Let's play catch up :)

I know I missed my beginning of the month post, and this one is a little late. There has been a lot going on and I didn't have the time to get a post up. There have been a lot of changes at my work (day job) and my days are a little more busy/crazy. I spent a few days working/meetings in Little Rock. I was also finalizing some last-minute things for our NYC trip and then I have one more work trip. Also, I'm not going to lie, I've been struggling a lot lately mentally/emotionally, which affects my productivity and just my daily life. So let's dive into what has been going on the last month, the good the bad, and the ugly :)

For starters, we just returned from our heavily anticipated NYC trip, which was fantastic! Kamdyn, my mom, and I took a girl's trip to NYC. This was for Kamdyn's Sweet 16 trip. I'm still baffled by how much we managed to squeeze into each day and I think we managed to do just about everything we wanted to.

Day 1

Day one was exactly what you would expect. My husband dropped us off at the airport and we caught our flight. The flight was very uneventful and smooth. The only thing that stuck out was there was a stewardess who was not very kind. I'm not sure if she was just having a bad day or what. Everyone else working on the flight was very cheery and kind. After we arrived at Le Guardia Airport, we found our way to baggage claim ( my mom checked her bag) and then caught our very first NYC taxi.

We arrived at our hotel (Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott New York Manhattan/Time Square South, highly recommend)without any problems and checked in. The front desk staff was SUPER helpful and gave us a paper that had all their favorite places to eat around town. We took our bags up to the room and decided to walk to the end of the block to try out the "best pizza in town". While the slices were greasy, they were delish! We had to teach kamdyn how to do the "fold" technique with her NYC pizza. :)

Our room was nice but smaller than we are used to. We had the executive king suite room and it had one king bed and a small sleeper sofa, wall to wall. I expected the room to be small since it was New York and space was limited. It was very clean, and we had a great view from our 22nd-story window.

We ended our night one with a walk to Times Square, which was only about a 10-minute walk from our place, which was great! Kamdyn was so excited about seeing " the big screens", theres her ADHD for ya, hahaha. Once we made it back to our room, we decided to plan what we were going to do the next day, as I did not make an itinerary for us, I figured we would go day by day. Which ended up being a perfect way to do the trip and very stress-free.

Day 2

Day 2 began with us checking out the breakfast early downstairs. We quickly realized that if you are not the first in line, there are not many options, so I would say that breakfast was a bust. That being said, we did have our coffee out on this little terrace/back ally way that was pretty quant... we also found out that kamdyn is scared of pigeons, which was the highlight of my morning hahaha!

We planned to spend the day in Lower Manhattan. We started off by catching an Uber right to the 9/11 memorial walking the grounds and just taking it all in. It was a very somber feeling, but one I really wanted to experience. The grounds are beautiful. I will say there was an elevated amount of security and police presence, which I believe was due to the Israel-Hamas war going on. There were flowers placed at the Survivor Tree at the memorial. We also heard on the news that someone entered one of the viewing pools the day we were there, but we did not see it ourselves.

We then headed over to One World Trade Observatory. The 360 views from here were AMAZING, and the elevator ride up was super cool. We had planned to eat lunch there at the restaurant upstairs, but apparently, it's reservation only.. so that didn't work out.

After we finished there we decided that we were now super hungry so we started walking around lower Manhattan looking for a lunch spot. While on our trek, we found ourselves at PACE, which happens to be a college kamdyn has expressed interest in and she wanted to hit up their bookstore. As a mom, I will say I love the level of security this school offers just to get into the building. We visited the gift shop/ book store and of course, had to buy some stuff, then got back to our lunch mission. We found ourselves at this little diner called Georges. We sat upstairs and had lunch. I ordered a Caesar salad and was delivered the biggest salad I've ever seen! I ate so much of it, or at least I thought I did, and it didn't even look like I made a dent in it. So kamdyn helped me. We both ate on this salad, and still couldn't finish it, but I will say it was probably one of the best Caesar salads I've had!

Side note, by this time (noon) we had already hit our 10k step goal for the day! We did so much walking on this trip :)

After lunch, we decided to get a little sweet treat from a local bakery before heading back to our room to get ready for the show in the evening. We were going to see Chicago! Chicago was just as amazing as you would expect it.

Also, while in lower Manhattan, we attempted to visit the ice Cream measure but had not pre-purchased our tickets, so note to self, if you plan to do this, make sure you pre-purchase your tickets even when the site doesn't say you need to. We decided we would come back on Wednesday since they were closed on Tuesday. This was on Kamdyn's bucket list.

Day 3

Our third day in New York started out with a walk to have breakfast at birthplace of Seinfield. It was a super cute little diner with DELISH breakfast. Kamdyn, of course, started her day out with some kind of ice cream topped waffle. If you know kamdyn, you know her weakness when it comes to ice cream, hahahaha.

After breakfast we continued our foot travel on to the La Duca dance shoe store. I promised her a pair of La Duca's for her birthday. We had intended to leave with a pair of black La Duca boots that she could wear in her upcoming photoshoot, but instead we left with a gorgeous pair of camel colors boots, and ordered a pair of her black ones. They were out of stock in the black in her size. I guess her shoe size is a pretty common size for dancers. We then caught an Uber to the Bloch dancewear flagship store and she came home with a few new leos for ballet class and a pair of hot pink "trash bag pants".

After we were done at Bloch, we decided to walk over to Macy's and see if we could find a dress for her to wear to her upcomming homecomming dance. We did not have any luck finding a dress, so we decided to go and check out Central Park.

Central Park was amazing and beautiful. There was a guy playing his saxaphone on a bridge (Which im pretty sure was the bridge from Home alone that the Pigeon Lady hung out at). They had horse drawn carriages, lots of people out with their familys, walking dogs, have picnicks. It was beautiful. We found a little bench and took a rest for a little bit as we had been walking all morning. It was super peaceful. I could see myself spending a lot of time just people wathcing if I lived there.

