The Big Apple....

It's been a while since I've posted and I've been working on this one for quite sometime...it's another long one, but it's totally worth it. Promise.
Last month (June 12th) was mine and Jonathan’s one year anniversary. Yay, and congratulations to us! I don't think I could have asked for a better man, or a better year of my life. Thinking about it, I have come to know the Lord more through him, see the world through him, and learn to love and fight for truth through him. He is my hero and my biggest fan, I couldn't be more blessed. Here is the story of our one year anniversary weekend.
Jonathan told me to ask off for Thursday and Friday the week of June 11th & 12th and to be ready for ANYTHING when I woke up Thursday morning. Wednesday night after going to a rained out Rangers with friends, I came home and laying on my bed I already had an outfit ready for me for Thursday morning. (my roommate Jenn was apparently in on the conspiracy as well, she's so sweet)

Thursday morning at oh about….4:00 AM Jonathan bursts in my room and wakes me up and tells me to start getting ready….Dear Lord! 4:00 in the morning, I could barely keep my eyes open. As I am fixing my hair trying to get ready in under 15 minutes, Jonathan is in his own world doing his own thing, but what I fail to realize is that he is grabbing things like my shampoo, hair brushes, and random toiletry items…..weird. I finally get ready and head down to the car, as he opens up the back door of the car to put my purse in, I look and see MY SUITCASE and his suitcase next to each other in the backseat! WHAT WAS GOING ON?!?!? So as you and I both figured, we’re on our way to the airport to head somewhere in the world!! (He loves to take me on adventures) We get to the airport at around 4:30 am, get all the way through security, and I STILL have yet to find out where we are going. He figures that I’m going to find out where we are going as soon as we get up to the gate so he tells me that I can go ahead and look at my ticket…..and you will never guess where we are heade....NEW YORK CITY!!!!! AHHHHH!!!!! I dropped to the ground when I saw the ticket and I began bawling my eyes out! (I’m sure you can imagine me and my subtleness) I was hysterical, laughing and crying all at the same time; I think he was a little shocked at my reaction too. I was in shock and disbelief, I have ALWAYS WANTED TO GO to New York and now my dreams where coming true. I'm sure the people in the airport thoght he was a horrible boyfriend at the time, imagine the scene: I'm crying and can't say anything other than "I can't believe you!" People must have thought he was wretched! Haha, funny.

The night before we left we had awful storms and they were still going when we arrived at the airport. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6:00 am, & unfortunately that didn’t happen. We lost almost an entire day because of the storms and we didn’t arrive in New York until 6:00 PM that night….frustrating, but WELL worth the wait. On the plane Jonathan had told me his entire planning and secretive process for getting us to New York without me knowing, too funny. He also told me on the plane that since it was so expensive to fly to New York he was unable to get tickets to see a Broadway show, which was completely understandable. That evening he had planned for us to spend the evening walking around Central Park….(little did I know what Central Park was like at night). He had also made arrangements with for us to stay with a friend of his in Brooklyn so we wouldn’t have to get 2 separate hotel rooms which would have been REALLLY expensive.
As soon as we got off the plane in Laguardia we got our bags and changed into dressy clothes for dinner, we were meeting with his friend for dinner in TIMES SQUARE!! In the taxi on the way to dinner Jonathan kept saying that we weren’t going to have a lot of time to eat since it was still dark because of the rain. I of course chime in and tell him to forget walking around Central Park and we can just enjoy our evening and dinner with his friend and we can just walk around Times Square for the rest of the night. At that point Jonathan look as though he has some important news to tell me, he then says, “Well, we really don’t have a lot of time for dinner because Phantom of the Opera starts at 8:00 p.m!” (as he is pulling 2 tickets out of his bag.) AHHH!!!!! And yet again I start laughing and crying, (maybe a little squealing was in there too) I was SO surprised!

First time in a taxi cab...and a NY taxi cab at that!

We go to dinner with his friend Chris at this great Italian place in Times Square called Tony’s and then we walked to The Majestic theatre for the show!

