Idaho to New York or Bust!

For the past year or so Scott and I have wanted to go vacationing to New York. Neither of us had been there before and we've always wanted to visit. We had originally wanted to road trip it and to hit all the church sights on the way there and then swing into Canada for our trip back. We figured to take a trip like this though we'd have to take at least 2 weeks off from work and spend lots and lots of mula. So we settled for just flying if the chance ever came up. Well that chance came up in October when we found tickets for $200 dollars round trip! Who passes up a trip to New York for 400 dollars? So we got the tickets of course and scheduled our trip for the end of January so that we could have a few months to save up.

We both have friends in New York and Washington D.C. so we decided while we were there we might as well hit both places. Now I can't possibly go into great detail without this being the longest post in history. So I'm just going to hit the highlights (and it will still prob be the longest post in history):

Day 1
Our plane left at 9:30 am with a layover in Denver then onto New York. Let me tell you, that first flight was the worst flight of my whole life. I didn't take anything and man was I sick! I don't know how I made it without throwing up all over the place. I was real close. Let's just say the Lord answers prayers. Once we landed we went straight for some dramamine! The second flight was much much more bearable.

 We arrived in New York at 5:30 and our good friend Carlos was there to great us! Carlos and his wife Heather were very generous to let us stay in their awesome one bedroom apartment while in New york! Thank you again! It was so fun to stay with you!

Day 2
Carlos and Heather both had to work so Scott and I head out into the big city on our own with nothing but money and a map! It was fun to get to experience New York for the first day with just the two of us. I was glad we got a chance to explore the city on our own just for a day!

The awesome bike set up in Carlos and Heather's apartment!

Our first New York experience, a walk around Riverbank Park!

Our first look at New York in the light!

We started our Subway experience perfectly by getting onto the Subway on the wrong side. There went our first 5 dollars! I was really excited to ride on a Subway because I'd never done it before!

 After fixing our mistake our first stop was the Seinfeld Diner for lunch!

 New York Temple. We really wanted to do a session but we just didn't have enough time. The temple was really unique and cool though.

 We spent the rest of the day at the Museum of Natural History. 

 That night we hit up Town Square and went to the Broadway Phantom of the Opera. I've always wanted to see it and I'm so glad we did! It was really good!

I thought time square was a lot like Vegas... Just a lot cleaner!

 Phantom of the Opera!

 After the Broadway we went to the Hard Rock for dessert.

 Day 3
Carlos and Heather didn't work so they would both get to show us the ropes of New York! We took the water taxi to take us to the sound end of the island (Which was still powerless from Sandi). This isn't the water taxi by the way... It's the Intrepid. We wanted to take a tour on it but ran out of time.

Walking to Ground Zero

 Ground Zero Memorial

The new World Trade center buildings are amazing!

 Last surviving tree from ground zero

Stroll down Wall Street.

 A lot of abandoned streets from Sandi.

 Brooklyn Bridge

 New York

 Statue of Liberty

 The Island is still closed from Sandi so this is as good at it got.

That night Carlos and Heather took us to Little Italy in the Bronx and we ate at the most amazing Italian restaurant ever! This was both of our favorite restaurants we ate at our whole trip! And we ate at a lot of different restaurants.

Day 4
We would be taking the bus down to D.C. later in the day so we started out by dropping off our luggage at a luggage storage place by the bus stop. It seemed a little sketch and we really hoped it would still be there when we came back for it. Nothing says breakfast in New York like eating at a authentic Mexican restaurant for taco's! It was really tasty... But I don't think my morning sickness was allowing me to enjoy it to the fullest.

We went to Central Park and got our first New York Geocach!!

 Random photo shoot. I felt bad for her because it was really cold!

Empire State Building!

 The view was so cool! But it was so extremely windy up there!

 Heather and Carlos our gracious New York hosts!

 Our last restaurant in New York was a French restaurant. Scott's main goal of going to New York was to find a French restaurant. Well it was the most we have EVER paid for any food anywhere. And neither of us thought it was that great. The thing I hate about nice restaurants is it seems the more you pay the less food they give you. We had a 3 course meal and when I left I felt like I still could have eaten more. The Italian restaurant was half the price, twice the food and tasted 50 times better! We know were we will spend our money on food in the future.

 I do have to say the dressed up the plates really nice though!

We were running a little late after that so we had to run to the luggage storage place and then to the bus so we didn't miss it! I was glad our luggage was still there and the bus ended up being a half hour late so all the running wasn't necessary. It was crazy but we went through like 7 states on the 4 hour bus ride to D.C. All the states are so close over there!

