The Visa Trip

This past weekend the girls and I packed up and headed to NYC.  When I first heard I was going to have to take this trip I was less than excited.  I'd in fact been trying to find anyway possible to avoid it.  Flying in a plane with two little girls for 8 and a half hours sounded, well, pretty awful!  After being told several times that there was no other way I finally had Marc go ahead and book the tickets and the hotel through Davis Polk.  

Fortunately my mom and sister would do anything for these little girls, and decided to fly out and spend the weekend with us in the city.  It made the trip SO much better.  It turned something I was dreading into a fun mini vacation.  We were only there for 2 1/2 days but we had the best time, and I'm so happy they ended up coming.

The trip was a success we got our visas, and are now living in this country legally.  Hurray!  Hopefully this will be the last time I fly alone overseas with the girls again!

 We got in Thursday afternoon.  My mom was waiting for us at the airport.  She'd actually been waiting for us for 9 hours!  This was my fault completely.  I had originally thought the flights from Madrid left early in the morning here and arrived in NYC around 10 a.m.  So she booked the red eye from Salt Lake thinking she'd just wait for me for a couple hours.  In actuality the earliest flight leaving Madrid didn't get into JFK until 1:30 p.m.  It was too late to change it by the time we figured it out, so my trooper mom just found ways to kill time in the airport.

After we landed and met up with my mom we headed to the hotel to drop off our passports with a courier, who could take them to the Spanish Embassy for us.  After we dropped the passports we rushed up to Hailey and Avery's old doctor's office.  I had scheduled flu shots for them and really wanted to get them while we were there, because I haven't gotten a doctor here, and frankly I'm a little terrified to go into a doctor's office and have to try to communicate with them in my terrible broken Spanish!  Hailey was able to get her flu shot, but Avery had a fever of 101.4 so they wouldn't give it to her.  Still not sure what she had, but she had a fever for most of our trip.  So that was a bummer, we also had to wait at the doctor's office for about an hour, because they were squeezing us in.  Not the most fun way to spend your first few hours of vacation, but it had to happen.  After our doctors office ordeal we picked up some food and headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest!

 The next morning we started out the day with a trip to Alice's teacup.  We love that place, and the girls as always had so much fun with their fairy wings, pixie dust, and of course their teacups.

 

 After our breakfast we headed to FAO Swartz.  My mom told the girls she wanted them to pick out a toy for Christmas.  What did they pick??  Dolls of course.  Hailey had her own doll made.  She got to pick out the eye color hair color and style and skin color, and then they made it right there for her to see.  Super fun.  Avery got a baby doll and a food set.

We wouldn't let them see what my mom ended up buying.  We wanted it to kind of be a surprise.  Hailey had a fit and almost hyperventilated about not knowing if grandma actually got her the doll she'd made.  On our walk home, she said something like, "Grandma this is how it works, you see something, you want it, you ask for it, and then you get the thing you want and you get to see it!"  That made me a little worried we are raising spoiled children.  I tried to put that sass in check in a hurry.   Wow.

 After the toy store, despite it being pretty cold Avery wanted to go see the horses outside Central Park.  A couple of the carriage drivers let us feed them.  They kept trying to sell us.  Only 50 dollars per ride.  Finally a guy said "I'll take all four of you for forty."  We were suckers and ended up doing it.  It was actually really fun.  The girls were Thrilled, and the park was beautiful, so I guess it was worth it in the end.  There's nothing quite like New York in the Fall. 

Friday night Ash flew in.  We had some fun talking while the girls were asleep and then we headed to bed too.  Then Saturday morning we woke up and packed up all our things to check out of the hotel.  They stored our bags for us and then we headed to brunch right by our old apartment at a place called ABV.  After brunch we went to our old park and played and then went to the movie Free Birds together.  After the movie we went to the West Village to our favorite pizza place, Keste.  (If you can't tell Davis Polk was paying for all our food, so we were trying to enjoy ourselves!)

 After Keste we went to yet another park, and then headed back towards the hotel to pick up our suitcases.  We had a sad goodbye with Ash.  She was going to stay with some friends of hers in the city.  The girls, my mom and I all headed to the airport, and had another very sad goodbye with grandma.  Then we boarded the plane.  I was SO nervous for this flight.  It left JFK at 8:15 p.m and landed in Madrid at 9:30 a.m.  We ended up being incredibly lucky, and had an empty seat next to us in the middle row.  The girls were both able to sprawl out and were tired enough they fell asleep pretty quickly.  It ended up not being bad at all.

  The tired faces of our travelers as we landed.

We were all a little tired, but so happy we'd made it.  Marcus was waiting for us at the airport, and we were all SO happy to see him.  We took a cab home and Hailey and Avery got ready and went to church with Marc (Hailey had a part in the primary program, and really wanted to do it) while I stayed home and slept.  Thanks Mom and Ash for making this trip fun!  We love you!