Home in the Big Apple

Crazy. That is probably the best way to describe our summer and the last couple of weeks. Luckily, we are done living in separate states! I'll just recap some of the exciting and fun things we've done since officially living in NY together.

That first Sunday together was actually our 1 year anniversary. I can not believe we've really been married for a year!! We have had the craziest year, but are so incredibly excited for where it is bringing us. Wes planned our anniversary date this year. He found this amazing restaurant. Giando on the Water. It was just across the river from Manhattan in Brooklyn. He planned it perfectly so we were eating during sunset. It was truly beautiful and a wonderful way to celebrate an amazing year of marriage. Here is to another exciting year!

The next couple of days I spent getting used to being in NY. One night after work I meet Wes to go to the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) for their free night. It is kind of an interesting, and odd place. Here are a couple of pictures. Actually the only ones we took...I was just very confused most of the time. I think I'm just used to my sisters amazingly beautiful, pretty, and realistic paintings. Either way, it was a fun experience.

Yes, thats a haystack...it was a "piece of art." All it did for me was make me sneeze....

More art...

Ok this was cool. A design to optimize the water space in the city. It is a model for apartment complexes that are over the river. 

Ya...not seeing the art. 

I have to say that it was actually more fun once we got home because we made homemade pizzas!! It is a total Collett tradition. Homemade pizza's have become our favorite and we've made them a couple times since. I am getting good at the dough! Needless to say, it was a TON of fun. We even took pictures... :)

(Ok I just want to say that our kitchen is never that dirty (I'm too afraid of cockroaches to leave it dirty). We had our sink fixed and I had to empty the cabinet. It ended up being bad since our oven is like a million degrees and melted everything on top that wasn't oven safe...it was bad)  

My pizza cooking!! 

I really was soo excited! (excuse the sweatiness. Our oven seriously makes our entire apartment a sauna)

The end result!! I was eating my delicious pizza by the time Wes' was done so I don't have a finished product for his...

The next week was an interesting one. It started with an earthquake and ended with a hurricane... Moving to NY was looking like a really bad decision. Luckily, we slept right through the hurricane. Lower Manhattan did have flooding issues and a lot of people were without power but we only had some tree debris on our side walks. We were glad it didn't end up being as bad as projected. Either way, we did our preparations! The most important? Our Hurricane Irene cake!!! We were extremely proud. 

Like I said, we really weren't affected by the hurricane. Our apartment is in a safe and protected area. Really our apartment is in a perfect area. Its really green and quiet. Wes did an amazing job finding the perfect apartment. 

The next week or so was spent job searching and watching a lot of tv! I didn't take many photos, obviously. But one night I got home from an interview and Wes gmail chats me saying, hurry back down here we have US Open tickets! Wes' boss was handed tickets that she didn't want to use so she handed them down to Wes! I ran back to the subway and we headed to the US Open! Best surprise, Federer was playing!! Worst surprise, over an hour of rain delay for the most annoying misting rain (especially because I forgot the umbrella...whoops!). Pretty much, it was such an amazing experience. Tennis sure is a different experience though. It was amazing watching Federer. They seriously hit the ball so fast and move even faster. Here are some pictures!

Federer serving. He seriously is crazy good. 

This is pre "rain" delay. 

They found Will Ferrell to entertain the crowd during the delay. 

US Open grounds. 

The US Open was so much fun! We felt that it was a necessary thing to go to as true New Yorkers. It was fun to hear all the different languages around us. 

Last, but not least, Wes has been playing in a basketball league in the city and last week his team won the championship!! Here is his team, and yes the lighting in that gym was really that awful. 

Also, I have been hired at a physical therapy clinic as a contracted athletic trainer. Pretty much that means the PT sends out an email with events for the next two months and I pick which ones I work at. I was supposed to start tonight with a high school volleyball game but it was cancelled so my first event is next week. I'm still hoping to find something more consistent and frequent, but at least this job provides some work. 

That is about it for our happenings recently. I'm going to try and be better about blogging. Promise! Hopefully I'll stop with the ridiculously long recaps. 

Passed the BOC!

Ok....yes I've been sooo lame I know, but I thought I would quickly post that I officially passed the BOC!!! (ok, ok, maybe I'm just really proud of myself). The BOC is the Board of Certification for Athletic Trainers. Pretty much, I had to pass if I wanted to actually be an athletic trainer... but it is even cooler because now my name can look like this:

Anna B. Collett, ATC, LAT 

(LAT means I'm licensed in NY to be an AT. Pretty much its stupid and means I had to pay more $$) 

So, hopefully I will post more soon. We've had an interesting couple weeks getting settled in NY finally together but we've had a lot of fun! I'll post soon. 

New York Trip #2

I've decided that since I'm officially in New York now I should probably blog about my last trip so I can get onto current things. This trip went a lot smoother than the first one. It might be due to the fact that Wes came and picked me up from the airport! It was nice to see a friendly face in the masses at La Guardia. 

We began the trip by going to see Super 8. Wes was dying to see it and somehow convinced me to go with him. It didn't turn out to be as scary as I had expected, but it also didn't turn out as good as we thought. Luckily we had got cheap tickets through LivingSocial.com (great site) so we didn't pay the full $16 for a NY movie. 

