More decorating picts

Drew decorated this table all by himself. He ended up carting everything upstairs to his bedroom.

Not quite sure what baby Jesus has going on here. Drew is always doing things like this.

Big boys on the roof...Drew wanted to get up there so bad. I told him he had to be ten years old so he just hung out on the ladder.

Christmas Decorations

We put up our Christmas decorations today and I figured I should post some since we always go to our families houses for Christmas, no one ever gets to see our house decorated.

The outside...

The mantle

The tree

The entry

Thursday, Day 1 in New York

Thursday we left St. Louis bright and early and arrived in New York in time for lunch. We went to Times Square and ate at Planet Hollywood. Then we went to Toys R Us, Rockefeller Center, Nintendo World, American Girl store (lots of protesting on that one!!!), M&M world, Hersheys store, went on the bus tour and played Rock Band with Crazy Dave at Game Stop.


Planet Hollywood

Toys R Us - Empire State Bldg made out of Legos. The pictures here don't do it justice - it's HUGE

Rockefeller Center - they were starting on the tree when we were there.

Nintendo world was a huge hit! The boys were in here for a very long time. They loved it!

Ty trying out some of the games

Linda waiting patiently for the boys

M&M world

On the bus tour

Empire State Building at night.

We wore Linda out and dropped her off at the hotel to go back to Times Square and the boys insisted on going into Game Stop. So, I caved and we went downstairs and a guy was just getting ready to play Rock Band and invited the boys to play. They were a bit shy at first, but he encouraged them and told them how much fun it was (they had played before...I think they were intimidated by him, not the game), so we sat in the basement playing Rock Band with "Crazy Dave" for quite a while. His sweat band had "Crazy Dave" written in perm. marker so that's what we called him.

Friday in New York

Friday was a busy day...We started at the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, spent some time in Times Square, went on a bus tour, saw the "Naked Cowboy", road a boat on a cruise around New York, and went to Young Frankenstein on Broadway.

The boys and I out in front of Ripley's

Grandma Linda with her new friend

The boys with the tallest man exhibit

Grant and Ty put their heads in the jars

The Naked Cowboy...we found out on our bus tour that he makes around $100,000 a year posing for pictures in Times Square!

Saturday in New York

Ok, just noticed the pictures are in reverse order...oh well. Saturday was a fun filled day! We woke up and walked to the Empire State Building, but the visibility was zero, so we rode the Sky Ride instead (it simulated a helicopter flight over New York) boys enjoyed it. I decided it wouldn't be a complete trip to New York without riding the subway, so I drug all three of them to the subway - it was hot and stinky and they were not at all amused until Ty found a dead rat on the tracks - which of course I took a picture of. We headed over to Central Park and went shopping on 5th avenue at FAO Schwartz, Trump Tower (where we had lunch), and the Disney store. We also went to St Patricks Cathedral and St Thomas Church. The weather cleared up so we went back over to the Empire State Bldg, got stuck in the elevator, and when we finally reached the top couldn't see a thing. We did it though! That night the boys and I saw a very entertaining street performer who had painted himself a bronze color and would do the "robot" with sound effects if you put money in his can. We also hit Macys and it was total insanity...so busy!!

The street performer

At the top of Empire State Building...we were sitting in a cloud - couldn't see a thing.

St Patricks Cathedral - it was just beautiful.

Ty and I in front of St Patricks.

FAO Schwartz...

There were lots of demos - we stopped for a magic show, rode scooters and tried the Myachi - it's a bean bag for your hands. Ty loved it and bought one.

Central Park

The subway

The dead rat in the subway.

The boys and I at the Skyride.

Linda and the boys at the Skyride

This was the last day of our trip. We had such a great time and I'm sure the boys will always remember it. Thanks Grandma Linda!

A day at the zoo

After church the boys and I decided we'd head down to the zoo for the day (Eric was going to be at Buffalo Wild Wings watching football and it was far to nice for us to spend the day inside.) The weather was amazing! I'm so glad we decided to hang out there for the day.

We were waiting for Ty to use the restroom and Grant was the photographer for the day so he snapped a shot of Drew and I sitting on the curb. When I got home and looked at it, I just cracked up! Look at that crazy little face!

This was a neat shot of Ty with the hippo.

The trees were just beautiful! Here's the boys feeding the remainder of our popcorn to the ducks.

A shot on the seals.

You always have to get a picture on this bronze ape!

Grant and Ty's first basketball game this season

Eric is coaching the big boys YMCA basketball team and they had their first game of the season yesterday. The boys did a great job and had lots of fun. Congrats on your first win boys!