Macy's Day Parade!!

 Our trip to the Macy's Day Parade started at midnight on Wednesday. I had tried to go to bed around 8pm, but didn't fall asleep until sometime after 9:30. My friend's daughter suddenly became ill and they couldn't come, so I was going to make the trip alone with my kiddos.

I rolled out of bed at midnight, packed the kids up and we were on the road by 12:45am. Luke and Devin were super excited to be awake, though both very tired. Devin started saying weird, random stuff like "I like Nana!" out of the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, about 4:45 we arrived at the train station in NJ and encountered no traffic on the way. There was no attendant scheduled until 5:30 and the train was at 5:42. I was hoping to flash my i.d. and get a military discount, but the attendant never showed and I had to rush to get tickets from the automatic machine. We were the first people to arrive at the station, but by the time the train showed there must've been a 60 people on the platform. However, it was not crowded at all the entire way to the parade. At Penn station we transferred to a NY metro train and made it to our stop. After walking a few blocks we got in line for our "grandstand" seats. There were no strollers or backpacks allowed, so Luke walked while Devin rode in a sling meant for babies.. which he wasn't happy about. Lukas broke through the little metal barriers to play on the stands since he was tired of waiting in line - which wasn't allowed. I tried to coax him out, but no luck. An attendant finally showed and Luke glared, hissed at her and ran away while everyone laughed. The people behind me promise to hold our spot in line, so I very gently grabbed Lukas and marched him back to our spot.

 By the time we sat it was around 7:30. The parade didn't start until 9, so I let the kids watch the four shows they had picked out the night before in anticipation of our long wait. I was a little concerned about the amount of sitting in one spot the kids would have to do, but they did great other than a little kicking of the people in front of us and Lukas yelling every five minutes during the last half of the parade that he WANTED TO GO HOME!! That was all great and stuff, but there was literally no way to get out. I felt bad for the guy sitting right in front of Luke, but everyone seemed to be great sports.

We also lucked out in that our section was super cheery! Everyone was happy to be there, cheered and whistled a lot, and were happy to chat. The couple behind me was retired Army from Florida and the couple next to them had driven up from Georgia picking up their adult children along the way to attend the parade. One of the kids lived in Washington, D.C. and I felt their pain as they described traffic driving up to NY the night before Thanksgiving. I was so happy to be around people that were excited to be where we were. It made the experience that much more pleasant and I didn't really feel alone there.

The kids both enjoyed the parade - Devin more than Luke. Devin loved the clowns and sat on my lap almost the entire time looking at everything passing by. He even told me as this float passed by that the person was "just a little tired." This float was a bit weird.. We saw a few famous people - some of which we didn't realize who they were until they passed. I watch almost no cable t.v., so I don't know what the artists look like. The most famous ones - that I did recognize - were Carly Rae Jaepson and the U.S. Olympic Gold Medal Gymnastics team! Oh, and Jimmy Fallon, but he never looked our way.

The sleepy float

I decided it would be best to record Justin, since it's more fun to watch videos than look at pictures in my opinion. I taped the Honor Guard passing, but they were going at a almost a sprint and we were on the complete wrong side of the street to see Justin. It was a little sad that I was only really able to catch a glimpse of him. Lukas ended up deleting the video from my iPod on accident, which made it even more sad.. I'm looking forward to the Macy's Video that we're going to order and hopefully there'll be some closeups of him from the military photographers that went.

In any case, Justin didn't get to see this super awesome float:

Justin was jealous

So after about an hour of Lukas telling me he wanted to go home, we finally were able to leave. Luke was really wanted a hotdog, so we stopped and the kids ate Thanksgiving Lunch on an NYC doorstep.  The promise of that hotdog was one of the few things that kept Luke seated and quiet during the parade, so I couldn't renege. I was surprised that Luke was the one giving me difficulty and Devin was perfectly pleasant. 

Anyway, the kids finished their hotdogs and Devin popped up to announce he had to pee!! He hadn't gone since before the very first train left at 5:40am. I rushed to get him to the metro stop, but there were no bathrooms and it was almost too packed to move. We had to wait for 2 or 3 trains before we made it to one that had enough room on it for us. People started packing in and yelling at each other, but we lucked out, got a seat and squeezed together.



We finally got to Penn Station and I definitely lost my cool. There were so many people it was hard to breathe. We finally found a bathroom for the kids, but Luke began to fall apart and I lost my patience with him. The signage was terrible and the line for tickets took me about twenty minutes to get through. There was no way to leave this line and keep my place if the kids decided they wanted to run around, so I was very short with them.. Also there were no marked maps of the routes and Lukas lost the one I had printed, so I started asking strangers. We found someone who knew where we were going and we realized a train going that way was leaving in 4 minutes. The next one wasn't for twenty minutes. I practically dragged both kids to the train 400 meters away and poor Devin started crying. Although it's hard to realize in the moment, both kids did so fantastically well it was hard to be angry they were dragging their feet.

People were packed tightly into this one and it was about 20 minutes before the crowd thinned out enough that I could get seats for us. I finally felt like I could breathe again and Devin fell asleep on my lap.. he didn't wake up again four about four hours.

Seats finally! On the last train home.

Unfortunately this greeted me when I left the train station:

I almost felt like crying when I saw this, but I turned up the music and used the time to think. The real challenge was staying alert on so little sleep. We made it home safely around 5:30pm, which was just after Justin got home. I was starving (I had literally had one lara bar and 2 pieces of sausage since midnight) and exhausted and there was no food.. so we hopped in the car, picked up some friends and drove around looking for somewhere that was open. The only place we found was Cici's pizza and it was terrible - but, we ate our fill, went home and slept like rocks.

The next morning we put up the Christmas decorations and went over to a friend's house for a homemade Thanksgiving dinner :)

I spent the weekend shopping for deals online, which is what I'm doing today - along with rendering some suet into tallow in the crockpot! Happy Thanksgiving and cyber Monday :)