Alright, Alright, Alright...

So I'm finally going to post a little something about New York so that I can move on with my life and start posting about now. But I have no idea where to start, we have like a gazillion pictures...

I guess I'll just tell you all what the BEST parts were. However, before I make you all wildly jealous, let me just start by saying it wasn't all fun and games. We sublet an apartment that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a year (I spent the first 3 days there scrubbing pee off the floor and walls in the bathroom). June was probably the worst month of my life punctuated by no less than 3 trips to the emergency room all of which were very scary and two in the middle of the night. We weren't allowed to let Max cry for the whole month pf June because it would make his cough flare up again, so He basically never slept, which means I never slept, which is probably why I got the swine flu...any way, you get the picture.We started having fun AFTER June. SO here's the pictures. THey are in no order and there are a billino of them (and I promise I narrowed it down a TON:

This is the armour exhibit at the Met. We went there 3 times for like 4 hours each time and we still didn't see everything. They have got some pretty awesome exhibits though.

This is battery park. It was close to Javier's work so we spent a lot of time here. There is a beautiful view of New Jersey and the Hudson River, and you can see the statue of liberty in the background.

Beautiful 5th avenue. I love this side of town, but I always felt very lowly here because most everyone who walks by seems to be wearing a designer sweater tied around their neck, and ne time I wnet into a store just to check it out, and sure enough the price tag on a simple T-shirt was over 100 dollars. Stiull, its beautiful!

This is the Unisphere at the woprld Fair site in Queens
. It was probably one of the coolest things we saw there. Just to give you an idea, that white speck you see around the base, is me! Walking under it, I felt like I had fallen off of the real world.

These are some beautiful Hydrandeas at the botanical Gardens in the Bronx which are amazingly beautiful!

We LOVED when my parents came to visit us at the end of July! Here we are in Beautiful Central Park.

This picture cracks me up. THis was so typical! It seems like every time Max and I left the house we got caught in torrential rain!!He got pretty good at holding his own umbrella.

The Guggenheim had an exhibit of Frank Loid Wrights ideas that were never built. It was Awesome! This building was my favorite! YOu might not be able to tell but those glass balls are aquariums filled with Sharks and Jelly fish and stuff. Pretty cool!

One day we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.

This is in front of Beldevere Castle in Central Park.

Max went crazy at the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn! He especially loved this sea otter!

When Mom and Dad were there, Mom and I found this little place in someone's house in China town that offered Fish pedicures. We knew that was only available in Big cities and that it was enormously expensive in a real salon, so we were pretty excited! In the pictures they show little tiny fish, so imagine our suprise when we saw these huge flesh eating monsters! I think Mom's expression in this picture best captures the first 15 or so of squealing and the fish gnawed on our feet. The next 15 minutes however felt very relaxing. Overall, it was one of the biggest highlight of the whole summer!

We also LOVED when my sister Natalie and her husband, Quinn came to see us at the beginning of July. (I think that was the point when we started having fun). We gave them the whirlwind tour in 2 days, but we had so much fun! Here we are in Central Park.

Here is another picture in the Met at the tomb of Dendur!

Here we are in Washinton Square. Javier and I both enjoyed seeing places we had seen in movies everywhere in New York. We very much enjoyed the movie August Rush which takes place all around this park. It is a pretty awesome park anyway. Full of singers, and young families, and hippy Greenwich Village dwellers walking their dogs. Pretty fun!

We made some GREAT friends in NEw York this summer.Our ward was almost entirely young families. IT felt just like a BYU ward. People were very welcoming and kind. I made friends with lots of mothers in the ward especially, adn I think that made all the difference. These are our good friends Roxy and Bradley. We were having a pucnic in Fort Tryon park, which in my opinion is the most beautiful park in New YOrk.

SPeaking of beautiful parks, this is Prospect park, The bog park in Brooklyn. It is full of huge expanses of grass like this. I loved it! It feel so open in a place where you NEVER feel like that!

We enjoyed giving Max his daily Starbucks! Just teasing, this was a chocolate milk. WE just thought it made a funny picture.

FAO Swartz on 5th avenue is probably the coolest store in the world! Here Javier and Max are playing on the giant piano from BIG.

Javier's uncle sells herbalife in Ecuador and we were able to send him some products a couple times. TO do so, we had to go to "little Ecuador" in Queens. This neighborhood is super ghetto right under the elevator train, but it is pretty cool. It was fun to eat Ecuadorian food, and notice th distinct Equadorianness of every one we passed on the streets. Pretty awesome!

We loved this little bakery called Magnolia's. It was so quaint, and the food was delicious!

At the south street seapot museum, you can board these two really fun and historic boats and there is basically no one there, so you can really enjoy it.

This is in fornt of the Frick museum on 5th avenue. THis museum is AWESEOME! It is a huge mansion (did I mention how weird it is to be anywhere huge or spacious there) right inh the middle of town. Frick was a business partner of Carnegie and they had an art collecting sort of rivalry. I think after Frick died, his wife saw all the amazing masterpeices they owned and decided to mnake their mansion a museum. It is really cool to see. He has an incredible collection of WHistler! SOmething lame tough is that they dont allow children under 10! How dumb is that!

One of our favorite weekends was when we took a trip up to DC and got to meet the President. It was pretty nice of him to let Javier sit in his chair!

