Rochester Trip

Still catching up on the past month. This post will be about our trip to Rochester. My entire family had plans for a trip to Rochester in October for Lindsay Armbruster's wedding. We were planning to fly-in from Phoenix, but since we moved, we just drove up. This trip was just Madeline and I. George doesn't have very much vacation time yet in his new position so he had to stay back. Luke stayed with him so it was a girl's trip for Madeline and me! 

Hannah and my cousin, Sarah, are both getting married next summer. This was the last time that the whole family will be together before both of their weddings so my mom and my Aunt Lesley threw a shower for them out at the Moore's lake house. We were in Rochester from Friday until Tuesday. On Tuesday, my parents drove back down to PA with us and stayed with us until Saturday. On Saturday (10/15), my parents, the kids, and I flew to Arizona. I had a work trip out in Arizona October 18-20 so the kids came with me and we extended the trip on either end by a couple of days. I know, hard to keep up, right? 

Here are some pictures of the shower....

It isn't a Warren shower without punch with sherbet....

The beautiful brides to be...

 Paisley, Madeline, and Parker are in both weddings. Paisley and Parker stayed back in AZ with Terrisa's mom. Madeline was more than happy to be of assistance to Hannah and Sarah as they opened their gifts :) 

Gabe and Katie's newborn, Lilah, was at the shower. She's precious and so tiny! It's hard to believe that Luke was that small just 7-8 months ago. 

 My dad, Hannah, Madeline, and I went had a nice visit with my Uncle Bob. It is always nice to spend some time with him. This was also his first time meeting Madeline.

We hit upstate New York at the perfect time....apple season.....aka cider and apple cider donut season!  The donuts and cider are unreal. My mouth is watering just recalling how delicious they were. I brought back some cider and have half a gallon frozen in our fridge. I was going to save it for Christmas and use some for hot cider. We'll see if I can hold off until then. 

The cider is so fresh. Here they are making it...

The powdered donuts are my favorite, although I love them all. 

Ok, I need to stop looking at donuts and cider because now I want some SO bad. Haha. Let's move on to the wedding pictures, shall we?

Lindsay and Jeff's wedding was beautiful. The venue, decorations, and little details were gorgeous. I thought they did such a nice job with everything. 

I only got one picture from the actually wedding ceremony at John Knox church, but I thought it was pretty good one! 

I can't remember the name of the reception venue, but it was very, very nice. 

I loved the gold jars with fall flowers...

Apparently I can't escape donuts. Instead of a wedding cake, they had a donut and pie buffet....genius! 

The head table...

Some pictures of table 12! 

Jeremiah also could not make it so Hannah and I were each other's dates. Don't tell George, but she's a better dancer :) 

The handsome couple! 

Another fun evening at the lake...

Back to present day...George is out of town this weekend for his friend Nick's bachelor party in New Orleans. Nick and Shelby are getting married on January 15 back in Arizona, so we will be heading out there for the wedding. Since we will be going back to AZ in January for their wedding, we will not be going back to Arizona for Christmas. It'll be hard not to be home for Christmas, but at least we will see everyone in Colorado in early December. The timing of our January trip will also work out perfectly with the arrival of Brian and Terrisa's baby, due in early January :) I am going to go there a week before the wedding so that I can soak in as much time with my new nephew as possible! Terrisa is now about 31 weeks so he'll be here before we know it!! And if we wants to wait to come until January 7 (the day that I get there), that's fine with me. Haha. George flew out on Friday night and will be back by this evening. The kids and I have stayed busy, but we're ready to have daddy home! Yesterday, I took them to the Please Touch Museum (a children's museum in Philadelphia). My friend, Amanda, came with me and was such a help with the kids. It would have been a complete disaster without her help. Amanda and I worked together in Scottsdale during my first year at General Mills. A year and a half ago, she moved to Minneapolis and then right before we moved to Philadelphia, she happened to move to Philadelphia as well. We both work from our homes and don't really work together, but we both work for General Mills still and chat often. She lives right in the city so after the museum, we grabbed a later lunch and took it back to her apartment. Today, I tried to get us out the 9:45am service at church, but at about 9am, things started to unravel.  Madeline was giving me such a hard time about getting ready, it was time for Luke to eat, and then right after he ate, he fell asleep. Soooo, no church for us today. I put Luke down for a nap, got Madeline a snack, and got out my laptop to blog. Madeline has been playing so well for the past hour. She is so serious sometimes when she plays. Right now, she is telling her Disney princesses what to do....and she had to call one of their moms. I have to pretend that I'm not paying attention to what she is saying. She doesn't really like us to acknowledge her when she is pretend playing. Unless she is playing restaurant or birthday party. Then she serves us food, makes us eat, tells us to finish our vegetables before we eat our cupcakes, etc. I might attempt a trip to King of Prussia mall when Luke wakes up. We have the double stroller so that helps a ton. 

I'll post later this week with the details on our trip to Arizona. 

Live from New York

I have so much to blog about. We have been ON THE GO the last few weeks. This post will be about our trip to New York City and I'll do separate posts about our other trips. 

