Trip to New York City (Day 1&2)

Oh boy! We love New York City. The Laydens are one of our favorite families ever, and they are so generous to host our trips there in 2009 and 2012. So this time, we invaded just in time for Thanksgiving.
The forecast was for a huge storm and cold cold cold, so we packed every warm thing we own and I made holiday scarves for the kids.

 Grandma Rainey came over at the crack of dawn to give us a ride to the airport.

Isaac and Jovie did a lot of exclaiming when we were landing: "Oh no! We're going to land in the middle of that building." "Oh yay! We made it!"

We took the AirTrain to Jamaica Queens and Mitch and Ron (a friend from SLC who traveled with Mitch) picked us up. It was really chilly and the warnings for flooding were dire.

We walked with all the girls and Mitch and Ron to Buon Gusto for delicious Italian food.

The Layden's home is also the studio for Mutmeg NYC, so Hannah was busy painting dogs, Sarah was packing up paintings, Mary was encouraging and Emma was marketing. Ron was building some organizers and Marsha was ordering supplies. Isaac and Mitch helped with tape management, and Jovie was decorated with some packing supplies and lots of lip gloss.

The kids referred to Hannah as "artist" and "painter" the whole trip and they knocked over one painting that wasn't dry and sorely affected Hannah's productivity. The Laydens are all named after biblical characters, they had the patience of Job, and they behaved like saints.

Ikey was one of the first ones up in the morning, and Hannah set him up on the comfy couch with a Christmas movie and a smoothie. This is his version of heaven. It was hard to get the kids to leave the house because it was so cozy and the girls are interesting and attentive. We coaxed them into bundling up to walk to Central Park and we found the playgrounds deserted and wet. No matter to us, though.

We went to the Ralph Lauren mansion on 5th Avenue and checked out the curving marble staircases and the very fancy dresses and furs. Jovie was the most colorful thing in the place.

 

We walked to McKeown's for some pub food where we met up with Tim Struby for an interesting discussion and big dishes of chicken pot pie. Sarah braided Jovie's hair and Mitch invented an eating game where Isaac got points for getting vegetables (It worked! Make the rules up as you go.)