River front views

We live really close to the Hudson River and they have a nice walk way that goes along the river. These are the cool views that we have of the Manhattan strip.




The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building




This is the new "One World Trade Center" also known as the freedom tower. When it is completed it will be the tallest building in America and the third tallest building in the world. It will have 105 floors and be 1,776 ft. tall. At night it is lit up with the colors red, white and blue.

The Manhattan Temple and Central Park

So we haven't had much luck with going to church while here in New Jersey because our ward has been cancelled due to the hurricane and clean up efforts going on. We have been here for over 4 weeks and have yet to meet our new ward. The whole stake is providing "helping hands" service to those areas which were hit hard by the hurricane, and since we don't know anyone and don't have a car it has been hard for us to know what to do. We decided after missing church for 3 weeks in a row we really needed to go somewhere so we decided to go to the ward that meets in the Manhattan Temple. We got there and found out that they were having a single adult regional area meeting...are you serious?! We decided to sit in on their sacrament meeting anyway and of coarse we were the only ones who had a kid. Haha it was pretty funny, at least Jaylee entertained the single adults that were around us. We are really hoping that we will be able to go to our ward soon!



The temple is right next to Central Park so we decided to head over there after sacrament meeting and walk around for a bit. It was pretty crazy to think that they had this patch of foresty area right in the middle of all these tall office buildings. It was really neat to walk around and see all the different things they had going on there, and it was also fun to watch all the different types of wackos too. I should have brought other shoes to wear while walking around though cuz my church shoes gave me blisters!

My own Playground

We have a cute little playground on the 12th floor of our apartment complex and Jaylee loves it because it is small enough that she can do everything all by her self. She climbs right up the stairs and goes down the slide with no help! It's nice because I can just sit and relax while I watch her play. It has these cute little windows that she loves to look out of and play peekaboo with me, it's really cute.

Elephants

Last week Jaylee and I walked Blake to the subway and I decided to explore the area down by the riverfront. We found this cute courtyard that had elephants with water squirting out of their trunks and around their feet. I was excited because it was a pretty warm afternoon and thought Jaylee would love running around getting wet. She was a little hesitant at first and didn't really want to touch the water until she saw this little boy running around getting soaked. She thought it was hilarious and joined right in!


"It's a little cold...not sure I want to get in"

"Still not quite sure..."

"Let's jump right in!"
She stood like this for at least 5 minutes haha

Crayon Corner

So our apartment complex has a great kids room that has toys, music, books, little table and chairs and a tv. Jaylee loves this room and gets excited when we get to go. The first time I went with her there were about 3 other kids and she loved watching them but didn't want them to come too close or to play with the toys she was playing with (we are still working on the sharing thing). The other times we have been it has just been us and she loves the fact that she can do whatever she wants.

September 11th

Yesterday was the ten year anniversary of September 11th and being here made it special. They had a big ceremony and opened up the memorial they built to honor the world trade centers. We didn't go to the ceremony because we knew it would be crowded and security was on high alert. But we were able to see these things being across the river


They had planes flying around with American flags all day.


Each year on the anniversary of September 11th they shine lights representing where the twin towers stood. It shone from dusk to dawn.

Braves game

So I am starting to think that Blake chose to go to NYU not only because it is the top ranked in the tax masters program, but also because there are things like the US open and the Braves game that he has always wanted to go to. So we fulfilled his dreams of going and went. The Braves were suppose to play the weekend we got here but due to the hurricane the games were cancelled and rescheduled for a double header. Wow two games for the price of one, who thought we would be that lucky;) We got there right in time to see his favorite player, Chipper Jones, hit a home run! It was awesome.

The US Open

So we knew that the US Open would be in New York when we moved here and we thought that it would be totally awesome if we went to it, so we did! We actually went to the Us Open park on Saturday to see if we could get lucky and buy some tickets from someone but they had signs that said no scalping tickets within 1500 ft. of the area and the seats at the box office were sold out. We did talk to someone who told us to call TicketsNow, so we did and found a pretty great deal on a couple of tickets for the night session on labor day. We were a little nervous cuz we knew we had to take Jaylee and it could get pretty late but we decided it was a once in a lifetime chance and we shouldn't pass it up.
The day session ended up going long so our session, which was suppose to start at 7, didn't start until 8:30. We got to see Wozniacki's (#1 women's player) match first and it ended up being 3 hours long so we didn't get to the men's match until 11:30. We were thinking there was no way that Jaylee would last but we decided to go as long as she was doing okay. She turned out to be a champ and actually loved being there! She loved to clap, cheer and dance with the crowd and loved watching/talking to the people around us. Everyone loved her!
Blake's dream came true and we were able to watch Roger Federer play. It was awesome! He crushed his opponent which was good because his match was only about an hour and a half long, but it was about 1:40am at this point and we still had to make it home. It ended up taking us two hours to get home because we had to wait for the trains which not running as much because it was so late/early AHHH! Oh well that's the price you pay when you do something crazy like that.

Hurricane...Herpes...Help!

Well we made the big move to NYC and already we have had quite the experience. Needless to say it has not been what we expected yet. As we were in the airport heading toward NYC we learned that hurricane Irene was expected to hit right where we were moving to. Fortunately we were able to move in our stuff before it hit ( thanks to Blake's dad who came to help!) and luckily we were in an area that didn't have power outages or flooding. So I thought well this was good cuz now the worst was over, and it could only get better from here on out, but I was wrong.
During all of this chaos, Jaylee wasn't feeling well and had on and off fever which we thought was due to the stress of flying, change, and teething. However, as her top gums started to swell up and a nasty sore appeared below her lip we found out that she has primary herpes. There is no special medication we can give her to get rid of it, so we just have to wait for it to heal itself and they say that it can last up to two weeks. She has started to eat a little bit more everyday so we are hoping she is getting better and will get rid of it soon. It has been so hard and sad watching her go through this and knowing there was little that we can do for her.
On the up side, we love our new place which is actually located in Jersey City, right across the Hudson river from Manhattan. We are in tall apartment towers and live on the 26th floor so we have a cool view of Manhattan and the river. It is brand new so we are the first people to live in our apartment. The apartment complex has nice amenities including a pool, gym, movie theater, playground (which is perfect size for Jaylee) and a cool kids room that has toys, music and a tv. We are really close to a mall, grocery store, and the subway which is nice considering we don't have a car here. It only takes Blake about 20 minutes to get to school which is way nice. We only have a one bedroom apartment but it is almost twice as big as any of the one bedroom apartments that we saw in New York. I will post pictures of our new place once we unpack everything and put it together.

1st Birthday!

So on May 6th we celebrated Jaylee's first birthday. I can't believe that my little girl is already one! Craziness, life goes by way too fast. She is now walking, talking, and getting into anything and everything.

Celebrating with Blake's Family


The Awesome Cupcakes that the girls made


Jaylee trying out the cupcakes




She loved her gifts!

Celebrating with Amy's Family

We decided to do a Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday




Oh what a cute little family ;)

As you can see she didn't like getting her hands dirty



She got a dog and a cell phone for her birthday, we are in trouble!