On December 20th, this sweet
girlie turned 9.
NINE.
Nueve. In true Sheridan fashion, all she wanted for her birthday was to have three friends over to celebrate with dinner, ice skating, and a sleepover. Well ... we tried. Unfortunately, one girl couldn't make it and one girl was wicked sick and had to go home after an hour. So the party turned into a one-girlie event ... which was perfectly fine for my easy going munchkin. Our friends joined us for a great dinner out after which Grady entertained us with his
utter and complete meltdown at the skating rink, realizing it was FAR harder to skate than he anticipated while
hysterically screaming, "It's too icy!" Well, duh?
L. Two girlies who were supposed to celebrate Sheridan's bday
R. The munchkin who did stay over with my kiddos
With Matt off for the kids' entire break, we managed to squeak in a quick trip to New York City, our favorite city in the world. We wanted to give our kids the TRUE NYC experience, so we decided to stay in Times Square, in the heart of the city. We made the four hour drive on Christmas Day and began our whirlwind walking adventure just as soon as we checked into our hotel. Despite freezing our bippy's off in the 20 degree temps, we bundled up with hats, scarves, gloves, comfortable shoes and off we went!
Upon waking up and looking out from the 25th floor of our hotel room
our first morning, Grady was excited to see so many "yellow cars." A
game he often plays with his sisters, he announced he was going to count
them. You can only imagine how
that went ...
Our first full day we braved the cold and walked all over the city, starting from our hotel to the Empire State Building, where we waited in line for about an hour to take the elevator to the Observatory on the 86th floor.
Back into the cold we then went as we walked the almost 30 blocks (stopping in every store in between) up to FAO Schwarz, where the kids got their "BIG" on ...
Shopping on 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Center and a late dinner at Ruby Foos ... ended our first day.
I sadly didn't take any photos of our next two days, spent entirely with Matt's dear childhood friends. The first was at the Museum of Natural History where we could have stayed FAR longer than the 5 hours we were there. Same goes with our "linner" at Sugar and Plumm and long walk back to the hotel. The next we took a "yellow car" down to Tribeca to hang at his friend's new apartment, journey to the neighborhood playground, and lunch at the Shake Shack. Two jam packed days filled with laughter, fresh air, delicious food, and friendship.
Of course what would New York City be without several trips to Starbucks. Or the sign of a great day when you fall asleep on your mom in a taxi!
Our 4-ish hour ride home on Sunday turned into an 8-hour ordeal as we joined everyone and their mother for the ride back. As Riley and I had been extremely ill during a majority of our trip, we actually went straight to Urgent Care, where Riley was diagnosed with the flu and I, an upper respiratory infection.
Thankfully, I managed to pull it together just enough to host some of our favorites here on New Years Eve!
A little bit of champagne, card games, a puppy, Chinese food, movies for the kids, sparking apple cider, and a festive countdown at the strike of midnight.
Who could ask for anything more? Here's to a bright 2014. Let the memory building begin!