It's hard to believe but Claire turned 12 in February!! She's a beautiful girl and has such a sweet personality. Claire is crazy about her little sister, her loving nick name for Aspen is "Pippy". Claire is really enjoying being in the Young Women's program now that she is 12. For her 12th birthday, as a special treat, Brenda and David carried on the family tradition and let Claire choose somewhere she would like to go visit in the US. Claire chose New York City, so off Brenda and Claire went the day before her birthday! It was a grand adventure of epic proportions! We just went for a long weekend since school was out for Presidents Day. Claire really wanted to go tour the Crayola factory,
so we flew out early Friday morning to New Jersey and drove to Easton, Pennsylvania about an hour away, spent the day at the factory. It was an amazing and fun place, she was so thrilled to see it all.
Claire loves to write stories, and had been writing a story about how colors really got their names,
so she felt the tour of the Crayola factory was crucial to her story.
When the factory closed, we hurried off to New York City to catch our first of 3 Broadway shows for the weekend - The Lion King!! It is such a fantastical musical, with fabulous, bright, vivid costumes and music. Claire was absolutely enthralled!
The show ended about 11 pm, so then we walked around Times Square
and I took her up high in the Top of The Rock Observatory, where I treated Claire to a dessert buffet so she could have cake high above New York City as the clock struck 12 while she turned 12 years old! By the time we got to the hotel for bed that night, she was exhausted!! Nice to know that sometimes my stamina can outdo hers!!
The next day, her birthday proper, was spent touring The American Museum of Natural History, the New York City Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art, exploring and ice skating in Central Park.
There were so many fun and fabulous thing we saw and did, she was so excited. As we were walking through Central Park, we had a fun New York City moment...we were a bit confused trying to find the rink, and we asking people directions, and we ran right into movie star Natalie Portman carrying her new baby boy, and she was walking with the star from the movie Home Alone, McKalie Caulkin. So that was fun. I got a photo of the movie stars and Claire on the bridge right next to them.
That night we ate at a sushi bar and off we went to Broadway show #2, Spiderman!!! What a fun, amazing production that was! Made even better with music composed by U2 !!
We visited the LDS church, the LDS Temple in NYC and had a great discussion with our very nice taxi driver from Hong Kong. One of Brenda's brother's had served a mission there and had taught Brenda some Chinese, which I had not forgotten, so I had fun speaking what little Chinese I knew. He liked us and asked lots of questions about our church. We visited the 9/11 Memorial site,
the Brooklyn Bridge,
the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
There was so much to read and learn at these historical sites.
Our last day we spent shopping, at FAO Schwartz where Claire got to play on the BIG PIANO,
the Worlds Largest Toys R Us store to ride the Ferris Wheel inside, the Swatch Store,
Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum,
lunch at Planet Hollywood and a Broadway showing of Wicked, (always our favorite) before flying home.
We got lots of hugs from David and Aspen who had missed us, but had their own weekend of lots of fun and adventure back home together.
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