Finally, the BIG NYC Trip!

Yipee! I get to blog about my fun trip to New York. After a long day of flights from SLC to LaGuardia, I finally got to see Nicki around 8:30 Wednesday night. (What was I thinking, no photos). Thursday morning we got up and went for a lovely walk in the neighborhood, and what a gorgeous neighborhood. I saw beautiful homes like this

and this (not the best photo, but you get the idea)

and this

and my all-time favorite (at least in this neighborhood) this. I think I loved it because of the somewhat Third Empire French style. Loved this house. All of these homes sit on amazing properties too.

This little beauty is Ariana, the two-year-old Nicki takes care of. At first I thought she was cute, but nothing to get too excited about, but by the end of the week I was in love with her and her cute little ways (uncontrollable wild curly hair and all). No wonder Nicki loves her job. She will be killer-beautiful when she grows up. Her father is Pakistani and her mom is a blonde from Boston - great gene pool, don't you think?

Dinner that night with Kelly and Munir (nicki's employers). They have a professional Pakistani chef that cooks for them and we ate the most amazing yellow lentils (beautiful color, bright yellow - my favorite. Now I get to not only wear and accessorize with it, but eat it too - what could be better). All I can say is we Americans eat yummy, but dull looking food. It is pretty bland too, comparatively speaking. Loved all the food I ate in New York. As far as getting little gifts for everyone here at home, I can buy almost anything here in Utah that I can buy in New York, except for the amazing ethnic food. That is the one thing I would have loved to bring home to my fam. I wish I would have taken more/any pictures of the food.

Day Two - Friday

Another gorgeous walk through another part of the neighborhood and more beautiful homes. We got home and showered/dressed and it was time to pick Ariana up from pre-school. After lunch she went down for a nap and we were able to have some girl-time shopping at Woodbury Commons, the biggest outlet mall I have ever seen. I found a cute dress and handbag at the Liz Clayborne shop, reasonable priced, and asked the lady to put them on hold, then we shopped around a bit more. Went to the Coach outlet just for fun and carried around a handbag that I loved for about 30 minutes. However, I didn't get it ($200.00) b/c I already have a really cute one that Nicki got me last year for Mother's Day. I thought about getting the new one and putting it on a shelf, saving it for next year, but that would never happen and I'm a one-handbag-at-a-time kind of girl. Besides, it was kind of pricey. Sadly, I put it back on the shelf. I miss it. We left Coach, went to Godiva and got so excited about buying chocolate that I completely forgot about my "hold" items at Liz Clayborne and left without getting them. I miss those, too! Nicki did buy a cute scarf (notice scarf in hair) at Coach for $12.00 - what a bargain!

That night when McKay (Nicki's honey) got off work, he came over to Dobbs Ferry (where Nicki lives) and we went to Lefteris, Nicki and McKay's favorite greek restaurant. Again, amazing food. Ya, that's me stuffing this ginormous gyro (pronounced g-y-r-o, not hero, as is said in Logan, UT) into my face. I was stuffed for the next 16 hours, seriously. I even ate the rice-stuffed grape leaves and loved it! This kind of activity explains my lovely "jelly-roll" in all full body photos of me. But if you're gonna have one, eating good food is the best way to go!

Can't wait to blog about our next adventures. By the way, if you want to see more photos and get an idea of the trip from Nicki's perspective (funny and much more brief), check out her blog by either clicking on her name at the right, or click here.