Our Trip Back East-New York

We hadn't originally planned to go to New York on this trip but it was quite a bit less expensive to fly in and out of the JFK airport. Plus, we could fly non stop. With a crew this big and all the luggage it was the only way to go. After a very exciting plane ride, since it was really the first time flying for all the kids, we hauled all our gear, plus three car seats and a stroller onto the air tram so we could get our rental car. We really were quite the site and I wish I would have thought to get a picture. Like one of the flight attendants that rode with us said, "Everyone had a job."

After loading up, the first item on our agenda was to get some food. The snacks on the plane weren't going to cut it for Bud Boy. On the GPS we found  "subway" and we proceeded to follow the directions. We soon heard "your destination is on the right". It had taken us to the subway, not the restaurant. So... we tried it again, this time making sure we were getting directions from the restaurants area on the GPS. We set off in search of Panda Express. Once again we heard, "your destination is on the right". All we could see was the airport. Near as we could tell it had located a place inside the airport. Not wanting to go back from where we just came we decided to start on the route to our hotel.

On the way to our hotel we had planned to drive through some parts of downtown Manhattan. Before we knew it we were there and still had starving kids. We saw McDonald's so I jumped out of the van while the rest of our crew drove around. Not a big fan of McDonald's food but it was easy and it did wonders for our starving little man who really was starving-he ate two hamburgers. Plus, the look on the clerk's face was priceless when I ordered that much food. Guess they don't see big families much, Imagine that?

We ended up driving through Times Square at 10:30 at night. Talk about letting the kids see the reality of NY. As our big, black, 15 passenger van, parted the sea of people we drove through the multicolored lights of the jumbo trons. We them turned onto a one way street (kind of the thing back there) and passed the back entrances to the Broadway shows, Newsies on the left and Mary Poppins on the right.

We finally made it to out hotel, in New Jersery, and all got some much needed rest. We awoke in the morning to the sounds of New York-honking horns.

View of NY from our hotel room

On the agenda for that day was the Statue of Liberty so we set off

The oldest two seemed a long ways away but the kids loved all the room to spread out

For our Cake Boss lovers we first had to drive by this

Jolly J really wanted to go get a lobster tail but we didn't have two hours to wait in line.

We took the ferry from the New Jersey side

 and then walked around the Statue of Liberty.

After taking this picture, while mom was attending to a crying baby, Bud Boy happened to wander off. It was a heart stopping five minutes while we searched for him. Thankfully a nice family noticed he was lost and started helping him look for us. After walking back and forth in front of the statue, while scanning the crowds of people, I heard a man say, "what does mommy look like?" and turned to see my little man. We were so relived all was well. As you can imagine Bud Boy stayed pretty close after that....... Thus began our adventure with a family of eight in the big city.