God's not dead!

God is not dead. He is real.

"...The scriptures are laid before thee, yea and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." Alma 30:44


He knows and loves each of us.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." John 3:16-17

NYC-Empire State Building, Pippin, Food

I am writing a lot in this post to remind myself of what we did. You don't have to read it all, you can just look at the pictures. 

Tim stayed with a friend from high school, Cameron, while he was in NYC. We decided to book a hotel for the one night I would be there because I didn't want to impose on Cameron and we didn't know his housing accommodations etc. But when Cameron offered to let me stay with him also for that one night I was there, we decided to cancel our hotel and stay with Cameron. I was happy about saving that money we would have spent on the hotel. 

On Saturday morning, Tim, Cameron and I ate breakfast at a place called Sarabeth's, which was on the upper east side of Manhattan. Can I just say it was delicious?! I loved it. I got apple cinnamon french toast which had chunks of apple and appley sauce on the inside of the bread and bananas on top. It was so good! I'm salivating just thinking about it. 

After we ate, we parted ways with Cameron and started walking towards Times Square, then decided to get on the subway the rest of the way.

We stopped by TKTS to see if any of the shows we wanted to see were on sale. Although I had no idea what Pippin was about, Tim said he had heard good things about it and the tickets were half off, so I decided to go to that. Tim got a ticket for another show. I will talk more about Pippin later.

After we bought our tickets we made our way to the top Empire State Building. The picture above is from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.

One of the views from the top.

Looking at Lower Manhattan.

Although it was a bit smoggy, it was actually quite a nice day to see the view.

After the Empire State Building, it was almost time for Tim to go to his show, but we made one more stop before he did. We went to St. Patrick's Cathedral and there was scaffolding up all over the outside and the inside, which was a little disappointing. But the few stained glass windows we could see were beautiful!

It was time for Tim to go to his show and I still had a little time before mine started, so I went to the Rockefeller Center and found this interesting sculpture. The sculpture is by Jeff Koons and it is called Split-Rocker. 

Up-close of the sculpture. It has over 50,000 flowering plants on it! It has traveled around the world since 2000 starting off in France and making its way to Maryland and now to New York City.

Side View of Split-Rocker.

It was time to see Pippin and can I just say that I had a pretty dang awesome seat!? I was right in the center orchestra about 10 rows back.

I loved the show! The acrobatics (some of the actors were former circus performers), the music (Stephen Schwartz wrote the music), the story line, it was all so good! It's about a prince named Pippin, who just graduated from university and is trying to figure out what to do with his life. He is looking for something that will bring him fulfillment in life.

He has a lead player/narrator for his life and the musical portrays his struggles to find fulfillment in his life. There were a few questionable parts and it was dark at times but it was all part of him finding himself and it was just all so good!

I was leaving on a 7 pm bus so after the show, Tim met me outside the theater and we found a place to eat. Tim wanted to see another show that night so we found the theater where they were having a lottery for the evening performance of a show he wanted to see, then we found a restaurant nearby to eat at. We found a place called Nizza, which was an Italian restaurant. I got Gnocchi Al Forno, which was really good! Although I really liked it, it was pretty expensive and I was still kind of hungry afterwards, but it's okay. It was worth the experience!

Then it was time for me to head for the bus and I was happy to have the whole back half of the bus to myself. :) We got back to Arlington in good time. But the usual 30 minute metro ride home ended up taking 100 minutes. I got on the metro at 11:30 pm and I did not get off until 1:10 am. It was great fun or something like that. I was glad to have a book and magazine and music to listen to while waiting. 

It was a fun trip and thanks Tim for letting your older sister come and hang out with you in NYC!

NYC- Tenement Museum, MoMA, Matilda

My younger brother, Tim, was in town. He was in Virginia for 4 days, then he took the bus up to NYC to spend the rest of his vacation, 4-1/2 days. I decided to meet him in NYC for 2 days and it was fun! 

 We took a tour at the Tenement Museum, which I highly recommend. There were many different tours to choose from and we decided on the Shop Life tour, which was fascinating. We got to see the saloon in the basement of a tenement house and the tiny apartment connected to it that a family ran and lived in as the tour guide told the story of the life of the family. Our tour guide was so good and I totally want to go back and take another tour.

Tim had a city pass and got discounted tickets to certain sites. The Museum of Modern Art was one of those places. We made our way there and I was pleased to see a sign for free admission tickets into the museum for that night. A company, UNIQLO was giving away tickets for free. This was us waiting in line for the tickets. For as long as the line was, it went pretty quickly.

Although I don't particularly like this picture of me, I liked the two men's expressions in the background looking at the camera.

The museum was pretty dang awesome! We got to see some Picasso. Night Fishing at Antibes.

Some Malevich. Although I don't know that I've seen this one before I kind of liked it, plus he was from Ukraine so that made it even cooler. :)

Some Monet. Not all of his paintings were this large, but this one, which is a very famous one, I did not realize was this large.

I thought this piece of art was fascinating. Read about it below.

And I was most excited to see this painting! Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. Isn't it beautiful?!

Seurat. You can read about it below.

I found this piece of art fascinating. That is a real taxidermied eagle.

We spent a couple of hours at the museum and enjoyed the beautiful and sometimes somewhat odd modern art, then we headed to a play for that night.

Matilda! It was awesome! It was funny and cute and magical and I really enjoyed it! Stay tuned for one more post about NYC.