New York Trip Day 3

I haven't had a lot of time to finish the blog about our trip but here is day 3.
We had tried to get to the statue of liberty on day 2 and the line was insanely long. So we purchased flex tickets and decided to try the next day. So we left our Hotel room by 8:30 and were in line for the ferry by 9:00 the first ferry leaves at 9:30. They also have 2 lines one for reserved times and one for flex times. The reserve line everyone gets on and then they take the flex ticket holders that will fit on the boats. We got on a Ferry at 10:45. As we waited in line there were entertainers who would just walk up to the line of people and start playing their instrument and singing. I think they make pretty good money. They were funny and good at what they did. So we went to Liberty Park and ate lunch and walked around the Statue of Liberty. Then we got back on the Ferry and headed to Ellis Island. The building at Ellis Isl and is pretty. The museum is actually depressing. Stories of oppression and imprisonment while they waited to see if they would be let into our country. But so many were coming at the same time what else could be done.

After we got back to the Manhattan Island it was after 3. We were tired and legs and feet were tired. We had been walking or standing in lines most of the day. We still hadn't been to “Top of the Rock” which was on our list so we decided we would go do that before it got dark. “Top of the Rock” is a view from a tall building. We had decided before our trip to do that instead of Empire State Building because the line was better at “Top of the Rock”. The line wasn't bad at all we waited maybe ten minutes but loved the view of the city and especially of Central Park. It also had three levels that everyone could go to. So we went and checked out the view of Manhattan from all three levels. It was beautiful. That was all we did on day 3.

New York Trip day 2

We had tickets for 9/11 memorial this day and since that was way downtown Manhattan and we were mid Manhattan, we wanted to see if we could get everything in downtown Manhattan done. That would be Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street, 9/11 Memorial, and Statue of liberty. (The ferry leaves from a park down at the very south end of Manhattan).

We ended up waking up a little late this day. We did fly all night long 2 nights before. So we figured out which subway to take to get down to the 9/11 memorial the fastest. Our tickets were for 11 we left our hotel room around 10:30. We hopped on the train we wanted, but we couldn't hear the announcement of the train stops very well so we had found a map in the subway station waiting for the train. We know we need 4 stops we can't remember if it's 5. We get off after 4 stops. As soon as we leave the train there is a bad smell. We start walking up the stairs to street level and it is way worse. This little girl in front of us starts to complain how stinky it is. We get out on the sidewalk and it is disgusting. I almost lost the contents of my stomach. I pulled Jon across the street so I wouldn't throw up. We realized there is a fish market around the corner from the subway exit. We also realized we were in China town and it was a little scarier than where we had been so far. Graffiti was even on cars in this area.


We knew we got off at the wrong stop. So we walked to another subway tunnel and hopped back on the train. We didn't get to the 9/11 memorial until 11:30 then we realized we had to go find a kiosk and pick up our real tickets. We couldn't find the kiosk and then it was noon. We decided we weren't going to make it to the 9/11 memorial so we headed to the Statue of Liberty ferry. The line was so long we were not going to make it on in time to see both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. So the day was turning out to be very depressing. The only thing we had seen so far was Occuppy Wall Street. I was really sad, I couldn't believe we had gone all the way to New York and were going to miss seeing the 9/11 Memorial. To see the 9/11 memorial you had to have advanced tickets. I got ours online and I didn't know if there was another place to get them. So we decided to head back that way and see if we could still make it to that. We found a museum that costed $15 dollars and you could get the tickets to the FREE 9/11 memorial. I didn't want to pay for the museum when we had free tickets before but this seemed like our only chance.

This museum was created by some family members of the victims of 9/11 and it was amazing. I didn't take any pictures I was too busy reading quotes from victims, family members, and survivors. They had radio transmissions from the firefighters. They had 2 walls covered in pictures of victims. I cried the whole way through this museum. It was awesome. Then we went over to the pools which around the outside of these gigantic pools were the names of the people in the airplanes, the towers, the pentagon, and the firefighters. It was sooo cool. I was so glad we were able to make it there.


Then we went and found the Wall Street Bull and the New York Stock exchange. We walked so much that day. My feet hurt so bad. We walked all over downtown Manhattan. After these last things we got back on the subway and headed back uptown to dinner at the Seinfeld restaurant. On our way there the train was stopping off at grand central station. We decided to get off and see Grand central station. I wanted to find the whispering gallery. We had to pay for an audio tour to find the whispering gallery. It really worked I could hear Jon from 40 feet away or there abouts. Then we got back on the train and headed to Tom's Restaurant, aka Seinfeld diner. We got on the downtown train and headed in the wrong direction. We did get better at using the subway. We did figure out we went the wrong direction and got on an uptown train. The inside of the diner didn't look anything like the set they used but the outside you'll recognize if you were a Seinfeld fan. The food was terrible. But we had to go try it. Then we went and walked Broadway and saw times square which was way neat when there weren't underwear adds playing on the huge TV screens. I was glad we saw it at night. It was really awesome.

