July 19-24

A very short 7 days after we returned from Sweden, me, B, Master D and Ari jumped on another plane to find Master D a place to live for the next three years plus have a little fun for Ari’s big summer trip.  Her cheer schedule makes it difficult to take family vacations.  I love that she’s a cheerleader, I just don’t love that her coach is INSANE when it comes to practicing and attendance.  Anyhow, as soon as Master D got accepted and decided to go to Columbia, we planned to go help him scout out an apartment.  Of course, NYC has very particular and stringent requirements for getting an apartment.  I know we could have bought a house in UT easier than securing an apartment there. It’s crazy!!  Master D did a lot of researching, found a real estate agent, decided what area he wanted to be in and was super excited to check out the few studios we had showings set up for.  This part of the trip was not exciting for Ari, but we found an awesome little place, on a nice little street one block from Central Park and set about giving up a limb, signing away our life and freedom and preparing a book of documentation.   While Master D and I were preparing the massive amounts of paperwork, B took Ari to the Natural History museum and then we met up for a very nice dinner in the restaurant at the museum.  The next day we went and checked out Columbia.  It’s like a charming UK college in the middle of NYC.  It doesn’t feel like you are in the city at all.  I loved that campus!B and Master D had absolutely no desire to go see any musicals while we were there, so I thought if it was just me and Ari, maybe I’d get lucky and find seats for Hamilton and my luck was knocked out of the park….I got two seats middle of the third row!!  It was really truly amazing, just a bit fast so a little hard to follow …and a little weird to have our founding fathers latino and black rappers and hip hoppers.  While we were waiting in the Realtors office, they had some magazines for locals that advertised off the tourist track events and so we found out about and went to a movie screening that had a Q&A with the main actors after it called “Eighth Grade”. We also found an illusionist show that was slow but pretty cool and then we went to another artsy movie that I honestly can’t remember the name of.   Then we biked and sweated our way around Central Park and went school shopping for Ari.  We also ate banana pudding from Magnolia bakery every day…since it’s very close to where Master D’s new apt is. We had BBQ down by NYU (I like Columbia campus SO much better).

B and I were kind of lazy a couple of days, so the kids did a bunch of exploring on their own to the empire state building, bowling and souvenir shopping.   We hunted down the best rated chai in the city and SURPRISE it was Big Train…..duh!Ari and B left early in the morning on the last day and went to enjoy crepes. While B and Master D were giving up a couple fingers and toes and signing in blood for the apartment, Ari and I went and wandered around the Met trying to find scenes from Ocean’s 8 and mostly just getting lost.

While we were galavanting about in NYC, Ayden was getting engaged in CA.  The big day is December 22, 2018.  So save the date.