Happy Birthday Ian and Trip to New York City!!

Zac travels with his work... a lot.  Already this year he has been to Tokyo, Dubai, the Phillipines, and Canada and those are just the international trips.  Every year Zac's work sends employees all over the world to attend conferences in the industry.  Usually, the conferences are in some of the biggest cities in the United States and all over the world.  As much as I would love to go with Zac to every conference, $$, time, and the logistics of leaving kids behind, plus the fact that I am just not always invited makes it hard for me to travel with him.  But it seems like at least once a year the stars align and I get to go on a trip with my sweetheart.  Recently, Zac and I decided that our big kids are getting old enough and his credit card airline miles are accruing enough that we can start taking a kid with us every now and then.  And since this trip landed over Ian's birthday, we decided that he was the natural candidate for our big trip to NYC!!

Ian's first ever plane ride!  He did great and didn't even pass out like his sister.

Ian and I did a lot of research about what sights we should see and do while in NYC.  We stayed right across the street from Madison Square Garden, so touring the facility where the Knicks play was a must on our to do list.  On this particular day, they were setting up for a Pink concert and the whole time we were their the Garden was lit up with pink lights.

I am sad because I had pictures of Ian in the New York Knicks and the Rangers locker rooms and some other pictures of the facility, but I had a new camera and my SD card was corrupt, so I lost a lot of pictures.  The only pictures that survived were the ones I texted or that Zac took.

Ian and I decided to buy a NYC sight seeing 2 Day pass which paid for admission into almost everything you can see and do in New York and we tried to do it all while Zac was in conferences.

We went to Madame Tussaud s and met Taylor Swift:

Jimmy Fallon

The Queen of England

Bruce Willis

The hulk, Johnny Depp, and Einstein

We stopped into F.A.O Schwartz, which is the enormous toy store that you see in movies about New York (I believe they have Buddy the Elf working there in the movie Elf).  And in the movie Big, Tom Hanks plays the giant piano in there.

We bought some Butterbeer from the toy store to try and it was really good. 

We went to the top of every big building we had admittance to.  I was surprised to find out that you have to pay money to go up to the observation decks of all of these tall landmarks like the Empire State building and Rockefeller Center.  In fact to go to the top of the Empire State building will cost you $40 a person to just ride the elevator and look out of the observation deck.  You have to pack a lot of $$ to see the sights of New York.

While we were there graduations were going on all over the city.  It would be fun to graduate in the New York area because they get to have their graduations in fun places such as Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, etc.  Graduates ran rampant through the town while we were there... so fun.  We saw this graduation taking place on top of a roof from our vantage on the Empire State building:

While there, we also scheduled a trip to the Manhattan New York temple to do baptisms for the dead.  Which felt so refreshing to go into that sacred and pure building after walking around the scuzzy streets of New York and riding the subway all week.

Before we left, we decided to find some names from our family tree to take to the temple to do their baptism work.  I didn't have time to research very in depth and I didn't have any baptisms to do, so I tried a feature the the LDS Church's family search app that searched my family tree for me and came up with a few names that I could take to the temple.  I printed off the names without really looking at them and then didn't pull them out until we went to the temple.  When it came time for me to do the baptism ordinance for these names, Zac performed the first baptism, but completely messed up the last name for the ancestor I was standing in proxy, coming out of the water we made eye contact and he said, "I messed that up didn't I?"  I agreed and we asked the temple workers if we should re-perform the ordinance?  They said it was really our call, that it would probably be okay, but if Zac felt like it needed to be re-done he could do it.  He decided to try it again.  This time as he went to say the name he could not get the words out.  He sat silent for minutes and then started to sob.  The words would not come out.  Finally, the words came and he was able to perform the baptism correctly.  The rest of the names went smoothly.  Next, it was time to perform the confirmation work for the same batch of names we just did baptisms for, when Zac reached that same particular name the same scene was repeated, words would not come and the tears flowed.  After all of the work was performed, the temple workers asked Ian if he would like to record the work in the computer.  As he sat down at the computer, our new ancestor friend's card leaped out of his hand vying to be first in line to be recorded.  It was an overwhelming experience.

When we got home, and began to unpack our things, Zac came across our stack of cards from the temple ordinances we had performed.  He pulled them out and began to really examine them for the first time and when he looked at our friend Bertha's card, he was stunned to realize that of all of the places in the world she could have been from... she was born, raised, and married in Manhattan, New York, where she also raised her family.  I felt compelled to see what I could find out about this person, finding census records about her and learning that her husband was also in the construction industry, just like my husband.  What are the odds that of the thousands of ancestors on my family tree, that Family Search would give me THAT name, not knowing that we would be taking it to New York where this sweet spirit spent her mortal life.  It is no coincidence, it was a sacred and special experience.

Ian and I also made a quick venture through the MET.  We could have spent an entire week examining the contents of that museum, it was incredible.  But by this point, Ian was tired of walking... we had walked 30 miles over the span of 3 days and he was losing patience for museums.  So we kind of ran through the museum trying to stop at only the very coolest exhibits.

Again, I lost most of my pictures, but we did love the Hall of Armor, all of the weapons, mummies, Greek pottery, statues, and so so much more.

Ian's absolute favorite activity of the whole trip was renting bikes and riding them through Central Park.

He kicked my butt zooming ahead of me and I was behind him the whole time scared to death that I was going to lose my son in New York City.  It was so refreshing to wind our way through the park after days of nothing but city streets and sky scrapers.  Central Park is beautiful and now gives us a connection every time we see it come up in movies.

