Weekend play

We've had a couple of eventful weekends! Last weekend, we had plans to go camping with Patrick & Shaylee (James's brother and his wife). It turned out to be something of a catastrophe! First of all, we weren't able to get a campsite. There was a snafu with trying to reserve one, and by the time we all got off work, all the first-come-first-served sites were taken. So, we ended up camping in our backyard: "Camp Holley."

As we were getting set up, however, James and Patrick discovered that their tent (borrowed from Shaylee's parents) was broken. Guh. Fortunately I was able to zip over to my parents house and borrow one of their tents. Meanwhile, Shaylee was working on dinner, which unfortunately was taking forever--we discovered that the fuel on my campstove was running low, which was why things weren't cooking. However, it was getting pretty late by the time we got it all figured out--about the time that the boys finally finished putting up the tent, after a couple of tries. So, it was about 10pm by the time we ate!

Shaylee had made homemade fries to go with the burgers that James and I made. When she finished with the fries, we needed the campstove, but her pan of grease/oil was still hot. So she laid the pan down on the patio to cool while we continued making dinner, intending to dispose of the grease once it was cool. But after dinner, we went straight into our campfire--the one truly pleasant part of the evening. We roasted s'mores and Starbursts and watched birds (we think) flying back and forth in front of the stars.

James and I had already settled down in our tent when we heard Patrick and Shaylee rustling about for awhile--dealing with their belongings, I thought at the time. But the reality was a sad state indeed. It turns out that Shadow had consumed most of the pan of grease, and proceeded to vomit several times in the house, as well as in Patrick and Shaylee's tent. They hadn't noticed when they first went in and it got everywhere. It was awful, James and I were so embarrassed. After they got cleaned up, we got them settled in our guest bedroom for the night.

Needless to say, our "camping trip" did not turn out at all as planned. The next morning, we dropped the pretense of camping, and determined to just enjoy the rest of our time together. We had breakfast, played games, and hung out most of the afternoon, which was a much more pleasant experience than the evening's adventures!

Sunday evening, we had decided to make our first attempt at Chicken Bryan, our favorite dish from Carrabba's. We get the same thing every time we go. So we decided to try to make it ourselves! (And so maybe we can try other things when we go next time.) It turned into a very special evening for us. We got all dressed up. We ate from our wedding china and silver, with candlelight. And to our delight, our chicken bryan was delicious!

This past weekend started off with a trip to the Call's new house. A few days ago, I posted a plea on Facebook--James and I have wanted to go swimming all summer, but it just hasn't happened. We finally made some time, but lo and behold, it turns out that the pools have limited their hours because school's in session, and we wouldn't be able to go. Fortunately, we have awesome friends! The Calls were very kind and invited us to their house to swim. Their pool is warm enough that Joel got to give it a try! He was not a fan of the life jacket, as you can see, but once we took it off and just held him in the water, he enjoyed splashing for a few minutes.

After classes on Friday, we got to visit with our friends the Estradas. It's been AGES since we've all hung out, since before Joel was born, in fact. We had a blast playing games and whatnot. But one of the best parts of the evenings was watching our babies interact! Savannah is 2 1/2 months older than Joel (though he's bigger!) and just on the verge of crawling. They were so cute together!

Saturday was a day that James and I have been eagerly anticipating. We had tickets to the national tour of WICKED, playing up in Salt Lake. We were so excited to see it! Of course, there was some nervousness attached--we had a babysitter (non-family) for the first time. I was a little anxious about it, but everything turned out great. The show was amazing, and we came home to a happy baby.

It's just nice sometimes to have a great weekend. =) That's all!

NYC Trip!

This was our version of Spring Break, seeing as how BYU doesn't actually have a spring break. James finished Winter semester last week, and starts Spring semester tomorrow, so we took five days and went to Manhattan--one of my favoritest places EVER! =)

Our flight left around 6am on Thursday...which means we were up at 3 o'clock in the morning. Blech. But up we got, and everything went smoothly for our travels. [Funny story--since we're going on our honeymoon cruise in August and I didn't want to pay to get my name changed on my passport (which is just as expensive as getting a whole new passport) we left my driver's license in my maiden name, until after the cruise. So all my tickets and everything had me listed as Valerie Mechling, rather than Valerie Holley. So apparently I am James' mistress. At least when we're traveling.] We laid over in Denver, and arrived in NYC just after 2pm. What with baggage claim and a taxi ride from LaGuardia to Manhattan, it was after 3 by the time we got to our hotel: Dream New York.

