New York trip with my girl

Last week on Saturday my daughter and I went to NYC with her Girl Scout troop.  I found out a couple weeks before the trip that we were riding the bus down with the Girl Scouts, but we were on our own once we got to the city.  Which for us was great!  We spent Friday night finishing our plans. 

The trip down was quite interesting.  I brought my mp3 player with me for something to do on the bus.  I was curious about what all the menus on the mp3 did, that I started playing with them.  At one point I ended up formatting my mp3 player.  I had No idea what that meant, so I showed it to Ladybug.  She said "Oh my god mom!  What have you done?!?"  Me, "I don't know that's why I'm asking you."  Ladybug "You are Erasing ALL of your music."  Bummer, now I had nothing to do for the rest of the bus ride.  The bus company gave our bus driver the wrong address for our drop off.  So we rode around NYC for about 2 hours, while he tried to find 48th St. and 6th Ave.  We kept driving by the same places and the girls and parents kept shouting out "Look it's the Statue of Liberty again!".  At one point I said to my daughter, "Look kids Big Ben, Parliament".  She didn't get it, but I was very amused.

Ladybug and Julie on the
cover of American Girl

Once we were dropped off, in the correct place, Ladybug and I headed out to the American Girl store.  She has been dying to go there since she was eight.  So now at 14 almost 15 I've finally fulfilled her "Life time goal".  We had alot of fun looking around at all the dolls and doll paraphernalia.  I even decided to spend some money on a "photo shoot".  Ladybug brought one of her 4 dolls with her and now she and Julie are cover girls.  (2 of the dolls she inherited from my sister and I.  And the other I bought at as cheap test doll, before I spent the money on a Real American Girl doll.)
We stopped for some lunch at Five Guys, my daughter's new favorite place to eat.  I know it's weird, but we always get the grilled cheese, oh so tasty.
After lunch we headed out to walk to the Fashion Institutes's museum.  Here is where things got a little bit exciting.  I had printed walking directions to several different places, because Ladybug was afraid to go on the subway.  I looked at the wrong spot in the directions and so we ended up in Hell's Kitchen!  Of course the whole time we were walking Ladybug is asking me (because the streets were almost empty) "Are you sure we're safe?"  My answer was "Of course we're safe, we're just not in the tourist area anymore."  Once I realized where we were, I let her know we had gone the wrong way and needed to head back.  I didn't let her know till the next day, that Hell's Kitchen is a bad area, because I knew she would freak out and make us Really stand out.  I actually had fun with us getting lost, and I even asked her if we could look for DareDevil while we were there.

Alice with Alice in Wonderland

From that point on Ladybug decided we were going to use the subway, so I wouldn't get us lost again.  We did make it to the Fashion Institute, but the museum was showing men's period clothing.  I could have stayed forever looking around, but she was Not interested at all.  Our next stop was central park, because I had never been there.  We just walked around and talked.  It was so beautiful and I could almost forget I was in the middle of the city.  We went in search of the Alice in Wonderland statue, so my girl could have her picture taken with Alice. 



Me and Dumdum!

I also talked her into going the the Natural History Museum.  For two reasons, one I had never been there and two I wanted my picture taken with Dumdum (from Night at the Museum).  I was quite disappointed that the museum didn't look anything like it did in the movie.  We both enjoyed the museum anyway and I took lots of pictures.  And as a bonus on our walk to the museum, we got to go along the bleachers people would be sitting on for the Macy's Thanksgiving parade.  Yup, that's about as close as I'm ever going to get to being at the parade.

To top of our visit to the city, we had to go to 1D World!  One Direction just open the store the day we were there.  She was really hoping they would be there for the opening, but no luck. 
She did get to sign the wall, so now the whole world knows how much she Loves them.  I had to talk Ladybug out of buying a stand-up cardboard cutout of one of the band members.  We just couldn't bring it home with us on the bus, plus neither one of us wanted to spend almost $40 on it.  So she bought a t-shirt instead.

The bus ride back was as crazy as the bus ride there.  The bus driver took an hour and a half trying to get us out of the city and onto the highway.  One of the girls had brought the movie Brave with them, so we all got to watch it on the screens on the bus.  Ladybug and I chatted over dinner, that we brought with us.  And she thanked me for coming with her.
"Mom, I'm so happy that you came with me to New York.  I had so much fun with just you.  I know you've been very busy with the stuff for Duckling, so we haven't done much together.  But it was really nice to spend time just the two of us."
I had to hold back the tears.  I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful, thoughtful, and fun teen daughter, who still enjoys spending time with her mom.

~EarthyMom