Written by Jason
Well, we have been in two contrasting worlds for the last week and a half. First, we spent six days in New York City in Steve and Kirsten’s studio apartment in the upper west side of Manhattan. Then we spent three days with Neal and Katrina in their home in Olean, NY—a town of 15,000. We are grateful to all four of them for taking such good care of us and helping us have such a great vacation. They live in such different worlds and it was interesting to experience that back-to-back.
We saw lots of famed, historic sites, but probably our very favorite parts were conversations we had with both Steve/Kirsten and Neal/Katrina. We love you guys and look up to you.
Some of my personal favorite places we went/things we did were:
1. Front row seats to Wicked on Broadway- Our flight was several hours delayed in arriving in New York because we couldn’t land there initially due to fog. No sooner than we got to Steve and Kirsten’s were they feeding us waffles and getting us on our way to enter the drawings for very reduced prices for front row tickets to Wicked. Steve, Kirsten, Julie, and I all put our names in. Steve’s name was drawn and he gave us the two tickets. After a trip to Times Square, Julie and I found ourselves only feet away from some intense singing and acting. It was awesome. I could not believe how good the show was. We had seen it before in Chicago and I wasn’t even that into it then, but for some reason this was so much better. I’m not sure if it was just the front row or if I got the story better the second time, or if the acting was better or what. In any case, that play has some really fun music.
2. Top of the Rock- The observation deck in the Rockefeller Center has sweet views of the skyline of Manhattan Island. I love being able to have views like that which give a different perspective. While you’re down on the streets it’s hard to have a concept of how massive and plentiful the skyscrapers are. Top of the Rock gives a different and amazing view.
3. Ellis Island Museum- Wow, what a historically significant place. I would have been happy to spend so much more time there reading about all of the interesting history of the conditions, situations, and issues of Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924 while it was the primary hub for receiving over 12 million immigrants into the US. Unfortunately, Julie was sick this day and completely missed it as well as the Statue of Liberty. I must say, the Statue of Liberty is so famous, but I thought the Ellis Island stop was so much more interesting.
4. Niagara Falls- Wow, God’s creations are amazing. That is a lot of water pouring over the various waterfalls. The Maid of the Mist boat ride and the Cave of the Winds walk were fun adventures with some good cold sprays and splashes from the falls. The Cave of the Winds allows you to walk to the “Hurricane Deck” where you are ten feet away from the bottom of the edge of one of the falls. The splashing is basically like taking a shower with your clothes on.
We also took a couple of bus tours of the city that allowed us to see a lot of things in drive-by fashion: the Empire State Building, the famed Macy’s Department store (it has the most floor space of any department store in the world), apartment buildings that celebrities lived in, Harlem etc. We walked around the area of the World Trade Center and went through a mini 9/11 museum, walked down part of Wall Street, went inside the largest cathedral in the world (St. John’s—it was really impressive), rode bikes through and around Central Park, went to the Museum of Natural History, took a tour of Carnegie Hall, ate at Serendipity, and briefly checked out some fun and unique stores in New York like Dylon’s Candy Shop and the Apple Store on 5th Avenue.
The Museum of Natural History has this really cool illustration of the relative size of things all the way from the galaxies to parts of an atom. It’s hard to fathom it all, but it reminded me of Abraham 3—if one thing exists, there’s always something greater than it.
We also went to Lion King on Broadway. After how fantastic Wicked was we were a little disappointed overall, but the costuming and sets were creative and amazing. Riding the subways around the city reminded me of my mission.
A nice little break from the noise and commotion of New York City was being able to go to the Manhattan temple one evening. It’s a nice little temple. The interior is more fancy or high class I think than any other temple I have been in. I think it was also the smallest temple I’ve ever been to in terms of the size of the rooms.
With Neal and Katrina we were fortunate enough to go to the Smith family home in Palmyra, the Sacred Grove, the Grandin Printing Shop where The Book of Mormon was first published, and the Hill Cumorah. The church makes things really nice. It’s neat to be able to go to sites so important to our heritage. I didn’t realize the church had a recently released movie about Joseph Smith. We watched the whole thing at the Hill Cumorah Visitor’s Center.
Our trip also included several rounds of Bananagrams, Steve beating us all in a good game of Bang and Neal winning a round of Cities and Knights. Neal is lucky it was my first time playing : ).
Funny Moments:
1. Jason at Wicked: “Wow, that was good. It’s cool to sit so close up.”
Julie: “It’s not over yet. It’s just intermission.”
Jason: “Oh (sheepishly). I forgot how exactly the play goes, but I thought that was a pretty dramatic finale. [Defying Gravity]”
2. Ben’s endless and extremely determined attempts to delay bedtime. That little boy is a crack up. Julie and I had a hard time holding in our laughter when he fell right off his chair one night at dinner. One minute we saw him at the table, and the next he had disappeared under the table, but not before flipping his plate of food off the table right after him.
3. While rushing to the Buffalo Airport from Niagara Falls, as we approached the airport Daniel kept telling us that he just saw our plane take off and that we needed to turn around because it was too late. I don’t know if he really wanted us to stay longer or if he just thought there was only one plane taking off from Buffalo that day. Either way, it didn’t help Julie's stress levels. I love Daniel’s cheerfulness.
4. At the church’s Hill Cumorah Visitor’s Center:
Sister missionary: “What’s your name?”
Daniel: “Daniel Xavier Carter.”
Sister missionary: “How old are you?”
Daniel: “Four and three quarters.”
Unfortunately, I think we were bad luck or something because three of the four nieces and nephews we stayed with had bouts of throwing up while we were with them. Some kind of short-lived bug jumped from Ben to Steve to Kirsten to me to Julie. In fact, I spent one whole morning sleeping on the plush air mattress in Steve and Kirsten’s apartment. Two days later, Julie was down for a whole day of sleeping. We are grateful none of us felt sick longer.
On this trip I’ve gone from learning what the song “Uptown Girl” is even talking about to learning that when Joseph Smith had the First Vision in the Sacred Grove, there probably were not any leaves on the trees yet (a little different from the movie portrayals huh?), from listening to little Ben insist on offering his several-minute long input to the Family Home Evening lesson to Bishop Carter teaching the fifth Sunday lesson to his little ward, from sleeping on an air mattress (and a nice one at that) in a studio apartment on Broadway, to sleeping in the loft of an old New England home on Main Street in Olean, NY. Now that’s what I call a vacation!
(If you want to see pictures, you can look at the slideshow at the bottom of the blog.)
We ate Brick Oven Pizza and played some Frisbee golf before coming home for Root Beer floats and a few games. We wish them luck in Texas!
