NEW YORK!!

I love NY! My Dad grew up in Brooklyn. Born in Chicago in 1903 to Swedish immigrants who decided they had to go back to Sweden and farm some more (?) and have 3 more children there, he was about 10 when the family all returned and settled in Brooklyn where his Dad worked as a ship’s carpenter. My Dad moved to the midwest to marry my mother in 1936 so we lived near Chicago but we made the drive many times to visit all the other relatives who never left that area. My Nanny and Pop Pop spoke broken English mixed with Swedish and were kind of exotic and foreign, but loving, to me. I got to ice skate in Rockefeller Center Plaza with my Mom and an aunt inside at the window having coffee, see the Rockettes at Radio city Music Hall (my Dad worked for a construction co. in the 30s that did some work on this), and of course he took me to Coney Island and the Statue of liberty and lots of places in the city. I loved it as a kid.
Spring of 1985 my #1 son and I went to look at colleges on the east coast where he was accepted-- We got to New York and just nixed anything else- he fell in love with New York and Columbia University. (Of course they had a reception in some tall building with a gorgeous view.) He got an American History degree and then decided he needed a “trade” so went for a masters in computer science from the U of Illiinois (His Dad’s alma mater) but wasn’t happy living in downstate Illinois with no building higher than 3 stories, so finished some of the coursework at NYU. He met the love of his life there and they lived in the city in Chelsea til they moved to Seattle late 2002 before Tatum was born in 2003. We loved visiting them in NY for many years! Unfortunately we don't go there as much now (altho my college roommates and I did have a recent reunion there.)

But tomorrow we are off to NY!!! We have long had a plan to take each grandchild alone somewhere on a trip when they are about 10. Well we didn’t get our act together last year but this year we are going to NY with NIklas who is now 11. We’re staying on the upper West side near the Museum of Natural History and have way too many plans for our 6 days and nights there (2 more than H’s tolerance for big energetic cities, but he’ll rally.) I hope the wifi works in the hotel and I can at least post some ipad blips of NYC thru the eyes of an 11 year old on his first visit to this magical place! We are all very excited!!