Merry Christmas! We hope everyone has had a great holiday season. We're very sad to see it quickly ending. In fact, we were just talking about how long we could leave our Christmas decorations up and not be judged. Our house just looks so much better with our tree and all of our decorations! One Christmas we had such a great tree that it stayed fresh until the end of January and we totally kept it that whole time. I think it was still good going into February, but by then we had come to terms with the fact that Christmas was over. We'll see what happens this year. :)
We planned a day right before Christmas to head to downtown Philly and see all of the Christmas stuff. We started the day off at Macy's and saw the famous Wanamaker organ- it has the most pipes of any organ in the whole world and for some reason they decided to put it in a department store. It's actually not that big size-wise, but it has its claim to fame anyway. Here we are in front of it:
This is me in the middle of city hall-it is huge and you can just walk right through the middle.
Ricardo in Love Park. They have a bunch of people selling Christmas paraphernalia here-we enjoyed walking around window shopping. I wanted to find a Philadelphia Christmas ornament, but no one had one!
Last time we were here it was about 40 degrees warmer than it is now. This day was actually really nice though. We got lucky.
Ricardo and the nutcracker. Yes, he has facial hair in this picture. See hunting pictures below.
T is for Temple University!
We finished the day off with lunch in the Comcast building, which is one the tallest buildings in Philadelphia-no one is allowed to be taller than William Penn's statue, but Comcast is a close second. We have a good friend that works for Comcast, so he got us in for lunch on the 43rd floor. It was a really cool view of the city! Thanks Stu!
I had to work Christmas Eve night and Christmas night, so that made celebrating a little difficult. Ricardo made this delicious dinner on Christmas Eve before I went to work and we also enjoyed the leftovers for Christmas dinner before I went back to work. We made Cornish game hens our first Christmas when we lived in Utah, so we decided to revive the tradition again this year. It was phenomenal. Poor Ricardo was alone for much of the day on Christmas while I was sleeping, but we were able to open gifts and talk/skype to our families, which was fun. It also snowed for the first time this year on Christmas Eve night, which was great timing. Hope you all enjoyed your Christmases!
The day after Christmas Ricardo went hunting with his good friend Jake. As you can probably tell from the picture, Jake does this a lot. Ricardo told me throughout the whole month of December that he had to grow out a beard because that is what hunters do and you're not allowed to go without one. After a few days of protest (I'm not a beard lover), I agreed. Unfortunately, there were no deer to be found that day and they ended up walking around in the snow and rain for much of the day, but they had fun and I'm sure there will be more outings in the future. As for the beard thing...we'll see.
The next day we headed to New York City for the day! We bundled up and took a bus from Chinatown in Philly to Chinatown in New York. We spent the morning walking around Chinatown and Little Italy and ate a great Vietnamese lunch.
We took the subway uptown and got out right across the street from Trump Tower. Ricardo loves Donald Trump. Really. So he was so excited that we got to see this building.
Columbus Circle, New York City
Our next stop was Central Park, which was surprisingly beautiful in the winter.
After a day in New York, our perspective of Philadelphia being a big city has definitely changed!
We were also able to go to the Manhattan LDS Temple. It is incredibly beautiful on the inside as well as the outside and we enjoyed being able to see it.
Ricardo was excited to have a hot dog from a street vendor in the big city. Can you tell?
Rockefeller Center and the famous tree!
The line to ice skate here was incredibly long. It was fun to watch though!
Little Brazil Street!
We saw this giant ad in the middle of Times Square!
Times Square was packed! I can't imagine what it will be like in just a few days.
After some New York pizza and a short bus trip, we were home again last night. So convenient to live in the middle of the northeast. We are still making plans to visit Boston and Niagara Falls at some point in the next few years. Wishing everyone a wonderful new year!!
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