advent spectacular | day 3

Day 3 | See Aunt Belinda's horse back riding competition and have pony rides, then head into the city and hit American Girl, a fancy dinner, then meet Harland's team from work to see the Radio City Christmas Show.

Wow.  Big day.  It didn't really go as planned, but no surprise there.  I had to get myself and the three kids up and out on my own this morning and it went smoothly, but then James wanted to eat right when we needed to leave and we missed Belinda competing.  Sorry Belle!  Grace was particularly devastated to miss out on her annual pony ride.

After handing Bacon over to Oma and Aunt Adi, we headed into the city and walked to the American Girl store to find a huge line outside waiting to just get in.  We didn't have enough time to wait in line and pick up what the girls wanted (they had birthday gift cards burning holes in their pockets) before our reservation, so we had to bag that.  They knew that it was possible we wouldn't be able to go, but I think when we walked right up to the store, but couldn't go in, that was just too much for any seven year old to handle.  We definitely had some sulking there, and I didn't mind it...for a while.  Thankfully they perked up at dinner, which was at the delicious Bond 45.  Grace had a huge lasagna that came with three giant meatballs on top and gave her compliments to the chef on being such a good "meat cooker" (she had also eaten about half of my steak and the prosciutto/buffalo mozzarella/tomato appetizer we had).  The waiter was very amused by her.  Abby had gourmet apples and a box of Pops.  LOL!

After that we headed to the hotel everyone was staying at to meet up with the team (This is the weekend Harland and I were supposed to spend with the team, but we opted out other than today because of the baby).  Grace put on her mayor hat and proceeded to introduce herself and shake everyone's hand.  She was in all her glory and even ended up in a dance contest with the doorman of the hotel, which she won, naturally.  Abby hid on a chair once more than one other couple came down.

The Christmas Show was really good, I have to say.  The new special effects were not cheesy like I expected and the girls absolutely loved it.  They even got to meet a real live Rockette and we had our picture taken with her (I'll have to scan that one later).

We walked past the Christmas tree on our way back to the car and that's where we stopped to take some pictures.  Everywhere else in that area of the city was absolutely MOBBED with people, so this was the only time we had a few inches of personal space.  Someone so nicely offered to take a picture of the four of us, and I was so excited, but they focused on the tree and we are blurry blobs.  Bummer! Oh well:

Abby took this one.  Not too shabby!...

Getting to give the girls some undivided attention was a breath of fresh air for me today.  I've been feeling like there's not enough of me to go around and they're the ones getting the shaft at the moment.

And with that, I'm off to get a little sleep in before real life with a newborn sets back in!