big portions usually equals average taste.  Not so in this circumstance.  The food was delicious.  We had the chicken parm and ravioli, which we mostly picked because our kids like.  I would have liked to try something a little more different, but maybe next time.  I definitely ate more than I should have, but not as much as I would have pre-band.  And now for my big confession - we got dessert.  I am not a dessert person (believe it or not), but the waiter talked us into the hot fudge sundae.  I wasn't really worried, because in addition to not being a dessert person, I'm really not a sundae person.  However, this was not your average sundae.  This was a little piece of heaven on earth.  The whipped topping wasn't too sweet or too gooey.  The chocolate ice cream was so creamy and rich.  But, not only was there ice cream, but it was on top of this delicious dark chocolate cake.  Most of the time those kind of cakes make my teeth hurt, but not this one.  I should have taken a picture, but didn't think of it until it was too late.

If anybody has any other good ideas about what to do in New York, I'd love to hear.  I think our next trip will be end of October so I'm thinking it will be good time to do Central Park and the Ellis Island tour.  Also, if anybody has any show ideas appropriate for kids, but interesting to adults, that would be great. 

On the band front, I'm doing pretty well.  Still down 11 lbs.  Carmines didn't help my weight loss effort, but at least I didn't gain.  Tomorrow is my first fill.  I'm a little nervous, but will be glad when it's over so I know what it will be like going forward.  I'm trying to keep my expectations low because I've heard the first fill doesn't give a lot of restriction, but at least it's a start to building restriction.   I'm assuming I'll be cleared to do whatever exercise I want, so that will definitely help.  Our elliptical has been broken for a few months and we finally found someone to fix it so I'm looking forward to getting back on that and logging minutes for the Chica Challenge.