We chillaxed at the hotel for a few hours before heading down to Times Square that evening. The weather was beautiful throughout our stay in NYC, and Thursday evening was no exception.

That night we spent on Broadway, where we saw The Phantom of the Opera. This is James' favorite show, thus we were both very excited!

Phantom was truly amazing. The orchestra, the singing, the staging, the effects, all of it was fantastic. Of course, I saw Phantom a few years ago when I went to NYC with my parents. But it was delightful to see it with James, who enjoyed it so thoroughly. It was great!

On Friday we went on a double-decker bus tour of lower Manhattan. It's about as touristy as you can get, and we ate it up.

We chose a hop-on-hop-off tour, so we could stop and see a few places we were most interested in, the first of which was the Empire State Building. We forked over the money to ascend 86 stories and revel in a 360-degree view of Manhattan. So worth it! Incredible.

After the Empire State Building, we rode the bus south through Manhattan, taking in SoHo, Greenwich Village, and other sights. We next got off at the World Trade Center, where we got passes to visit the 9/11 Memorial.

I described the feel of the 9/11 Memorial to Sam and Ashley as similar to war memorials I have visited. While there were still city sounds, and conversation at the memorial, the people there were mostly respectful and reflective.

James and I spent some time taking in the pools, in the footprints of the twin towers, and the Survivor Tree.

After the Memorial, we finished our bus tour, taking in the wealthy neighborhoods of the upper east side, Central Park, the shops of 5th Avenue, and more, before returning to our hotel.

We borrowed a little griddle from my mother to take with us, and did some shopping on Thursday at a local drugstore for groceries. Over the course of our vacation, we ate out a few times, but many of our meals we cooked in our hotel room. It saved us quite a bit of money! So after our bus tour, we made a little supper in our room while we prepared for our evening outing.

Friday night we visited the Manhattan LDS Temple for an endowment session. Of course, we stopped for a minute to take pictures. =)

The temple was beautiful, inside and out, and we really enjoyed the session. It was interesting, because of the eight or nine couples present, at least half of them seemed to know each other. Small world!

After the session, we stopped at a street cafe and enjoyed a banana split. Date night!

Saturday morning we dorked around for awhile. We ended up back on Times Square (tourist trap!), where we visited several stores, including M&M World, which is MASSIVE. It's three stories full of M&M merchandise: toys, clothes, accessories, housewares, games, and of course, M&Ms.

We then went to the matinee performance of Wicked. I was absurdly, ridiculously excited:

James didn't really know much about Wicked, sans a basic premise. Afterward, he told me it was sillier than he expected. =) Nonetheless, he enjoyed himself, though probably not as much as I did!

We had predetermined that while in NYC, we would go out to one nice dinner, and Saturday night was the night. We had a hard time deciding where to eat, which resulted in us wandering around for a long time looking for a likely place, before we ended up back at the hotel to look up a good place. We settled on a Japanese restaurant called Mr. Robota.

James had skirt steak, I had braised pork belly. Both were divine--but mine was the best, we concurred. A-may-zing. Truly delightful. And great ambiance, too. We left very happy.

Sunday we spent some time in Central Park, which was lovely. The weather was absolutely perfect, first of all, and there was also just this great feeling of R&R about the place. We paused for awhile under a tree, and ended up watching a community softball game, just for the heck of it.

After crossing Central Park, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of my top-favorite places that I visited with my parents. Before going in, we stopped and enjoyed frozen yogurt and fruit on the steps of the Met.

The Met reportedly has over 1 million pieces of art--which I believe. It's enormous. We were there for less than five hours, and we didn't even walk through the whole museum, let alone seeing half of what they have there.

James was kind enough to humor me while I spent a great deal of time in the 18th-19th century European paintings (Vincent Van Gogh? Yes, please.) We both enjoyed the Arms & Armor, as well as the wing dedicated to Musical Instruments from around the world. I could spend days in this museum, happily.

After the museum closed, we took a looooooooooong walk down Lexington Avenue, slowly working our way back to our hotel. We had some New York pizza that night, and then spent several hours watching the Food Network in our hotel, just for fun. =)

Then we were up early on Monday to travel home! We had a layover in Houston, then finally made it home--just in time to head to the Holley's to celebrate our brother Patrick's birthday. It was a busy day, but a good one.

All in all, a FABULOUS trip. I've officially decided that traveling with my dear James is the best. Like, THE. BEST. Holleys for the win. =)