On a steamy New York City summer day, a little blonde-haired boy took a bite out of the big apple. Literally.

Our first night in, we walked down to Times Square where Grandpa Glenn procured this kitchy big stuffed apple from the Toys R Us store. It was cute, cheap and amused Sawyer for hours.

I thought Sawyer would be a little overwhelmed by the crush of people and noise, but after a while he seemed to handle it better than we did.

Times Square selfies!

“Is this structurally sound, dad?”

If it weren’t so expensive, I would have loved to look around this place. It’s a macabre museum on 42nd of the scary medical stuff people used to do back in the day.  Appropriate for a medical school graduation trip, no? 😉

Instead we went to The Art of the Brick and BodyWorlds. Appropriate for David, yes? 😉 You can read about that here.

The next day was graduation! But not until the afternoon, so we wandered Central Park for a while. As we wandered the sidewalks, the majority of the other people were tramping though the underbrush. It took sitting next to a New York Post reporter (distinguishable by his notebook and rushed conversation) to find out what was really going on. Real Estate billionaire Jason Buzi thought it would be fun to hide envelopes of cash in major metropolitan cities and watch the frenzy ensue from behind the safety of an “anonymous” twitter handle (@HiddenCash) that gave vague clues. That morning, the Twitter chatter had led to Central Park. While it would have been wonderful to find one of those $50 bills, it was also fun to watch the madness. Crazy things happen when you tell big crowds there’s some easy money to be had!

Sawyer was Ok with the crush of people, but slightly overwhelmed by the Central Park merry-go-round.

That afternoon, we got to watch David graduate from SGU, a newly minted medical doctor. It was a proud moment!

On graduation eve, David’s parents watched Sawyer back at the hotel while we explored Hells Kitchen, and the rest of New York. We found this fun little Thai-French fusion restaurant where we took no pictures and David thought the food was just OK. After that, we wandered around, eventually needing a bathroom.  “Hey, Toys R Us should have a bathroom,” we thought.

It did.

One. … On the third floor, which is only accessible by one rickety elevator.

After finally making it through the ginormous line and conducting our “business”, we joined the crowd of people who were trying to get back down. Three car-loads later, we weren’t anywhere close to descending.  A perturbed employee said, “come with me.” We then travelled through the dingy back rooms and warehouses of the Times Square Toys R Us.  Now how many people can say they did that? Ha ha.

Eventually our wanderings led us to Manhattans finest gay bars, Planet Hollywood (where the neon handprints are on display) and we even found the Naked Cowboy.

When we returned, Sawyer was sleeping peacefully in his hotel cage … er, I mean crib.

The Soup Nazi’s kitchen:

Sawyer’s first cab ride:

One World Trade Center:

We didn’t go into the museum (and pay the hefty $24 ticket price that never sees the pockets of the families! I have some serious rants about that). But we did walk around the reflecting pools. There is still an incredible feeling there and I was overwhelmed with emotion at times remembering that day and my feelings about my country.

The finale to our day was a trip to the yummy and mouth-wateringly cheap Papaya Dog.

This is not our first foray into the Big Apple and probably won’t be our last.  However, by the last day David and the folks were ready to kiss that noisy, smelly, busy city goodbye. A fabulously fun place to visit, but I prefer my wide open range, the smell of pine trees and my mountains made of dirt rather than steel.

See ya later you gorgeous city you! Muwah!