Emily's 12th Birthday Present

No, Emily did not just turn 12. In fact, she will be 14 in December (what the??!!), but she's had a 12th birthday present coming to her for some time that was put on hold when her little brother was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Since I travel so often for work, I accumulate a lot of frequent flyer miles. As a result, we decided to take the example of some friends who have taken each of their children to a location in the US of their choice for their 12th birthday. They pick the spot, and we fly out with them on my frequent flyer miles and hotel points.

We thought this was a great idea, as it offers the kids an opportunity to study up on places they would like to visit, and exposes them to different ways of life and areas of our country.

Emily chose New York City as her destination, so this past week we flew out with her and spent 3 days in "the city." We stayed at a hotel that overlooked ground zero, a loud but impressive location, and took time to do all the New Yorky stuff that you do. We saw a musical - The Addams Family with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, it was really good, did the NBC tour and top of "the Rock," Central Park, the Temple, Statue of Liberty (from afar), China Town shopping, etc.

We had a great time and were very thankful to a few people - my parents and little sister who took care of the kids the entire time, Angie's mom who took Natalie for a while during the weekend, and especially the nicest person in New York City, who recovered my wallet and went WAY out of her way to find me and return it, she literally saved our trip.

All in all, I think Emily really enjoyed herself. She was able to counter the pain of walking miles every day ("my feet feel like they are exploding from the inside") with the fact that she was able to spend every flight we had there and back in first class (again, payoff for Dad having to travel so much). It was fun to have her experience everything there, and to dispel the constant idea that New York is a mean and dangerous place. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and we've had nothing but good experiences there and met the nicest people.

Here are the pictures. One thing to watch for is Emily's impression of Amy Adams' character in Enchanted. I think she pulled it off spectacularly and with a much straighter face than I ever thought she would. I laughed so hard I almost Lizzed.