Rockefeller Christmas

We (OK, I) had a great idea that we would take the kids into the City to see the holiday window displays and the Rockefeller Christmas tree. As a bonus, we told the kids we would take them ice-skating either in Rockefeller center or in Central Park, whichever one was less crowded. I originally thought we might do this on the Friday before Christmas because the kids got out of school early and Dave would be getting off work early, too and we could just meet him there. We decided it would be too crowded, though, and decided to wait 'til after Christmas.

SO, we went yesterday, and I swear I will NEVER EVER do that again! Everywhere we went was unbelievably crowded. The line for ice-skating in Central Park was a mile long and the rink in Rockefeller, well, even though we stood right next to it, we never even saw the rink because it was so crowded!

Every street corner, every window, every INCH was jam packed with people. We were like cattle, slowly shuffling through the sidewalks, just trying to get to the next destination. I knew it would be a bit crowded, but Dave said it was WAY worse than it had been before Christmas. Who knew?!? I never understood before when I would hear news about people, human beings, being trampled to death at soccer games or wherever. NOW I understand. I don't normally have a "fear of crowds" or anything but I swear there were so many times when I thought to myself, my gosh, if there was any kind of crisis that would cause all these people to panic, we'd be lucky to get out alive. Or heaven forbid, someone should have a heart attack or something, I can't see how they would be able to get emergency personnel in quickly. I told Dave, I don't EVER want to do that again so if I bring it up next year, I guess he can just pull up this blog entry for me so I can remember!

We made our first visit to FAO Schwarz and the kids enjoyed seeing the life-size Lego models of Harry Potter, Hermione, Ron, and Hagrid. Also, Indiana Jones, Sponge Bob, and many Star Wars characters. The did NOT, however, enjoy the idea of us taking them to a toy store to "just look around".

So, after all the walking around, NO ice-skating, and NO toy purchasing, we felt pretty bad for the kids and told them we'd take them to a nice restaurant. Caleb and Sam are actually kinda 'into' the whole "let's go to a fancy restaurant" idea whereas Peter would be much happier at McDonald's. (When I say 'fancy restaurant', we're talking about something like Olive Garden or Applebee's)! Unfortunately, we were on 5th Avenue and the 'fancy restaurants' there started at around $40/person. We knew we had to keep walking away from 5th Ave. and Madison Avenue, more toward where we were parked in a budget parking garage. (Only $18 for 4 hours)! Anyway, by the time we got down there, we could only find Asian restaurants and a couple of Diners. We opted for a diner called the "Moonstruck Diner" because it was nicely decorated and had fish tanks to look at, too. Anyway, all of us had a good experience except for poor Dave who tried the seafood platter. (Man, did it stink)! So now we know, when you are at a restaurant with "diner" in the name, you DON'T order seafood, even if it says it's fresh daily. But hey, my fries were darn good!

Here's some pictures:
The first ones are of the window displays at Bloomingdale's. (Bloomie's to New Yorkers). Each window was originally designed by children...with some adult help for the end product. There was a little description at the bottom with a storyline for each scene and the names of ages of the kids who dreamt it up. My favorite was one made entirely of candy. The robot (above) moved its limbs, too.
Here, Peter is saying, "WHY do we have to keep looking at these dumb windows?"

You may have heard about the Penny Harvest Field. It was really cool and the kids sure enjoyed looking at over a million dollars worth of pennies. (That's 100 million pennies). Of course, people have been throwing in all kinds of spare change so who knows what the tally is now. It was originally collected by children in all the NYC schools. (Over 850 schools). They only collected pennies so that even the poorest children could participate. Anyway, you can click on the website if you want to learn more. You can see the tree in the background. It was HUGE. Every single branch had lights on it. They are LED lights so they are quite brilliant in person.
Also, I just HAD to take a picture of Home Depot right in the heart of midtown Manhattan. Do you think they are ready stocked with sheets of plywood and loads of 2 x 4's? I didn't see anyone leaving with flatbed trucks full of supplies...

Oh yeah, there was one teeny incident while in Rockefeller Plaza. Not only was it wall to wall people, but you had to maneuver around street vendors selling their junk, I mean, wares everywhere. Well, the crowd was so thick I got separated from Dave, Sam, and Caleb but I had a hold of Peter's hand. One of the street vendors who cut me off from Dave, inadvertently backed into me, pushing me backwards off a curb, onto my hurt knee. He did it hard enough that he had to have felt me but he never even turned his head to look.
Needless to say, this really ticked me off and as I got up and proceeded to plow through the crowd, I will admit, I was not so gentle as I shoved past the vendor. After I got past him he had the nerve to yell out to me that it wasn't nice to push people and that I couldn't go around pushing people like that. Normally I would have just rolled my eyes and ignored him but I, instead, chose to act like a two year old (well, maybe a three year old) and got into a screaming match with this guy about how he wasn't watching where he was going and backed into me and pushed me off the curb with my kid, etc., etc. He just kept interrupting me, telling me that there were homeless people around (whatever that means) and how it's not nice to push people. We were literally yelling at each other with HUNDREDS of onlookers in Rockefeller Plaza.
It ended with me yelling at him to knock it off! He finally shut his mouth and I stormed away through the crowd...I noticed people got out of my way at this point....
Poor Peter said, "Mom, were you angry at that guy?" I said, "No, I was VERY VERY angry at that guy." Dave was far enough away that he had no idea anything happened. In retrospect, I am sorely embarrassed by my behavior in front of all those people, (and those of you who know me well know that this was a little out of character for me) but I just didn't feel like letting a toothless street vendor push me around in New York City. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and I really wish I'd ended it differently. Something more like, "Knock it off!...and MERRY CHRISTMAS!" snarl

p.s. Caleb is begging us to take him to Times Square for New Year's Eve. It's the 100th anniversary of the ball drop and they're expecting a MILLION people there. I told Caleb, "ARE YOU CRAZY?!?!?!?!"