We also had to stop in Macy's which was just down from our hotel.  Macy's had 8 levels of shopping space.  It was huge!  It was fun to see the iconic Christmas Village where Santa comes at the start of the season and where the Macy's Day Parade starts.  The actual piano from the movie Big lives in Macy's and Ian and I got to play chopsticks on it, just like Tom Hanks... my feet touched where his touched.

We also took a trip on the subway up to where the Twin Towers once stood and now resides a monument to 9/11.  It was jaw dropping to see the gaping footprints where these buildings once stood.  It is hard to describe the beauty and the feeling that resides there without seeing it for yourself.

Every day the monument guides place a yellow rose for those who perished in 9/11 on their monument spot when they have their birthday.  These individuals are still loved and remembered.

This is the first day that we rode the subway.  The subway station near the 9/11 monument is called the Concourse and it is beautiful.  It blew my mind to think that there were cities underneath the cities.  Each subway stop is a shopping center and almost a whole little town underneath the ground.

Zac had always wanted to see the Wallstreet bull and had to rub it for financial prosperity.  Apparently, this is a huge tradition because there were hoards of people trying to rub that thing.

Wall Street- The Stock Exchange

This is us boarding a boat to go to Ellis Island to visit the Statue of Liberty

Seeing her come into view was surreal!

Ian learned from school that you have to book tickets almost a year in advance to go all the way to the crown, we didn't get to do that, but it tipped me off that I needed to book our tickets and we at least got to go up into the pedestal.  This was the view from the top of the pedestal going up into the crown.

On our last day in New York, it was rainy.  The whole week had been beautiful weather, but that rain made a pretty picture of the hoards of people walking around with their umbrellas.

I was a little sad that I couldn't talk the boys into taking the time or $$ to see a Broadway play or musical.  It was hard to see Pink right across the street and not go in and take part in that concert.  But otherwise, we saw and did most of the iconic New York things, even eating hot dogs from the food carts!  I was surprised at how many people there are.  There is just such a constant crush of people that you can't even look at your phone or you will be knocked down or pushed aside.  It shouldn't have surprised me, but maybe it was just a little culture shock, but I was surprised how dirty it felt.  The graffiti, the garbage, and the stink.  There was constantly bags of garbage left out everywhere for the garbage collectors and it just stunk.  Also, it was so noisy!!  Taxis are honking 24 hours a day, it would be near impossible to drive around the city with all of the traffic and every 10 minutes an ambulance, fire truck, or police car screams down the road sirens blaring.  It made it hard to sleep, even with a fan on in our hotel room.  But as everywhere that I go I am always delighted that people are mostly friendly and love to talk if you just take the time to make eye contact and say hello.  By the end of the trip Ian was missing home and wanting to go back to good old Idaho.  But I think that he had the most memorable 12th birthday a kid could have.  

I feel bad that I also lost my pics of Ian with his birthday pie and opening presents from his siblings.  Most of his actual birthday was spent sitting on a plane for 7 hours being re-directed into Canada because of storm conditions.  It was hot and long and then we had another 3-hour drive home, but he was happy to be home and thrilled with his memories and his souvenirs.

10 Things we love about Ian:

1.  He is incredibly confident.  He firmly believes that he can do anything and if he doesn't know how do do something, he KNOWS he can figure it out.  Zac likes to test his confidence sometimes and will ask things like, "Ian if I sat you down in a helicopter, do you think you could fly it?"  Ian always replies with a confident, "Yes, I bet I could figure that out!"

2.  He is impulsive.  Because he is super confident he often dives into projects that are over his head and that he doesn't ask permission to do and sometimes it lands him into trouble... like when he decided to spray paint a bookshelf in his room recently and ended up spray painting the walls and carpet as well.

3. He is cheerful.  No matter what is going on in this kids life he is always cheerful.  Whenever I pick him up from anything and I ask him how it went, he always responds, "It was great!!"  And then tells me all of the highlights, never focusing on anything negative.

4.  He loves to play sports and just got done with a long season of Spring basketball and is preparing for football.  He gets in there and does his best and loves it all.

5. He got the priesthood this year!  With changes that took place in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was able to get the priesthood at the beginning of the year and has been helping to pass the sacrament and enthusiastically gathers fast offerings every month.  He never shirks in his duties and always has a smile on his face while he is serving.  Because he is now 12 he also got to go with our ward to Scout Camp this year and he loves it!

6. He is beginning Junior High this year.  He is so excited to finally choose some electives and try out for team sports.  He still loves to read books and flies through them, reading for hours at night when he is supposed to be sleeping.  He does awesome in school and pulled straight A's this year!

7. He loves to build and create.  He has his dad's genetics and loves to find scrap pieces of wood and comes up with fun projects to build.  He decided that they needed a basketball hoop in the swimming pool this year and so he ran out to the garage and built one and then spent days improving it.  He also loves to build with Legos and Lincoln Logs.  The boy loves a project.

8.  He loves to help others.  He listens and finds ways to solve problems for his siblings, his parents, grandparents, and friends.  I often find him helping others hang pictures, looking for lost items, or at the side of his dad helping to fix and improve the house.

9. Because he is always building, fixing, and helping, he often leaves a trail of mess from one end of the house to the other.  We have started calling him Hurricane Ian because you can often see his path of destruction. 

10. The boy loves to be outdoors.  He is always happiest doing outside and project chores rather than stuck inside doing dishes or cleaning bathrooms. He started his first job this year helping to move pipe for a local farmer neighbor and he works hard and does a great job.  He loves to camp, ride bikes and four-wheelers, and fish. He loves to be at the cabin.

We love you Ian Robert and are so happy that you are in our family!  Happy Birthday!