New York, New York!

This little guy, Basil, is the only kid that got to come to all the funeral festivities. I thought he'd be bored out of his head, but he managed to entertain himself pretty well.

I wish we had more group shots, but this is the best I can do. There's Uncle Mike, I think Uncle Ali from the back (but there are a lot of uncles with flowy gray hair), cousin Corrine, cousin Diana, not really sure. Nice people, all.
This is the Van Vorst side. Uncle Dave, Aunt Barbara and their kin. Cousin Mark actually lives in SLC, so we were able to have a decent sized chat with him. Turns out it was tricky to find things in common with a lot of the crowd. I think usually in these situations you focus on the deceased, but since I never met her and AJ barely knew her . . .

Hey, at least people like to talk about babies.

Here I am with my old mission companion, Carlynne. She lives in Harlem and is one of my favorite people in the world. We got to spend most of a day together. All our plans didn't really work out, but we managed to have a great time anyway. A Little Chinatown wandering, including an emergency bathroom trip for me, catching up in the Marriott lobby while AJ got the car. Before that, losing the ticket lottery TWICE. Eating in Little Italy, stuff like that. It was great!

Here's AJ and me in Chinatown. One of the lessons of this trip is do not try to drive in Chinatown on the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration.

Here I am, looking all cute and pregnant in front of a billboard of really old naked women. It was too funny not to capture by photo, decency be danged!On our way back we stopped in DC because I can't sit in a car that long anymore. Here's AJ in front of the Capitol Building. You may notice his feet aren't going down into the snow, and some little kid is sliding on it. Hard and slick as ice, this snow in the East. Since my balance isn't that stellar to begin with, I stayed off it. But isn't AJ so precious in this picture??

What I can't believe we don't have pictures of is us with our friends the Stevensons. Clint and Andrea are both friends of mine from school, and they now live in New Jersey with their adorable and fantastic and well-behaved little boy Elijah. Andrea is the same amount pregnant as I am. They let us stay with them the whole time we were up there, and it was a blast! The only problem is we all stayed up way too late talking every night. Elijah was so fun, I think especially for AJ. Elijah likes escalators, doggies, and birdies. And cold white hot chocolate. And jumping. And gum.