Im leaving on a jet plane...

I'm off to see the fam in Seattle for a few days, AND soak up the sun on vaca in HAWAII for 11 days. Life's rough I know. Dustin gets to stay here in NYC and work like a dog. Sad. Aloha for now...

If you need me I'll be here (see picture above)

MOMA

We decided to broaden our horizons and made our way over to the Modern Museum of Art and were pleasantly surprised with all the wonderful paintings and sculptures the museum has to offer. After many humanities and art classes in college, it was really cool to see a lot of the paintings that I had studied in real life. There was a special exhibit of all of Salvador Dali's paintings. He's the one who painted the Persistence of Memory and is know for his 'out there' concepts. That guy must have been messed up in the head because his paintings are so random. I could never image coming up with any of the things he did. It was pretty interesting. Here are some of my favorites from the day...

Jackson Pollock's famous paint splatter art

Van Gogh Picaso This Monet painting was beautiful and extremely large. It spanned the entire length of the room. I couldn't even fit the the whole thing in the picture.

Govenors Island

We took a trip this weekend down to Governor's Island which used to be a military base and is now used for public enjoyment. It's about a 5 minute ferry ride from the southern tip of Manhattan and is a beautiful place for picnics and bike riding. You also get great views of the water and the New York City skyline. It was really quiet and peaceful with lots of trees and grass. We enjoyed the island even though we were only there for a short while before it started raining on us.

O Say can you See...

I love holidays because it means no work and all play. Dustin had a four day weekend and I had a three day weekend. We definitely took advantage of our time off to do some more sightseeing and going to new places. To start off our eventful weekend we went on a night ride on the Staten Island Ferry. The city lights were beautiful and so was the Statue of Liberty all lit up. We were lucky because as soon as we boarded, a fireworks show went off behind the Statue of Liberty. So we had a great view of the statue and the fireworks going off in the background. It was awesome.

For the fourth we decided to brave the humidity and crowds and headed down to Coney Island for the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest. Yep, that's right. Boy was it quite the event with over 35,000 people attending. Before the contest we walked around the boardwalk and beach, ate funnel cake and the famous Nathan's hot dog (sponsor and hot dog of choice to the contestants). I'm glad we decided to eat our hot dogs before the contest because after seeing these people shove water soaked hot dog after water soaked hot dog in their mouth, we didn't have the biggest appetites afterwards. Anyways, the contest itself was pretty amusing. We ended up getting pretty close to the action. Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi were neck and neck the whole time and ended up tying at 59 hot dogs each at the end of 10 minutes. They went to sudden death where Chestnut ended up coming off conqueror. It was entertaining and disgusting and quite the unique experience. PS- My parents watched the contest on ESPN and caught a glimpse of Dustin and I in the background. Our fifteen minutes of fame.

To end the day we walked to the Fireworks show over the East River. They were great and the best fireworks we've ever seen. Hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you...

Hope you had a great day dad,

You sure deserve it!

Thanks Steph, I plagiarized and stole this picture from you blog. Love it.

The one Broadway show I've wanted to see while we are here in New York is Wicked. And because it is the show to see around here tickets are pretty hard to come by and very pricey. Some friends of ours told us to go the the Wicked ticket office to see if any partial view tickets were left. These are the seats way on the side where you don't get the best view but they are pretty cheap because of that. So we went to the box office to see if we could get any of these tickets. Unfortunately the guy told us that all seats, good and bad, are completely sold out for the rest of summer. I was crushed! I wanted to see the show so bad. Then the guy proceeded to tell us that he had 2 tickets on the 8th row that opened up for the show that night and is selling them for less than half the original price. It took us about point 5 seconds to say yes to that offer! We snatched those babies up so fast and had eighth row tickets in our hands for that very night that were worth over three hundred dollars a piece. I was one happy camper. I am so glad we got those tickets because the show was absolutely amazing. I have the Wicked CD so it was fun to see all the song that I knew actually acted out on stage. And Dustin who is the most non-musical lovin' type of guy loved it, and really appreciated the talent in this show. So if I don't do anything exciting here the rest of the summer, I will still be go home satisfied after seeing Wicked. It was awesome.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my wonderful mother's birthday!

She is the best mom and I love her and appreciate her so much.

Hope you have a wonderful day mom!