A few months back we learned of an organization for the benefit of families that have a parent with a life-limiting illness.  We expressed interest in their organization and they planned a free one day trip to New York City.  We were all pretty excited about this, as we are typically country-folk and have never had the chance to explore a busy city together!

I had been feeling more tired, short of breath and in pain lately and it seems like I haven’t recuperated from our overnight trip to Newport two weeks before.  But, our family had exciting memories to make so I pushed through the brain fog, pain and fatigue, packed myself up and away we went to NYC!

Our first event was the Broadway musical Wicked!  None of us have ever seen a Broadway musical so we were really impressed.  It was an incredible show with really talented people.  And imagine our surprise when the usher led us in right into the second row!  Thank you One Day to Remember!

Our next stop was Carmine’s restaurant in Times Square.  This was a fantastic Italian family style restaurant that we all loved.  Apparently, many famous people visit but we didn’t see any on our trip 🥸.  The food was great.  After dinner we shared a flourless chocolate cake - this was a BIG family sized serving of cake.   In our travels we’re becoming flourless chocolate cake connoisseurs!  We’ll be tasting flourless chocolate cakes all up and down the New England coast all summer long!   We agreed that the flourless cake at Sardella’s in Newport was much better! 

After our rather monstrous meal at Carmines we checked into our hotel.      I was absolutely spent so I took my meds and climbed into bed with my heating pad and I watched my family’s shenanigans from my perch on the hotel bed…

Don and the girls weren’t ready to stop looking for adventure and the girls asked him if he would come with them to look around the hotel.  I guess when you’ve never stayed in a hotel with 35 floors and you were 13 and 15 you might want to explore it too!  So off they went.  But before they went Emma asked if she could wear my slippers.  So, these are the L.L. Bean slippers that I pretty much live in.  I LOVE my slippers.  I never wear them outside because I’m determined to keep them in pristine condition.  I hesitated for a moment and decided that hey, there’s no reason to be uptight about this because it’s just an indoor walk and I can sanitize the bottoms of the rubber sole.  So I told her sure thing.  

Don texted and told me that since our hotel was so close to Times Square he was going to walk them over to show them.  I was so thrilled when he sent me this picture of them - they looked thrilled and they were even hugging!  

They came back with supplies for paper airplanes that they wanted to drop from our window on the 28th floor.  Then they set to making several different airplanes, cracking the window open as far as it would go, which was not much, and videoing their success or (lack thereof) “unsuccess”.  I watched all of this from bed and it was pretty fun to watch them enjoying themselves.  

The next day I was admiring the picture again and was surprised to see that Emma was wearing my very favorite pristine slippers in TIMES SQUARE of all places, and there happened to be what (appeared) as a discarded banana peel, of all things, just sitting right next to her foot!  This was really funny to me.  Things can be replaced… it’s “small potatoes” as my grandfather used to say.

We settled down to bed eventually and had a pretty great night of sleep.  We could see the view much better during the day and it was really neat to see NYC from so high up.  We were able to see the top side of some very large sculptures!

One Day to Remember had arranged a family photo shoot with a photographer that volunteers their time!  Have I mentioned how fantastic this organization is?!

We were in a rush to get pretty for our pictures, and pack up and check out.  We took turns braiding hair (theirs anyway lol) and putting makeup on each other.  

We met up with Emily of Emily Louick Photography and we had so much fun with these photos!

All in all it was a great trip and we’re so glad we were able to experience it all.  We’ll just add it to the Braman family memories!!

Pictures from this trip can be found in the gallery on caring bridge