Home Bitter-Sweet Home

It's official.
We have left NYC and are back in AZ.
I have to admit I was really depressed saying goodbye to Brooklyn and our lovely Marriott hotel room.


It was pretty awesome having free rent and someone to clean up after you every single day.
Not to mention living so close to Manhattan and the getting to explore the city almost every day.

I wanted to have one more post dedicated to NYC so I could look back and remember all the amazing things I got to do and see.
So, here is a recap of some of those things I did before I left.

Jeff and I had the opportunity to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (compliments of J.P. Morgan) and it was astounding. I have never seen so many beautiful pieces of art work in my life. I am not a big museum fan but this place was cool.






Those are just a few pictures I snapped while walking through. This place is so enormous that we didn't even have time to visit every part of the museum.

I also had a chance to meet up with some friends from our old ward in Utah, The Markhams.
Alyssa and I went on the Staten Island ferry where we got to see good ol' Lady Liberty herself
and then her and husband Shane were kind enough to invite me to go see the 9/11 Memorial.


The memorial site is magnificent. They truly have done a beautiful job on reconstructing the thing. I can't wait until they open the museum next year!

It is weird being back home in Arizona. I love it here but nothing compares to New York City. It is such a unique place and I hope one day we can live there permanently. (sorry, Mom)

We are on to new adventures though. We are currently on an apartment hunt, which sorta fun but mostly stressful. I am pretty excited to have a place of my own and be out of my parents house..(sorry again, Mom) I just really want to decorate and have a place to call home.

This is life as we know it for now. I will update when we get in to our new apartment, so wish me luck and hopefully we will be moved in by next weekend (that is if we can pick a place)!!

Until Next Time...

Love, The Meise's

How to Succeed in Business

What a weekend.
I have waited in a line for a grand total of almost 8 hours this weekend.

Friday, Nicole and I tried to get in to the Regis and Kelly show (Josh Groban was co-hosting and Orlando Bloom and Ginnifer Goodwin were the guest stars).
We were numbers 22 and 23 in line and guess how many people they let in?
21.
Needless to say, we were pretty bummed that morning.

Saturday, I woke up early to get tickets for the Broadway show
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
and that was yet another FAIL!

Sunday was our last shot. I felt really bad because we were breaking the sabbath by going but Jeff had never been to a show before and we leave really soon!
So, we woke up at 6:30am and headed to Manhattan to get in line for these discounted rush tickets. Normally the box office opens at 10am so we thought if we got there around 7:30ish we we would be golden. So that is what we did. We got to there at 7:30 and there was only one other person there....just my luck...
THE PLACE DIDN'T OPEN UNTIL NOON!

We waited in the cold for 41/2 hours, but it was totally worth it!
The show was awesome and it was so cool being like 10 feet away from Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter).


This was only only picture I was able to get...
refer to story below.

About 20 minutes into the show after I had taken a few pictures with my camera (the flash was OFF) I hear the usher telling me to get up and follow him. I was scared out of my mind because I thought I was getting booted out of the show. I had an idea that it was for taking pictures but I didn't know that it was prohibited. They told me that it was not allowed and that I needed to delete the pictures in front of them so they knew I didn't have any of them left. What they didn't know is that I had taken one with my phone...haha
I was pretty shaken up and not to mention mortified from the whole thing and it kind of put a damper on the whole experience for me. It was still a great show and it was fun spending time with Jeff's parents who met up with us to see it.

We went to dinner in Brooklyn after and said our goodbye's because we won't be seeing them again until Christmas.
Well, that was my crazy weekend, hopefully no more lines and mean ushers yelling at me anytime soon.

Until Next Time...

Love, The Meise's

Brunch in Brooklyn

Brunch.
The simple combination of breakfast and lunch.

So, apparently brunch is a pretty big deal in NYC. I see it all over the "specials" signs of restaurants on weekends and all over yelp. I assume the reason it is so popular on weekends is because most people are recovering from the night before on Saturdays and Sundays and aren't planning on getting out of bed and eating breakfast until past noon at least. The main attraction is that they have all of these specials on alcoholic drinks, meaning that they will be drinking in the early afternoon (another reason why I assume they are recovering from a hangover). Either way, I love brunch and am happy that so many places offer it in this lovely city.

Jeff and I woke up this morning after sleeping in (this was normal for me on account of I get to sleep in every day) and decided we needed to get brunch this fine Saturday afternoon. So, we stayed lazy for a little while playing with our new iPhone 4 S's (which are freaking awesome by the way) while cuddling and talking about our plans for the day.
I decided we needed to get crepes. I absolutely love crepes. They might be my favorite breakfast food, EVER! So with my handy dandy yelp app on my phone, I looked up near by crepe places.

This is the place we found...



O crepes is right! This tiny little crepes shop located in DUMBO (Down. Under. Manhattan. Bridge. Overpass) was outstanding.
I ordered the "hula hoop". This consisted of a crepe filled with strawberries, bananas and nutella. Yes, you read correctly NUTELLA. Oh, and don't worry it was topped with whipped cream. YUM.



I had sweet, so Jeff had to order salty. His crepe was almost as good as mine. He got the "green desk" which was a crepe filled with spinach, egg, tomato and feta.