What started out depressing ended up to be a busy, fun, wonderful day.

Anniversary celebration New york Trip

So Our 15th anniversary is coming up in a few weeks so Jon and I planned on doing a big trip to celebrate. These days making it 15 years seems like a big accomplishment and we wanted to do something big for it like a second honeymoon so we started to make plans to take a trip together to New York City. The kid's fall break was in October and that would give us a long weekend so we decided to do it then even though it was a month before our anniversary. So we went from Oct. 19th through Oct. 24th. the 20th through the 23rd were spent in New York City the other 2 days were spent traveling. Now about our trip....

First of all I would like to mention and thank those who made this trip possible. Thank you to Grandparents Glenis and Craig Gardiner, Linda and Ralph Rawlinson, and aunts Traci McDonald and ShaeLyn Loperena who were all willing to watch our 5 children for 5 days or help for a few days so we could go on this trip. Thank you Thank you to Glenis and Craig Gardiner who in the end had the girls and Benjamin for the whole 5 days and took such good care of them. We are sooo grateful to them for that.
Now the other honorable mention is Citi Credit card. We started putting all our food and gas and clothes on credit cards and just paying it off at the end of the month so our bank account wouldn't really be used except for bills, this was because new fees our credit union wanted to charge us. Then we heard of Citi credit cards doing a promo, that if you spend $1,500.00 in 6 months you earn 75,000 miles. Well we decided if we paid our bills on this as well as the other spending we could do this and not carry a balance and get the miles. We got 2 cards and were able to earn the miles. So we booked our flights for most of our miles 50,000 each. Our plane tickets costed us $10 each for taxes or something. Then we looked into hotels for the rest of our miles but in New York for 3 days, we would have used all our miles and still paid for most of the hotel ourselves because hotel rewards aren't as good as airline rewards. So we decided to keep our miles and pay for our Hotel ourselves. But then we realized we were going to need to spend a night in Las Vegas because our flight arrived from New York at midnight Las Vegas time which if we drove to St. George where we were leaving the children we wouldn't get there until 3:00 am. So we decided to stay the last night in Las Vegas and used our miles for that hotel. There will be pictures as I go through our trip day by day and then this next statement will seem more incredible. So we paid only $20 for our night in Vegas. Wait for pictures. You won't believe it. Thank you for our friend Ryan who let us know of the credit card deal.

Day 1.
We left provo at around 4:30 to drive the children and all their stuff to grandparents in Hurricane. We got the kids ready for bed and had one last family prayer together kissed them all lots and said goodbye then at 10:00 pm we headed for Las Vegas and the airport. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 12:50 am Las Vegas time. We made it to our gate in plenty of time then found out our flight was delayed because of rain in Chicago which is where the plane was coming from and that was our connecting flight to New York as well. So we would most likely miss our connecting flight but because we used our miles to buy our plalne tickets we were priority access status and they booked us automatically on a later flight. So we made our flight and our new connecting flight in Chicago and made it to New York City by 11:00 am Thursday Morning. Now we planned it this way because then we would have most of the day Thursday, all of Friday and Saturday, and most of the day Sunday to see everything we wanted to see. Had we flown during the day we would have lost the whole day. So we decided to fly at night and try and sleep on the plane. Now a little about the plane trip. This was my very first time flying. I thought I might be nervous but I wasn't at all. Probably because I had my best friend by my side. It seemed to take forever to load the passengers on and their carryon bags but finally it was time for take off. It was awesome I loved take off. I loved flying it was soooo much fun. I was in the middle seat but could see out the windows just fine. Landing was a different story. We get to Chicago and it's sprinkling maybe raining. I don't know if that made a difference but it seemed like the piolet had to make a lot of adjustments for landing. We seemed to keep leaning one way or the other and landing seemed to me, a novice, really rocky. Jon even said it's usually smoother than that. We got off the plane once they were able to line it up with the tunnel for some reason they were having problems with that. We got off the plane and were already booked on a new flight for 7:55am This flight I had a window seat and once we got close to New York and I was awake I saw out my window that we were flying above beautiful white fluffy clouds that would have a hole every so often where you could see the land below. It was beautiful. As I said we arrived in New York at 11:00 am another scary bumpy landing. I did not like landing. Well our luggage made our oringinal connecting flight so when we realized it wasn't on the luggage belt we headed for the baggage claim area to report it lost. Luckily it was there waiting for us. We got a cab and went to see if we could check in early at our hotel. They did let us check in early. So we went up to our room on the 23rd floor. I didn't take pictures of this room it was pretty small but from what we read so are all New York hotel rooms. It was still nice and in the center of most of the things we wanted to do. It was named Club Quarters, Opposite Rockeffeller Center. Our first thing to do in New York was a tour of Radio City Music Hall, which happened to be right across the street, at 2:00 pm. It was amazing. It is a lot bigger than it looks our pictures don't do it justice. It was a fun tour and at the end we took a picture with a Rockette. Our next event was a tour of NBC and sad as it is we were not aloud to take pictures on this tour. Our tour consisted of Dr. Oz's studio which no one in our group watched or was willing to admit that they watched him. Most of the tourists in our group consisted of Japanese people who spoke no english. It took us awhile to get through security. After Dr. Oz's studio we went and saw Jimmy Fallon's studio who had a few more fans than Dr. Oz did including ourselves. Then we saw Saturday Night Live Studio and that was a lot of fun. They are off for 2 weeks one of those being the week we were there so we didn't see anyone. But it was fun to see the studio. Then two people in the group got to do a news segment, (Jon and I did not volunteer), and we all got our pictures taken at the news desk but we didn't want to spend the money to buy it. I think that was all of the NBC studio tour. We stopped in at Saks Fifth Ave., we saw some shoes for $900.00 and $1,200.00 an evening purse for $1,000.00. Of course we didn't buy anything I just wanted to see it. That was our first day in New York.

