NYC Trip-Day 1 (Tuesday)

Tuesday morning Leila's Auntie Jen came over to begin Leila's-fabulous-adventure-of-being-showered-with-attention-by-a-ton-of-people-who-she-loves-and-who-love-her :) Was she sad to see us go? Um. . .no! In fact, she had looked forward to this day with anticipation! We had talked to her for a week about how mommy and daddy were going to New York. We then told her that she would be going to my cousin's house, be taken care of by her Aunt and eventually make her way to Grandma's house where she would stay the last couple of days. After telling her the agenda a few times, she had it down. The conversation went something like this:

"Leila! Where are Mommy and Daddy going?"

"Nort!" (New York)

"Good! And where is Leila going?"

"Teah's house! . . .friends!. . .toys!. . .Grandma's house!"

Then she would randomly tell me throughout the week:

"Mommy go Nort!" (with a very sure-of-herself tone and nod of the head)

"Yep! Mommy's going to New York"

"Daddy go Nort tooooo!?!?!"

"Yep! Daddy's going to New York too!"

"But we'll come back and give you lots of hugs and kisses!!!"

*Disinterested stare*

Here's a sample of what that might look like. . .as if she's saying "mmm hmmm. OK Mom. Does the fun end at that point?"

When we left her with Jen, they came out onto the balcony to wave goodbye. As has been a ritual lately, I yelled up to her "who loves Leila?" to which she confidently replied "Mommy!"

Good! I hope she doesn't forget it :)

We then embarked on our journey, first driving to Nana and Pa's house so that Pa could drive us to the airport and we could leave our car behind. It was nice to start off our trip with hugs from those two!

It was business as usual, flying from Salt Lake to Denver, but then there was a storm warning in Denver and all sorts of airplanes were advised to land at other airports until the storm subsided. This increased our layover by two hours :( But hey! Why complain! I got to spend it with my best friend!

Originally we were planning on arriving at the first apartment at around 11:30pm, but the extended layover pushed that to about 1:30am. We let our host know and he was super nice about it.

We took a taxi out to Chelsea and met Stark! He didn't seem put out at all by our being late. In fact, we were surprised to find out that we weren't even keeping him up! He stayed up and watched a movie and went out on the town at 2am with his friend. He said he does that most nights--stays up until about 4 or 5, then sleeps in until noon. Oh, the exciting night life of a New Yorker!

Left: Robby is standing underneath the loft.
Right: A warm welcome from Stark after a long trip!

Here is our lovely loft bed!

Us and Stark! After spoiling us like he did, the other hosts had big shoes to fill!

Stark was SUPER accommodating! He showed us our room-- with a loft bed, and showed us the little goodies he had gotten for us--little shampoo and conditioner, a chocolate bar, a fruit bowl, a bowl of chips, and a refrigerator full of yummy juices! Free food!? Sold! My mindset is that if you want an extra star when I rate you (whether it be a restaurant, hotel, whatever) you offer me free food! I was one happy  pregnant lady! 

Anyway, we went to bed happy with how our trip had started and excited for the adventure to begin. And we were so tired that if there was any big city noise going on outside, we were too comatose to hear it!