When we first found out that we were moving to Philadelphia, George entered his name into the Saturday Night Live lottery. On a previous trip to NYC, George and I did the SNL standby line, which was a super huge pain, and we didn't get in. The lottery is much easier, but the chances of being drawn are really slim. Well, George's name was drawn.....FOR THE SEASON PREMIERE!! :) Also, I should note that you do not have a say in the date that you are selected for. There are so many dates that wouldn't have worked for us because of other trips, but we happen to be completely free the weekend of the premiere. He was notified via email that he was selected about 2 weeks before the show. He was required to reply 3 days beforehand to secure our spot. We actually weren't planning to go because ya know, we have 2 kids and what would we do with them? I did some research and found a reputable babysitting agency called Pinch Sitter, George researched hotels and parking, and we decided to go! 

New York is only about two hours from us so we drove up first thing on Saturday morning. It was a super easy drive, exactly two hours from our place in PA to our hotel in Manhattan. The show didn't start until 11:30PM (we had to arrive at 10:15PM) so we had lots of time to explore after we checked-in. We stayed at the Kimpton in Chelsea (got a great last minute deal). Our room was so nice and even had a great view. I was pretty nervous about how things would go with the kids in NYC. George and I absolutely love NY (like we would move there in a heartbeat), but I wasn't so sure that we'd love it with the kids along. It was definitely a different trip with the kids, but had very compact "baby gear" so we were able to get around easily and had no where to be (until SNL at 10:15PM) so we could play it by ear. Luke was pretty oblivious to the whole thing and slept a lot in the Ergo. Madeline loved walking everywhere and enjoyed the couple of sites that we did see. We stumbled upon the kids area at the New York Public Library and spent an hour or so there. Then we walked to Grand Central Station and checked that out. We grabbed an early dinner and then took the scenic route back to our hotel. We relaxed in the hotel for a couple of hours and then took Madeline for ice cream. 

The babysitter arrived at our hotel at 8PM. I did a lot of research on Pinch Sitters and spoke to the owner, but we were both still pretty nervous about how it would go. However, once our sitter arrived, we felt so relieved. She was awesome right off the bat. Luke was asleep, but she immediately connected with Madeline and we left without any tears (yay!). We had a couple of hours to kill before we had to be at SNL. The ASU game was on and I found a bar right around the corner from our hotel that was playing it. It turned out to be an ASU bar and the NYC ASU alumni group was there watching the game. So, we hung out with the alumni group and watched the game until half time....it was so much fun! And I actually saw someone I know from my undergrad. 

When we got to Rockefeller Center, we sought out "Jen's line" per the instructions on the email. George gave his name and we were on the list (phew!). I'm going to be honest, I felt so VIP. Haha. They checked his ID, gave us our tickets, and sent us to a waiting room with the other audience members. We were told not to take any pictures. George took a picture of our tickets and I got so nervous....I was convinced that we were going to get kicked out. We didn't. Next, they brought us up to the studio. We had to take an elevator up several stories (I think we were on the 10th floor or so). We shuffled into the studio and they pointed us to our seats. The majority of the audience (with the exception of a small amount of VIP audience members who sit right on the floor) is raised up about 15 feet off of the stage level. We were in the front row of that section. When looking at the stage, we were to the right a bit. There is the main stage in the middle with the house band. Then there are a few other stages. We had very good visibility to all stages except the one on the far left, which ended up being the musical guest's stage (we could see the frontman, but not his band). 

Margot Robbie was the host and The Weekend was the musical guest. The premiere was the same week as the first Presidential debate so the highlight of the night was the debate skit. Alec Baldwin was Trump. He was HILARIOUS! The debate was my favorite skit and my second favorite was the sink hole skit (check it out on Youtube!). George was really excited that Larry David (creator of Seinfeld) was on the show. He was also very excited for the house band -- he is a big fan of jazz music. 

George is an SNL fan and has watched many episodes. I, on the other hand, had never seen an entire SNL episode prior to watching it live, so I had no idea what to expect. A lot of it was funny to me, but I also found some of it kind of stupid/weird. Maybe my sense of humor is not that sophisticated??? We both found the "behind the scenes" perspective fascinating. The pace at which the cast and crew move during the live show is insane. They were literally pulling Margot Robbie off of the stage as soon as it cut to commercial for her costume changes. It was clear that the crew had every detail thoroughly planned. The sets were so intricate. Many of the props/scenes were leaning against walls throughout the studio. The cast is full of comedians, but many of them had very serious game faces on before their skits....you could even see some of them sort of rehearsing their lines prior to going live. We have been to other shows (Live with Kelly and Price is Right) and those shows gave direction to the audience. SNL did not give much direction. The laughter and audience reaction is all very spontaneous and genuine. 

We were both so glad we went. It was a once in a lifetime thing and we had a blast. 

We rounded out our trip with donuts at Doughnut Plant in Chelsea and coffee at Stumptown on Sunday morning. We hit the road after lunch and got back in the early afternoon. I even had time to do my weekend grocery trip.

We will be back soon, New York! Here are some pictures from our trip... 

George connected a strap to our umbrella stroller so that he could sling it on his back when Madeline wanted to walk. 

 

Luke was in the Ergo the entire time. He loves being in it and it's simple for us. Win-Win!