A christian, I am.

I haven't blogged for awhile now. I have tried to write when something is on my mind a lot or is really important to me. The subject of whether or not I am a Christian is something very important to me. Now people have always believed that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are not Christians and the reasons why are many. Recently on FB I saw a video of a Mr. Jeffress claiming these same things and that got me thinking. So I decided to defend myself and my beliefs on my blog. Not because what he believes is important but for myself I would like to defend my position that being LDS or a mormon is being a Christian. Definition of a christian is this (from dictionary.com)
1. of, pertaining to, or derived from Jesus Christ or His teachings: a Christian faith.
2. of, pertaining to, believing in, or belonging to the religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ: Spain is a Christian country.
3. of or pertaining to Christians: many Christian deaths in the Crusades.
4. exhibiting a spirit proper to a follower of Jesus Christ; Christlike: She displayed true Christian charity.
We as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ(2 Nephi 25:26) because we know that without Jesus Christ we are nothing. We can not return back to the presence of our Heavenly Father without Jesus Christ. We are not perfect and no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God. We cannot be saved without the Atoning Sacrifice of our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ. We do believe that we are to try and become like Jesus and do our best to follow Him and receive important ordinances and make covenants with Him in order for us to return to Him as well. This does not take away from His Sacrifice for us though, as some believe. No matter what we do here on earth no matter how good we are, we are not perfect and therefore unfit for His kingdom without this sacrifice, nor could we overcome death and have immortal life without Him. But Jesus, Himself taught there was more to eternal life than just believing in Him. He was asked once by a rich young man "Good Master, what shall I do that I might inherit eternal life?" Jesus said "Thou knowest the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, honour thy father and mother." The young man said "Master, all these have I observed from my youth." "Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me." "And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions." Mark 10: 17, 19-22. Jesus did not tell this man just have faith in me as your Savior and you shall inherit eternal life. His answer to this man tells us we need to do good works as well as have faith in our Savior Jesus Christ.

Our Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is the only church set up the way Jesus Christ set His church up when He was here on earth. It is the only church with a man called of God to restore it to the earth given the priesthood keys from those who held them last even John the baptist who held the Aaronic priesthood keys and then Peter, James, and John who held the Melchezidek priesthood keys, and later Elijah who held the sealing keys, with a Prophet and apostles, temples as they had anciently, with baptism by immersion as Jesus was baptized, with the Holy ghost given through laying on of hands.

What I know is this: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is Christ's church. It is true. It teaches the gospel of Jesus Christ as he taught it. It has all the Priesthood keys as was had when Christ was here, and that were given to Peter, James and John When Christ died. I know Joseph Smith was visited by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, who are 2 separate beings, and they called him to restore the gospel to the earth. Just as Adam was called, and Moses also being visited by God, and Samuel hearing the voice of the Lord calling him so did the Lord call Joseph Smith to be the prophet of the restored church in our time. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I have read it many times. It teaches and testifies of Jesus Christ and His divine mission. I know that Jesus is my Savior and Redeemer and without His atoning Sacrifice I would be doomed to eternal misery, but because of His love and His Suffering for my sins and His dying on the cross for me and His resurrection, I can be saved from death and hell if I follow His example keep His commandments and receive the ordinances necessary to return to Him. I know that I am a Christian. In the name of Jesus Christ amen.