The Goodrich Family: May 2012

For Mothers Day weekend, which was also my birthday weekend, we went up to New York City. It was a quick 5 hour drive up there, about 30 hours of busy sight seeing and then what seemed like a much longer 5 hour drive home. Evelynn did pretty good the whole time considering she went 2 days with out a real nap and a rough night of sleep in between there. By the time we left Saturday night she was pretty grumpy. The poor girl couldn't get comfortable in her car seat the whole way home either. I felt so bad for her. It took us both about 3 days and a cold each to get over our busy weekend. We had such a good time though. We got to see the Empire State Building and then went to Time Square where there was a guy dressed up as Elmo and scared the crap out of Evie. She will still tell you that she saw a "scary Elmo". What a funny girl. The next day we went to the 9/11 Memorial and it was my favorite by far. We paid a little extra to take a tour given by a couple who lived there at the time. We had little head sets so we could hear them even when we were chasing Evelynn around which was super nice. Everything in the memorial has a meaning. There are 2 big water falls, each is an acre wide and they drop down twice till you can't see them anymore. The names of everyone lost is around the outside. The trees are all from special place around the country and there is one tree they call the "survivors" tree that stayed standing through both of the towers falling and all the fires there that lasted for 6 months. During a portion of the tour the couple told their story of that day. The man actually worked in the south tower on the floor where the plane hit. When the first plane hit the north tower no one working in the towers really understood what was going on he said. He just decided he was going to go down and check out what was going on and got out in time to survive. Everyone he was working with that day died. Their stories were so powerful and it was really an amazing experience to listen to the passion this couple had for the 9/11 memorial. They were asked why they volunteered to give tours on their time off and they answered because they care about what happened that day and about what the memorial represents. We were there for 2 hours and it seemed like 10 mins. If anyone ever gets the chance to go there, it's worth taking a tour for it! After that we went to the Statue of Liberty. We waiting in some long lines for this. After a while some guy came over and let us skip the rest of the lines because I'm pregnant. There's a good reason to sight see while huge and uncomfortable! I have always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty so it was really awesome to be able to go out there. Evelynn loved the boat ride out there too. Every day she tells me she went on a "water boat". After that we headed back to our hotel to get our car and started our long drive home. It was a really fun weekend and like I said, Evie and I paid for it for a couple days. But well worth it! Hope you enjoy the pictures! I know there are a ton!

In the picture above you can see the new World Trade Center that they are building and then off to the right is the Statue of Liberty. It's very small but it's there!

It was so windy up there!

Little Evie getting some what of a nap at the 9/11 Memorial.

The new World Trade Center. Now the tallest building in New York City

This is a fire station just outside the memorial. The wall was a gift from some bank to the lives lost by the New York City Fire Fighters that day. The families and friends of those who died were able to sign the wall behind this art work before it was attached to the wall.