The next day we decided to go to the beach!! It was so much fun. I had never been to the Atlantic Ocean and was in desperate need of something remotely like a summer. We decided to go to Long Island for our first trip to the Atlantic. It was shocking to be able to play in the water and still be able to feel our limbs!! We played in the water a ton. We were like little kids jumping the waves, or really Wes was jumping the waves and I was just trying to get my head above them. Either way, we had SO much fun!! We knew that we'd need loads of sunscreen and I made sure we reapplied anytime we went into the water, but.....apparently sunscreen doesn't work the same way on the East coast. We got FRIED! And that still might be an understatement. Here are some pictures.

Due to our awful sunburns our adventures weren't as ambitious the next couple of days. Sunday we spent most of the day just trying to find some type of comfortable position to sit in and trying to keep cool (which is hard without central AC). 

Monday was our big fourth of July celebration. We planned on finding an awesome seat to watch the fireworks show over the Hudson river. We left the apartment early and walked around 5th avenue before heading to the river to find a spot. Here are some pictures from FAO Schwarz.

Jelly Bean man! 

You can make your own muppets! It was super cute and I loved looking at all the different muppets. 

A Barbie foosball table. It was hilarious! 

Then we went to Rockefeller center. We headed there with the intentions to just look around, but once we were there we decided to go up! 

I always forget how massive Central park really is. 

We got down to the pier around 2:30 for the 8/9pm firework show! We wanted to make sure we got a great seat to watch the most amazing firework show. And we did. We spent a lot of hours just chilling on this pier but it was totally worth it in the end. It was seriously a crazily amazing show. Here are some pictures! 

(Do you like the difference from the pictures on the beach?)

The fireworks were so HUGE! It like rumbled every time they went off. 

We were so excited!!!! 

Sadly, I had to leave again the next day. But we knew next time I'd be in NY was good so that was a little easier. 

And I have finally arrived in NY!! more posts to come soon. 

New York Trip #1

I decided that since I changed our main picture to a picture from New York I should probably blog about it. I have officially finished my online class and my mom and I packed the entire apartment yesterday so I decided I can take a little break to blog. I'll begin with the first trip to New York (which was June 16th...) and blog about my 4th of July trip after. 

This first trip was exciting because it was my first time ever going to New York! If you want some advice, don't fly into New York at midnight if you've never been and take a shuttle bus to an apartment you have no idea where it is...just saying. It was a little shocking to say the least. When I flew into La Guardia I swore we were going to land in the Hudson! Wes made fun of me, but if you ever fly into that airport, you'll understand what I mean. I then struggled to find the shuttle place but eventually made it. Unfortunately, the driver decided not to go straight across into Manhattan and drop me off first but he he decided to go clear down to the southern part of Manhattan and drive through every part of it before dropping me off last at around 1:30 am...I wasn't very happy about that decision when Wes explained his apartment is practically just across the bridge from La Guardia! Like I said, it was quiet the first impression. 

But everything after that, and by that I mean once I reached Wes, was perfect. 

The next day we started our sight seeing at Times Square. Wes showed me his office building and I walked down the street in awe of the craziness. I actually really like Times Square. I love the bustle and entertainment of it. 

We rushed through Times Square to make it to the ferry for the Statue of Liberty! It was seriously beautiful.  I could spend an entire day on Ellis Island just reading everything they have there. We probably would've if I hadn't got so hungry and drained. Wes just let me get overly excited and read everything I wanted to. I'm like my mom in the fact that I just want to know everything museums offer me! Here are some pictures. 

This picture was taken completely level. I was SO nervous the boat was going to tip over!

This is the main room in Ellis Island where so many people passed through to come to America. 

Can you tell that we were getting super tired by then? And very very very hungry. 

After Ellis Island we planned to head straight to lunch but got really distracted when we walked into the filming of Men in Black 3! Needless to say, it took us a lot longer till we made it to lunch. Here are some pictures of our distractions. 

Tommy Lee Jones just relaxing. 

If you look closely, that is Will Smith. He waved at me! 

This was down at the financial district and was so gross...

Ground Zero (Wes is an amazing husband and already got us tickets for the opening of it in September!) 

We FINALLY got food after waiting probably an extra 30-45 minutes in line for the famous Shake Shack. I know it is supposed to be a shack but....they should make it bigger. It was really good though. 

On our way home we decided that we'd stop at Times Square again and walk up to Columbus Station (I might be remembering that name wrong). We got very very distracted in Toys R Us....here are some more pictures! 

Coolest box of Nerds ever! 

I wish I knew children in New York so I could have an excuse to ride the Toys R Us ferris wheel! And yes that is IN the store. 

So one time I had this dream that Wes died and came back as Thor...so I made him take this picture. I can totally see the resemblance. 

For Sunday we went to Central Park. It is seriously so beautiful and I love that you truly can't hear the city noise once you get like 2 feet into the park! We saw some of the funniest things. Again...here are some pictures! 

This was a huge group of roller skaters just having the time of their lives. My favorite was the older man in all red spandex who spent most of his time changing his cassette player in his fanny pack. 

Wes enjoyed this man who kept trying to balance all 3 water bottles on his head. 

My personal favorite, the turtle pond! Especially as we watched this little turtle eat the moss off the massive turtle. It was hilarious. 

Sadly this trip was only two days, but I had a blast and am so excited to eventually move their with Wes. I was mainly happy to just be with him again, but it was also fun to see New York. Wes has just fallen in love with the city and I loved being there with him in the city he loves so much. Hopefully I'll post my second trip here soon!