One of the highlights for us was seeing Wicked! WE waited until our last week to try to buy tickets and they are sold out way far in advance so we waited in the standby line for like 3 hours 4 times. We had a baby sitter for one of those nights, but we didn't end up getting tickets, so in the end, I saw iut one night and Javier saw it a different one, but it was awesome! We also got to see a musical called IN the Heights (which was about the neighborhood we liveds in) WHich was AWESOME! THank you Mom and Dad for that one! WE still talk about it all the time!

THis was a live statue in central park. Pretty cool.

This is from when we went to Madame Toussouds Wax museum (alright the picture with Obama was too). THat was pretty fun.

Poor little Max took a lot of naps sittimng up in his stroller this summer. He is SUCH and easy going baby or we never would have been able to do half this stuff. Here is is in front of the triumphal arch in Brooklyn, built to commemmorate the return of the union soldiers.

Here is another picture from the flesh eating fish. Max LOVED them!

WHen Natalie and Quinn were there for the 4th of July, we waited on the street for two hours to watch the Fire works on the Hudson RIver, and BOy was it worth it. THey had 5 bargesall shooting off the same fireworks show in a line. It was absolutley spectacular! We also enjoyed walking to the 5th nearest subway station with 2 million people. Max was as mesmorized as any of us!

One of our very favorite things was the statue of liberty! There is really nothing I could say that would do justice to that experience.

Here's Javier and Max at Cony Island in Brooklyn. Mostly pretty dirty, but we did enjoy a delicious Nathan's Hot Dog!

So all things considered, I think the subway was one of my favorite things about New York, It was also one of the hardest things. It smells like urine, and it was very difficult to always carry Max and his stroller down two or three flights of stairs, and then back up again. But I loved it because there were so many kind people who helped me carry Max's stroller (usually the big scary looking guy, it taught me a lot about judging, because I found that those people are MUCH nicer than the clean cut tourists from Utah or wherever). But my favorite part of the subway was how Max loved to get everyone's attention. Peopel were always so nice to play with him on the subway. There were usually 5 or more people playing with him at once. Which did a lot to build his confidence. By the end he had no qualms n(much to my dismay) to pull on the strager's sleeve next to us to give him a big toothy grin. I am just so grateful for all those nice people who entertained him!

This is Little Italy.

WE went to see the staten Island Yankees (dont get excited, that is not the same as the real yankees) with people from Javiers work. THe stadium where they play is Beautiful right on the water. THese two sweet girls were so nice with Max. All of Javier's co-workers seened a little baby hungry.

Thats the Plaza Hotel.

Here's Max on one of our many excursions wiuth the empire starte building in the background. This day we had just come from seeing Mood Fabrics (you know, from project runway). That was a COOL store.

These girls gave me and my mom a makeover. This is in Bloomingdales. That was really fun.

This was like 10 blocks from our apartment. I just thoght it was cool because there are like 12 lanes of traffic.

THis is time square which I sort of hate because there are SOOOOO many people, but it is awesome to see all those HUGE signs which are mostly moving. It is like being in the fututre.

There is another picture form the Botanical gradens in the BRONX.

These are obseravtion deks at the world fair sight. You might remember that in Men in Black they turned out to actually be space ships.

When my parents came we went to the flower district one day which was pretty awesome!

This is an old synagoge on the lower east side wehere all the tenements were back in the day. Now it is China town. We didn't get any pictures, but the lower east side tenement museum was another highlight.

THere is another picture form Magnolia's.

This picture is taken at the cloisters which are another awesome museum for rennassance art in the middle of Beautiful FOrt Tryon park. They have a beautiful monastery garden.

Here's Max chillin with the Beatles. (Wax museum).

One of my very favorite things about New york by the end was the parks. THis picture was taken at a park just down the street from us where we loved to go and play! WE always met the most interesting ppeople (most of whom only spoke Spanish, no matter how long they had lived there because EVERYTHING in our neighborhood was in Spanish. It was so cool to live there!) There was also a free pool just 5 blocks away from us, where they had an olympic sized TODDLER pool. Needless to say, that was very fun!

Here is Javier at work. He was working on an audit for a new building that Goldman Sachs was building. Part of his job was researching construction accidents that happened on this building. Ever since then we both feel much more nervous around cranes.

I love this picture of Max anbd my Dad taken right outsude the Met.

You can rent a rowboat in the middle of central park for 10 dollars. It is very romantic. Once again it has many movie ties as well.

Here is Max at FAO Shwartz with a giant Hagrid made of legos (pretty cool)

Thats another shot in a nearby park. Oh how we loved spending our days in parks! THere are so many there, we could almost go to a different one every day. but we went to this one a lot.

Here are Nat and Quinn. I wouldn't say the museum of naturaly history was my favorite, but it was so fun to go with them, and alright the dinosaur bones were pretty cool.

One of our FAVIRITE places was Serendipity 3 (thanks for the tip Natalie Hansen) look at the size of those icecreams! Plus it was in One Fine Day and Serendipity! The atmosphere is really fun!

Javier really loved this hot dog place (which was also in some movies).

Possibly the highlight of my life was when we stubbled on the American girls store. It was the culmination of every childhood dream to be able to see everything from the catalogue in real life. The only sad thing was that they have stopped making Samantha! WHy would they do that?

Well sorry. That was the mother of all posts. But now it is cronicled and I can start taking new pictures again. Well I miss New York now. It was hard but so fun. Im glad we had the experience all in all.