After we were all shopped out, we decided to head back to our room and get ready for our next show. We were going to see Little Shop of Horrors. This was a favorite movie of mine when I was a kid so Iwas excited kamdyn chose to go see it ( we let her pick all the shows we saw). The theatre was a small quant place, but perfect for the play. I was so impressed with the puppetry in the show when it came to Audry II. My only complaint was the first half of the show, we had this lady, which im sure was drunk or high on something, and would not stop talking (loud) and trying to have conversations with thecast on stage, and crawling all over her date. Several people turned around a shushed her. She left part of the way through the first half and didnt come back, so that was good :). Again, we had great seats, we were on the second row so you almost felt like you were right on stage with teh cast. I loved it!

Day 4

Day four was a more relaxed day for us. We found a little diner to have breakfast at and then caught an uber to the Museum of Ice Cream, which was on kamdyns bucket list. I made sure I pre-ordered our tickets this time. Kamdyn throughly enjoyed this. However, I have to call her out for one part... there was one room where you spun a wheel to decide what type of ice cream you would try, she landed on Fear. They gave her to option to take the fear challenge or just get a

different type of ice cream. She asked what "Fear" was and they told her bugs.. she asked if they were real bugs and they said yes, so she opted for the fear. I was surprised. Wow, kamdyns going to try this! Way to go girl! They put two good sized bugs on her ice cream, so I told her I would eat one with her in solidarity. I grabbed my bug, she grabbed her, I toasted her bug with mine and popped it in my mount and chewed super quick. It was super crunchy, but didn't have any flavor.. was like a crunchy piece of popciorn... did she eat hers... NO!!!!! She just looked at me as I ate HER bug... SHE CHICKENED OUT ON ME. I won't let her live this down.

After the Mesurem of Ice Cream, we headed back to our hotel and just rested up and relaxed. She was going to go to Broadway Dance Center for classes that evening so we wanted to make sure she wasn't tired out. She spent a long time prepping and getting ready for class then we walked to the studio. She took an intermediate/advance contemporary class from Nijawwon Matthews and absolutely loved it. She said she left that class feeling super inspired and couldn't wait to bring back what she learned to our little corner of northwest Arkansas. Mom and I sat outside ad watched. I thought she did amazing and looked like she fit right into the class. She was by far the youngest in the class, but technique wise, you couldn't tell.

We finished our night up with an expensive steak dinner at Smiths Bar and then walked back to our room. We got back late and were all ready for bed.

Day 5

This was another super busy, and spontaneous day filled with shopping, shopping and more shopping. We hit up the Herseys store (where kamdyn and I got giant smores), the M&M store (where we each put together our own custom bags of treats), lots of souvionier shops, and even did the Big Red Bus tour (recommended to us by Brooklyn Jai). The Red bus tour was super fun. I actually wish we would have done this at the begging of our trip. We sat on the top deck of the bus and it took us ALL OVER the place and we got to see all the sites we wanted. It was a perfect day too. The weather was amazing. Mom and I wanted to get a hot dog from the cart vendors, so we did that for lunch. I don't think kamdyn was too impressed, but we liked it :).

We ended our night with an exciting photo shoot with Austin Howd. This was so much fun and he was great to work with. I highly recommend him if you are ever in the area. He is so reasonable priced and we received almost 600 images from him. We went ALL over time square, the subway, and a few other other cool spots. 10 out of 10, do recommend.

A few funny/odd things that happened during the shoot:

• The very first location, some random dude came up and put his arm around kamdyns shoulder, which austin did not like and told him not to touch the model. He was like "dude, shes a kid, stop touching her". He came up to me and said that has NEVER happened to anyone he has ever shot before.

• When ever Austin was taking photos of her, a TON of other people were taking photos as well, of her, of him taking photos of her.. he said lot of people do that to try to get their 15 minutes of fame by catching something cool happening in the city.

Day 6

This was our last official day in New York and we just took it slow and relaxed. We didn't wake up early for breakfast. We decided to get an early lunch at the burger joint next door that was recommended to us. We lingered there for a bit then went back and relaxed for a while at our hotel waiting for the shuttle to the airport. our flight was uneventful and smooth and we arrived home with no issues. My husband picked us up from the airport and loaded all our bags into the truck. Once we got home and got unloaded, we pretty much all went straight to bed as it was close to 10:00 p.m. when we got home.

NYC was great, and I highly suggest if you get the opportunity to experience it, do it!

Girls night

I did have a little girls' night with one of my old high school friends before the NYC trip. We decided sometimes, us moms need to have a moment to be kid-free and carefree. We had a few drinks, had dinner, vented, talked, and laughed, and then I had a hotel room for the night and I ended my evening watching a show on Netflix and just relaxing. It was a good and much-needed temporary escape from reality.

Travel for work

Ive had a few trips for work as well. I went to Little Rock for a few days for a benefits meeting and now I'm getting ready to head to Hot Springs for another conference. Ive actually never really stayed in hot springs before so I'm looking forward to exploring the town a little bit. When I go to Little Rock, I pretty much have the places I like to go, I stay in the same few select hotels... so this will be a new experience. I feel like the last month has had so much travel between work, vacation, and the girls' night. It's not even my busy season yet!

Mental health

As I am finishing up this post, I had intended to talk a little bit about some mental health stuff going on in my life, but I am going to save it for the next blog post. I was just in a car accident yesterday, so I'll discuss ALL that and then some in the next post.

Im hoping to get back on my twice monthly schedule starting in November. Thanks again for following along.

-Rothrock Mom