L.A.R.Z. Family: New York

I was thinking about New York a lot yesterday since it was September 11th. Sorry I didn't post this yesterday. I didn't get any fun computer time. Anyway, back in January of 2007 I went to New York for the weekend. My sister-in-law, Raney was a nanny there. She worked at Cyprus Credit Union with Cassi for a while and then moved to New York. She made a lot of friends at Cyprus and they all wanted to go visit her while air fare was cheap.

We tried to squeeze in as much as we could. We went to The Lion King. We took a ferry out near the Statue of Liberty. We didn't go to Ellis Island because that was a whole day trip and we were there for only a few days. We did some shopping. On the last day we walked to the Disney Store to get Ruby and Baylee a princess doll. It was further than we thought, so we had to run the whole way back to the hotel to meet our group. While running we had to find a Dunkin' Donuts. Lewis served his mission in Texas where they had Dunkin' donuts. He missed them. I brought a tupperware from home and bought a dozen to take home to him. At the time we were on a no sugar diet so he ended up eating one donut. As a side note, Raney is still going strong on the no sugar diet. Man, she is tough. Did I mention it was freezing there? We went there a few weeks too late. New York had record high temps. The week before we got there Raney was running in Central Park with 70 degrees. We we arrived the high was 20. Nice. We really did have such a fun time. I missed my kids and Lew, but I could have stayed about 5 more days.

This is the group that I went with. Starting from the left Ashley, Jessie, Ali, Becky, Raney, Me, Cassi, Mike, Hazey, and Danielle. We were shopping in Times Square.

We all decided to go to Ground Zero. We ate at a little sandwich shop near the area. I remember having a nervous stomach ache to see it. When we got to the actual Ground Zero, it was really quiet. There was a sort of reverence feeling. No one was laughing or playing. It was very sobering. I didn't think it would effect me as strongly as it did. The tears began and would not stop until long after we left. I wanted pictures, but it didn't seem appropriate to have a happy group shot at such a devastating, horrible place. At the time there was a lot of construction going on. They have a type of memorial set up. There are pictures that people took on display. The picture of the man above is one of them.

They have all the names of the people that died on this plaque. This is not the only one. The fence was lined with more.

The man that is touching the fence was yelling. He did not stop the whole time we were there. He was yelling facts about September 11th. He would say things like, "At 9:20, five New York firefighters rushed into the first building." I don't know what his story is. I think he must have gone a crazy from it all. If I lost a family member, I know I would have gone crazy too. It was really heart breaking to watch him. I can't remember what he was putting in the fence.

There is a second level to the memorial. On the lower level there are tiles on the walls. They were painted by children that lost a parent or parents in the attack.