Compliments of Zales Jewelers ...

We didn’t have a whole lot of time on Sunday but Caroline’s Spanish teacher had given her “homework” to do in New York.  Her teacher loved the Eloise books when she was a little girl and envisioned having breakfast at The Plaza Hotel just like her.  She got her opportunity and emailed me that she wanted Caroline to “get to” do it as well.  And if it’s homework you have to do it.

We enjoyed their breakfast buffet:

(Doesn’t Bill look a little like Daddy Warbucks in the velvet highback chair?)

We took a few pics around the hotel:

And then we headed back onto the town.  We had one more thing we wanted to do … if we had time.  We really wanted to ice skate at Rockefeller Center.

We got in what started out as a very long line.  We knew we needed to skate in the 11:00-12:00 session so we could make it to the airport.  The rink closes from 12:00-12:30 to groom the ice.  It became clear that we were not going to make it into the rink in time.  No one was leaving their session (can you blame them?!) and the time kept ticking away.

Bill decided that we should stick around for the 12:30 session.  We were first in line for that one and he thought we could skate for about 15 minutes.  Now, let me just say here, it costs $29 per person to skate.  So, it was going to cost 87 bucks for us to skate around a time or twenty and leave.  And that might have been fine back in the day when it was just me and Bill, but it seemed mighty expensive at this point in life.

So I said things like … “that seems like a lot” which turned into “that seems silly”, etc.  Bill said things like … “when will we have this opportunity again?  This is one of your favorite memories.”, etc.  And as I was mulling over whether or not to agree with him, I looked over and saw a sign.

Like, a literal sign that said … “12:30 session compliments of Zales Jewelers”.  And by “compliments of” I didn’t know if that meant they were sponsoring a contest or who knows what … but I intended to find out.  So Bill went and asked and sure enough!!!  Zales Jewelers was picking up the entire tab!!  Another Christmas miracle!

We had a BLAST!

 I did some pretty impressive moves:

One of the reasons we were able to get in when we did was because it started to rain.  Now people, rain is nothing more than liquid snow.  And we enjoyed that liquid snow … oh yes we did.  Thankful for it in fact.  Without it, the line would have been much too long.  And I mean really … it was free.

And it was very fun.  Very, very fun.

Kind of like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, Santa showed up at the end.  Wished us a Merry Christmas.

And here’s the thing …

One of those Zales diamonds might last forever, but let me tell you, the memories of this trip will last a lifetime.  Words can’t describe how much we enjoyed spending time with our oldest daughter … alone.  And while we missed the others, we treasured the time with her.

Thanks for the memories … New York, New York.