In case you’ve never heard me say it, I’ll repeat myself: we love New York. Even after all the places we have been in the world, Brennan and I always feel this tug back to New York. It’s our favorite city and we love any chance we have to visit.

We set out from Bangkok on November 8. Our hotel was already decorated for Christmas, so I made sure to snap a photo before we left. We made it to the airport, and saw these statues as we were checking in. I thought it was very funny how they looked with the giant masks on their faces. This statue has smaller faces on the back of the head and even the little faces had masks! At some point in the far future, I know it will be hard to believe how prevalent masks were everywhere, so I think it’s interesting to document things like this.

Brennan left Ohio on August 31 and flew to New York City for the night before heading over to the UK. 3 of Brennan’s favorite things are New York pizza, stand up comedy, and steak. He managed to fit all of these in his short time before his flight.

My mom has been saying for years that she wants to go to New York City. It is one of my favorite places, so we finally got to go in September. Rachel was able to come too and we made it into a girls’ weekend. We had so much fun that we decided we need to make these trips an annual thing.

Mom and I flew to New York from Dayton and Rachel flew in from Indianapolis. We all met at our hotel where we had a few challenges checking in. Thankfully, we were able to work through that and found a place a few blocks away to get dinner. We walked through Times Square on the way to dinner and had to stop for a picture!

After dinner, we needed to find some dessert. Rachel said if the Krispy Kreme light was on, she wanted to go to the location in Times Square. (The light is always on!) We stood in line while we watched donuts get their glaze, ate our fresh donuts and walked back to the hotel for the night.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to go see the Today Show being filmed. While we weren’t able to get onto the plaza, it was fun to see through the windows to the famous desk and studio that we have seen on TV so many mornings.