Day 5
I think today is the day I lost all my energy. Every day for the past 4 days had been go go go go. And it hit me. In D.C. we stayed with my good friend and old roommate Mich! It was so fun to see her and spend time with her! We also met up with our friend Tara and Scott's cousin Shalayne! It was a party in D.C. for sure! We started off by going to the Space and Air Museum:

Moon Rock!

Tour of State Capital Building:

 Me and Mich!

 Touching the center of D.C.

Archive Building to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:

Washington Memorial

 Scott, me, Mich and Tara

 World War 2 Memorial

 Lincoln Memorial

 Tara, Scott, me and Mich!

Vietnam Memorial

 White House

Day 6
The last sight seeing day of our trip we got up early so that we could fit everything in!

Arlington Cemetery got there just in time to see the changing of the guard:

 JFK family burial site and Arlington House in the background

Just subway waiting..... Mich is the most awesomest photographer ever...

 One of her great works!

 Another Great work. :)

Museum of American History:

Just a cute 23 week baby belly pic of me :)

 The Holocaust Museum was our last stop. I was glad we got to spend a couple days in D.C. Our checkbook was glad too! New York is soooo expensive! We spent almost all of our vacation money the first 3 days we were there! Everything in D.C. was free so we hardly spent anything! It was a nice change. We caught the bus back late that night and I think I slept 3 1/2 hours of the 4 hour ride. (I blame it on the dramamine) After arriving back in New York we bought ourselves a hot dog off the street because everyone told us we had to do it. Well that was the most nasty tasting hot dog I have ever eaten in my life! I'm surprised I didn't catch a disease from eating it!

One last night shot of Empire State Building

Day 7
The final day of our trip! I'm going to speak in Idaho time zone. We woke up at 1:30 so Carlos could take us to the airport. We wanted to get there early so that we could check in... But I guess that early in the morning there isn't a lot of people because by 2:30 we were in our terminal waiting for the plane that was scheduled to leave at 4:15. Because of weather in Chicago our plane ended up being delayed an hour. So our 1 hour layover in Chicago ended up being hurry run to our next flight because everyone is already loaded and your going to miss your plane! Because of all the delays though we ended up actually taking off about an hour late as well. Because of the dramamine I slept for a good 2 1/2 hours of the first 3 hour flight and prob 3 hours of the second 4 hour flight. The people I sat next to probably thought I was some crazy prego women that couldn't keep her eyes open except to shove snacks in her mouth and then dose off again! But between the motion sickness of the flight and the morning sickness of not having a meal to eat for 10 hours (because we had planned on getting something to eat in Chicago but ended up not being able to because of the delays), I was feeling pretty crappy. So I was glad I couldn't keep my eyes open! When we landed it was around noon and I was beyond starving! and feeling pretty sick. We stopped in Ogden on our way home to have lunch with Melanie. She is so cute with her cute little baby bump! I wish we would have thought to take prego pictures standing next to each other but I didn't even think of it... On our drive back to Idaho, again I proceeded to sleep for most of the ride. I felt bad for Scott but I really just couldn't even keep my eyes open if I tried!

All in all the whole trip was a blast! We both loved it! New York is so different then anything I have ever experienced. And so much walking! Scott and I had sore feet the whole week from walking so much. It got pretty painful by the end of the week. But we still had so much fun. It was also so fun to see so many of our friends! Thank you all for hanging out with us and letting us crash with you while we visited the east! It was so fun to see everyone. Now I really did have a blast, but I don't think I will ever take a trip like this again while pregnant. It just would have been even more enjoyable if I didn't have to deal with morning sickness the whole trip and not have to find a restroom every hour! Anything I rode on made me sick, and we rode on a lot of different things. Planes, subways, buses, boats, elevators. And I felt like a had to pee ALL the time. Like I said before though. It was still so much fun! And I loved going! Now we feel like we need a vacation from our vacation!

Moving Time!

With a new babe on the way, Scott and I decided our 450 SQFT 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 1 car garage apartment just wasn't going to cut it anymore! Time to upgrade! So what did we decide to upgrade to?..... A 1200 SQFT 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath, 2 car garage townhouse!!!! This is going to be a long post. So if you don't want to hear all the drama you can skip to the end to see the pictures of our new place. I know those are the best part anyways....

