Welcome to NY

Welcome to NY, home of my blog for the next year.

It's been busy couple weeks! We left Charlottesville two weeks ago, and headed to Disney World. Thank goodness for that mini vacation, it was wonderful to get away in between moving out and moving in. Yes, Florida was 100 degrees every day in June and the crowds were busy bordering on panic-attack mode at times, but we've perfected how to do a laid-back, get the maximum enjoyment out of each day at Disney-vacation. Favorite moments included Miss Lilly dance on stage at the Luau; watching my little girl get made over into a princess at the Bippiti Boppity Boutique (especially the look on HER face as she got made over); seeing Lilly's expression when she would meet a princess or Mary Poppins or Micky Mouse, etc; and especially relaxing on the beach at the Polynesian with a view of the castle, while Jon and Lilly played in the pool nearby. As always, I love our family vacations - not just because we're enjoying where we are and what we're doing, but because I love spending so much quality time with Jon and Lilly - time we don't usually get together in our daily busy lives.

Last Monday we got on a plane to New York City. It wasn't as nervewracking as getting on the flight to New Zealand two years ago; but there it was definitely comparable somewhat because we got on a plane with just a few suitcases to begin our new lives in a completely different city.

Last Tuesday we moved into our new apartment, and we settled in and explored our neighborhood for the next few days. Then over the weekend we went to New Jersey for the weekend with my whole family.

And then yesterday. Lilly started at her new school. Honestly my first impression was not so good for a variety of reasons but we're giving in another try: but for $25,000/year (which is standard for daycare in NYC) I'd like to be a little more impressed. I picked her up at noon, and she took a nap in the afternoon. My work schedule was a little chaotic since I'd taken so much time off to move, so Elmo was Lilly's babysitter as I struggled to get everything done. We ate dinner at 5:30, and by 6:30 I was feeling a little guilty that I had ignored Lilly all afternoon - I wanted her to get out of the apartment for a little bit. It was 100 degrees in the city, but Jon and I decided to take Lilly out - maybe walk around, find a playground, do something outside before bedtime.

So we left our apartment and walked down the hallway to the elevator, and the elevators were out. And the hallway smelled smokey. And we looked in the stairwell and it was solid white/gray smoke. Huh. Is our building on fire?

We live in a 36 story apartment building, and our apartment is on the 18th floor. We walked around the corner to another stairwell which was not smokey. We had no idea what was going on but decided to walk down the 18 flights to get out. Around the 6th floor stairs we ran into a lady who told us there was an electrical fire on the 24th floor. We got down to the lobby and it was solid smoke, with a bunch of firefighters. Huh. We ran through the smoke to get outside, and there were crowds of people with their clothes over their faces to not breathe in the smoke, and the doormen had their vests over their faces. More firemen, lots of firetrucks and ambulances. So yes, in fact, it was a good decision to evacuate the building!

We hopped in a cab to my sister's neighborhood, and hung out there for a few hours until our building said we could come back in. We took the cab back around 9:30 pm (Lilly fell asleep on the way back) and when we got inside our apartment, it was 100 degrees. Apparently the air conditioners and refridgerators were still broken, and half the building didn't have any power at all. *Sigh.* An hour later the power went out completely in our apartment and we started researching local hotels on our cell phones. But finally the power came back on around 11:30, including the air conditioning, so we got ready for bed and went to sleep. What an exhausting day!

So here we are today, hoping Lilly's second day of school will go better, and that there is no excitement or electrical fires today! It's going to be a nutty year, I'm thinking.