If we had literally been 5 minutes late going to dinner we would have missed the first part of the show. We walk straight in, give the usher our tickets, and as we sit down the curtain opens and the first scene begins…phew we had JUST made it! The show itself was incredible; probably the best show I’ve ever seen….I mean c’mon its BROADWAY!! And yet again, I cried for the first 15 minutes of the show because I was in complete disbelief that I was at an actual show on Broadway in New York!

After the show.

After the show we ended up walking around Times Square until about 2:00 am, and it IS the city that never sleeps, we felt like it was only 9:00 pm because of all the people out and about.
We took the subway (which was SO COOL) all the way to Brooklyn and arrived at our friend Chris’ apartment. It was a very New York picturesque apartment too, VERY SMALL, less than 800 sq ft and he pays $1700 a month to live there. Luckily his wife and 2 kids had traveled back to Texas for the weekend to see her family so we weren’t cramped in the apartment as we might have been.

The next day (Friday) we woke up and went to breakfast in Brooklyn at this little hole-in-the-wall café with GREAT food. The Colodor Cafe, no sign just a cool little place.

We took the subway and our first stop was the Brooklyn Bridge, we walked all the way across to lower Manhattan,

caught a Flag Day parade

saw St. Paul’s Cathedral right next to Ground Zero,

went to Trinity Church and explored there,

Ate lunch from the street vendors! YUMM!

got to see the NY Stock Exchange,

Battery Park,

the Long Island Ferry, Lady Liberty,

Clinton’s Castle, The Sphere from 9/11,

Central Park and SO much more….

I couldn’t believe how much we had seen. And we managed to get a little bit of shopping done too.

There was still so much more that we didn’t get to see that we wish we could have had time for. That night we met back up with Chris and went to a restaurant on Broadway called Max Brenner’s Chocolate Bar. You have never seen anything like this restaurant, great food, AMAZING desserts, AND there are pipes of chocolate running through the ceiling all over the inside! It’s like Willy Wonka’s, but very chic and cool.

We finally got done eating around 1:30 am and then we sat out in Union SquarePark and people watched till about 3:30 am. It was so much fun.

After we got back to Chris’ apartment we climbed on the roof of his building and just looked over the city….it was gorgeous.

The next day (Saturday) we woke up late and walked around Brooklyn where Chris lives and had brunch at another great little café.

We had a car come and pick us up and take us to the air port and again our flight was delayed about an hour…not so bad.

As soon as we got off the flight we met my dad at my apartment since he had come in town and went straight to the Rangers game in Arlington.. I got great tickets for him as his Father’s day gift. Turns out something went wrong with a set of lights and the game got delayed an hour and a half! Ugh we were SO exhausted and frustrated to boot! The game lasted till about midnight and we finally got home around 1:00 am. I told my dad and Jenn to not wake me up until mid afternoon!

On Sunday Dad got up and fixed us all brunch with a few other friends that had come over and then the rest of the day we just laid around and talked about our trip and showed pictures to everyone. That evening it was my turn to treat Jonathan to MY anniversary gift for him! I took him out that evening to a steak dinner at a great restaurant called The Keg in Las Colinas. After that we took a walk down the River walk and there I made him close his eyes and flip a coin I had made. I glued 2 cd’s together and had made a homemade coin with 2 different gifts on each side. I was going to have him flip the coin and whatever it landed on was what his gift would be. The first side of the coin had a tattoo on it and the other side of the coin had a skydiver on it!! Haha, he flipped the coin and so now we are planning for HIM to go skydiving….I might go if we can afford it, it’s still pretty expensive for just even one person to go. When he opened his eyes and saw the sky diver he freaked out! He was so excited, it was great! He loved it!
So…..THAT is the story of our anniversary weekened! The funny thing about it was, the entire trip we had people calling us asking if he was proposing or if there was a ring on my finger. Arrogantly Jonathan says “People, people….your imaginations are SO small if you think THIS would have been my engagement to Laura. No, no you guys and her have no idea what’s going hit you when I DO propose!” Hahaha I can only imagine
Website of the day: http://www.starbucks.com/ This is in celebration of the new Starbucks coffee machine we recently got in our office... It's the Bentley of all coffee machines.