We had quite the experience with finding a new place. We had been searching for a couple months and had found the townhouses and liked them. Finally 2 became available the beginning of January. They were owned and managed by 2 different people. From this point forward in the story I will refer to the managers by good manager, and bad manager. We looked at good managers townhouse first. We liked him and the townhouse from the start. The only problem was he was renting his townhouse for 75 dollars more then the bad manager. And that was about 75 dollars more then we could afford to spend. Even though we were able to talk him down 25 dollars, we still just couldn't do it. So we looked at the bad manager's townhouse and liked the townhouse but felt a little bit more hesitant about the manager. We told him we would like to move in 2 weeks because we had a vacation planned for the end of January and wanted to be all moved in before then. He told us that wouldn't be a problem at all. He had a list of things he wanted to get done in the townhouse (maintenance/upgrade things) but should have everything done in a week! Sounded great to us! So we gave him the deposit to hold the townhouse for us and the plan was set to move the 19th of January.

The day before moving day we called bad manager to make sure everything was still in order for us to move. He told us he still had a couple things he needed to finish up but we could move Sunday for sure. This was slightly inconvenient for us but gave us all Saturday to finish packing everything. By Saturday night we were all completely packed up except for a bag full of clothes to get us by the next couple of days. Around 10 pm we get a call from bad manager saying he had some stuff come up and wasn't able to work on the apartment but we could move in Monday for sure for sure. I was a little frustrated at this point. EVERYTHING was packed and ready to be moved, and moving on a work day was VERY inconvenient for us. Sunday morning Scott drives over to the apartment to see whats going on. When he gets there he find that almost NOTHING has been done since we gave him the deposit TWO weeks ago! The apartment is still dirty from the last tenants and all of their garbage is still there. He hasn't cleaned anything. Bad manager tells Scott we can move Tuesday for sure, but Scott knows that there is no way he going to get everything done he said he would in two days. By now Scott and I have had enough red flags to know we DO NOT want to rent from this guy. We were glad we hadn't signed the lease and were not obligated to move there. But all of our stuff was packed and we had nowhere to go. The apartment we were in had already rented for February and we had to be out by the 31st of January.

We get online and notice good manager still has his townhouse for sale. So we call him up, knocked off some more money and were all set to move Monday. We had already given him an application and he had already accepted us at the beginning of the month so we didn't have to worry about any of that. I don't know how it all worked out in the end but it did.... Monday after work we had the elders quarm from our ward helping us move all our stuff and by Monday night we were in our new townhouse. It is so much bigger then anything we have lived in since we have been married that we don't quite know what to do with all the space or with ourselves!

To finish the story.... Monday Scott went over and told bad manager we'd decided not to move in and would like our deposit back. He took it a lot better then we thought he would, tried to talk us into it a little, then told us he didn't have the money to give back our deposit but would be able to get it by Thursday. To make an already long story shorter... From this point, two week later, we have received a little more then half of the deposit (which we finally got on Saturday) and am still waiting for the rest of it. We aren't to worried about getting it... eventually... We just don't know how much longer we'll have to wait for it. Scott keeps on his tail about it everyday. Most of the time he ignores our calls, emails and texts. But if we keep hounding him them we'll get it... eventually.... He should have never deposited it in the first place before we had even signed a lease. This was a great lesson for both of us though! The spirit talks to us for a reason. Neither of us felt good about the manager in the first place and we were just to eager to get a new apartment to listen. We hope to do much much better in the future so that we don't have to deal with drama like this again. But I'm still amazing that everything worked out so nicely in the end. Maybe it was supposed to work out like this so that we could get the townhouse that we really wanted at a price we could afford. Who knows... Either way I'm so happy we ended up where we were and not where we could have been.

I'm glad we decided to move when we did because I'm not even that big and I feel like when I was trying to clean and pack and move my belly was getting in the way all over the place. So I can only imagine how much worse it would have been a couple months down the road! Ok... Now for what you've all been waiting for! PICTURES!!!

 The door of our Second home together! It was a nice place to live and we enjoyed the manager, neighbors and cute little apartment that it was! Good bye!

 Getting everything packed! This is the only moving picture I have... Cuz I'm good like that.

No judging clutter and boxes! We are still in final stages of unpacking!

 Living Room from front door

Living Room

 Dining Room

 Kitchen

 Half bath and Coat closet under stairs

 Up to the Second Level!

 Full bath and my personal favorite, Washer and Dryer! YAAAAY!!!

 Master Bedroom from door

 Master bedroom

 Guest room/Baby Bergy's room!

 Fenced in back patio with 2 port garage! Perfect for Cricket! My second favorite thing... Not having to take Cricket out and just letting her go out the back door by herself! So nice!