my beautiful life, by erin larsen: New York! New York!

I just got back from the most insanely crazy, fun, eventful girls trip (+ dad) of my life. I have SO many pictures to share and fun stories to go with them. Krista turned the big 30 on Saturday and I am beginning to think 30 is going to be a great year for her, considering how her 30th year started! We had a blast! It was my whole family plus two of our closest family friends. I sort of felt like a kid again because we all left behind our husbands and kids and were just the four girls and our parents again. It was a trip I will always cherish.

Here we are after arriving to Newark, NJ ready to board the train to New York City.

We stayed at The Marriott in Times Square on the 40th floor overlooking the Hudson River. It did not disappoint. We stayed up until 3am almost every night and woke up at 8 (that would be 6 Arizona time) every morning. It really is the city that never sleeps! I'm paying for it today. I feel like a zombie I'm so tired-- but it was well worth it!

I don't remember the last time I laughed so much. Ashley is one of my best friends that I have known since Kindergarten. She has the funniest sense of humor and killer dance moves (especially at dance parties to the Newsies soundtrack in our room at 2am!)

Miranda (on the bottom right) is such a down-to-earth, fun, intellectual, spiritual, amazing person. She lives in D.C. and joined us for the weekend for Krista's birthday bash. The bottom three are all best friends and world travelers together and (drum roll please...)-- they are all single! Hint hint any of you fella's out there!! They are all great catches!

Sisters!

We ate at a place called Juniors the first night we arrived. We were probably the loudest group in the restaurant because he was making us laugh the entire time! Best. Waiter. Ever! He gave Krista a kiss on the cheek too when we asked him to give her a kiss for her birthday! We all agreed that Brandon will go down as the coolest waiter ever.

The picture above is hands down my favorite picture of our entire trip!! She was kind of embarrassed, can you tell?
Tara is having a baby at the end of September and she was a champ on this trip! She had swollen ankles and feet the entire time but she was determined to do everything we did! She is one tough cookie!

I went on a trip almost a decade ago with my dad and don't have any pictures of it because his camera settings were all messed up. So I made up for it this weekend!

Riding the subway is an experience in itself! The people watching is very entertaining to say the least.

Oh this is just me riding on the Subway! "Strike a pose!" is what I was told to do.

My dad was a great sport on our "girls trip" and went along with anything we wanted to do. He walked all over town while we shopped till we dropped. One night on our way to Serendipity, Ashley showed us one of the shirts she bought that day and how soft it was. My dad chimed in in the front seat of the cab and said "Oh, its rayon and polyester that makes it so soft!" We all looked at each other in complete amazement because we couldn't believe our ears that he was now talking about fabrics and clothing! He thought we were talking about the Newsies t-shirts that we all bought after the play because he had read the fabric information on the tag before he bought it. It was awesome! Funny dad!

He also ate the flowers out of the centerpiece at Da Nico in Little Italy! Never a dull moment with that man. We sure love him!!

One of the neatest things we did was visiting the World Trade Center Memorial.

The memorial was incredible. They are re-building the world trade centers even bigger than they were before and will be the tallest building in the nation. They did not build them on the foundations of the previous towers out of respect. They made a memorial where the precious towers stood and put huge pools on the foundations and engraved all of the victims names around the pools.

In the picture below, we were standing by the "survivor tree." It was the only tree that survived the terrorist attack. It stood only 8 feet tall and was badly burnt with only one branch left on it. They removed it and took it to a nursery in the Bronx and then replanted it. In 2010, there was a storm that uprooted it. They removed it yet again, nursed it back to health and then replanted it and the tree bounced back immediately. It now stands 30 feet tall and a reminder to all of the New Yorkers and Americans who persevered after the attacks.

On Friday night, we went and saw the Tony award winning musical, Once. The music was really good! It was a little hard for me (and everyone really) to understand the dialogue because it was in Irish and Czechoslovakian accents. And I didn't really like how it ended. But the music was awesome! I'm glad I saw it but I probably wouldn't see it again.

Krista got an up-close picture with Steve Kazee (the main character in the play.) He won a Tony award for best actor in a musical. We all agreed that he was a total babe!