I know I talk about food A LOT and I say that everything was soo good but this place was seriously AMAZING. It met my expectations and then some.

After brunch we decided to talk a little walk around through this park under the Manhattan Bridge. It was such a nice day out and the views were to die for as always so I had to get some pictures to share.

What a beautiful Saturday it was for us. I wish I could say the rest of the day was just as cool but unfortunately it's crunch time for Jeff and this Series 7 test he has to pass for work. Next week is the last week of training and it's all dedicated to studying and learning about what will be on this test. So, I spent the rest of the day napping and playing on the phone while he did this for like 6 hours straight.


I just have the best husband! He works so dang hard and puts up with a lot of me. I love to bother and distract him from what he should be doing because I'm bored and I think it's funny. I'm so annoying.
Anywho, that was our fun day together.
I'm off to eat my black forest cheesecake.

By the way, this is why I'm looking plump in the pics..
The camera doesn't add 10 lbs...this does.

Until Next Time...

Love, The Meise's

Columbus Day Weekend

For Columbus day weekend, Jeff and I went to his parents house in Doylestown,PA!

They picked us up in Newark, NJ on Saturday afternoon and it only took about an hour to get home from there. Even though I get a little car sick from the windy roads, the drive was beautiful and it was refreshing to see all the green, yellows and reds of the changing trees.

Gorgeous view of the ride home

First of all, let me tell you how nice it was to be in a house that had a kitchen and more than one room (it gets a little crowded in our hotel room).
Second, I've never been so happy to have a home made meal in my life. (Plus, Jeff's mom is a really good cook)

Jeff's parent's house! I love it!!

So, after we got in we rested for a little while, had some dinner and then we went to a get together put on by the families good friends the Sequine's!
It was so fun! This shin dig took place at corn field type place (it was dark and I couldn't see very well) and their was apple cider, hot chocolate and tons of treats. They also had hay rides to go on for all the kids. The best part though was getting to see our friends in PA!


This is our BFF Zoey! She loves to call me "Jeffrey" and call Jeff "Robyn"

I was so mad at myself that I didn't get any more pictures that weekend! It was mostly just relaxing and eating good food. (Jeff's mom sent us home with tons of food too which I was so grateful for!) We also played a lot of the game "Ticket to Ride" it is seriously so fun! Jeff got a little competitive though and beat us all.


We are so happy we were able to go visit our family this last weekend. We don't get to see them as much as we would like because of the distance so we love being here for that reason!

Until Next Time...

Love, The Meise's

A New York Way of Life

It has been almost two weeks since I moved out to live with Jeff for his training in NYC and boy, do I want to stay here forever! It's definitely different from Gilbert, AZ and Provo, UT (the only other places I have ever lived). All I can say though, is that this big city is something you have to get used to living in full time and is somewhat of an acquired taste. It's fast paced, dirty, crowded, unsafe at times and sometimes hard to get around...BUT once you get used to it all, it's kind of beautiful and awesome at the same time.

These are just some of the amazing pictures I captured of the city, the subway and one of the new world trade centers being built.


I am so grateful for all of the fun things we have been able to do while here in NYC...here is a recap of some fun things we have been up to this past week:

We went to the Mets vs. Reds game (compliment of J.P. Morgan)

We actually had pretty good seats at this game, and had a ton of fun hanging out with all of the other people Jeff and Eric are at training with.



I met up with my friend Leslie again and did some shopping! Then, we went to this tasty little Thai restaurant called "The Cottage" (it was so good and very reasonably priced)

It is so fun seeing Leslie one of my next door neighbors in Arizona! It's like having a little piece of home away from home :)

As some of you know, Jeff served his mission in Slovenia/Croatia/Serbia. So, like any other RM he has a love for those countries, the people and of course the food. A couple trips ago we tried going to this little Serbian restaurant called Kafana in Manhattan but it happened to be closed that day, so we thought we would try again. (don't worry, Jeff looked it up to make sure it was going to be open this time) The food is soo good and very healthy, nothing like American food. We shared the sopska (fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and feta cheese in vinegar and olive oil) and pljeskavica (Serbian style hamburger on pita style bread) with a side of picked cabbage.


It was so good we almost got another sopska to go!

Don't worry, I'm not done yet...
Have you ever heard of the show Cake Boss? Well, I'm quite a fan and their bakery is just across Hudson River in the cutest little town called Hoboken.

There was an enormous line to go in so we just took a picture and kept on going.

We were starving after looking in to the bakery so we decided it was time for lunch. We went to this little Mexican restaurant and shared a burrito. It was pretty good, not my favorite though. Wasn't even worth taking a picture of, let's put it that way...
Any who, after lunch lo and behold RITA'S was right next door.
For those of you who do not know what Rita's is, I am so sorry for you. It is an Italian ice and custard shop that is pretty much amazing! We go there every time we come to the east coast.



Look how happy we are that we got Rita's :) too bad it was raining when we left...

What a fun time it has been. I love hanging out with our friends and enjoying New York together!

Oh, before I forget......

Happy 22nd Birthday to Nicole Smith, hope you had the best day ever friend!!


Isn't she beautiful! I am so glad she is my exploring partner and best bud in NY!

Until next time...

Love, The Meise's