Free New York!

New York is a fantastic place to live because there is so much to do here... if you're rich. So we are determined to see New York despite our lack of riches and therefore, for free!  (or at least as cheap as possible)   So just within the past few weeks, we have done quite a bit for free or close to free.  

First, we were able to go to the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) - thanks to Target Free Fridays.  It is as it says; the museum of modern art.  There are some pretty incredible paintings and pieces of art there.  Van Gogh's, Cezanne, Matisse and others were some included in their collection.  Some of the sculptures and more modern stuff was pretty interesting though.  You know the painting by Pollock that is famous because it is so controversial over whether it should be art or not?  You know, this one...

 

It is also here at the MOMA.  But the interesting part is that you can rent headphones, which can tell you about some of the paintings.  They give a very convincing description and explanation for this painting where you will certainly begin to see it as the work of art which they say it is.  click here  and you can read about it yourself.

We were also able to go to the New York Aquarium - thanks to Bank of America.  We get to go to museums and some other places such as the aquarium and the zoo here for free on the first weekend of every month just by showing our Bank of America card! This was a lot of fun and not very crowded with the weather being so cold out.  But most of the exhibits were indoors.  You just had to go outdoors to get from exhibit to exhibit.  There were some pretty large fish there and we were even able to see the shark's feeding time.  

Next, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art - thanks to Columbia.  We only saw about 3/26th of it because it is such a massive museum.  We were there for about 3 1/2 hours and that is all we had time for.  Luckily, we can go back any time with Derek's school ID.  It is an incredible museum though.  They have so many articles of history from all around the world.  So far this is our favorite museum and we've only seen a small part of it.

Of course, we decide to do all of this fun stuff at this most convenient time when our camera is broken.  So we apologize for the lack of pictures.  We will still try to keep you up to date on our adventures though.

It has been a very long time since we have posted anything on our blog, so this is our attempt.  The only downside is that we will not be posting any pictures.  "Why?" You ask.  Because our camera is broken.  The battery door on our camera broke about a month ago, but the camera was still working, until it didn't.  We thought it would be somewhat inexpensive to get fixed (and cost effective to fix it instead of replace it).  We were very wrong!  Because there was an electrical problem with the computer inside, it would have cost roughly $130 to fix it.  This means that we were not able to take any pictures during Christmas and New Years, which is sad because it was our first New Year's eve in New York City.  ...Life goes on.  Keep posted, once we've saved enough dough, we'll buy a new camera, because we need to have a camera to record our adventures here in the big city.

We had a great time in Utah over Christmas!  The highlights include:  spending time with family, Emily (Jamie's older sister) went through the Jordan River temple and was endowed while we were there,  we ate at Cafe Rio (which we had been craving for quite a while), we drove a car everywhere we went and did not have to travel by Subway, and it was fun to see Kaitlyn, Cole, and Carson double the size they were when we left Utah last August.  We had tons of snow (it snowed almost non-stop while we were there!), and we built an awesome snow fort in Derek's parent's backyard (which Ben and Derek probably enjoyed making and playing with more than the kids).  All in all we had a really great time, and really enjoyed being with everyone.  We are especially grateful to our families that fed us and let us hang out for a week.  The holidays always seem to go so fast, because here we are... already 18 days into January.  We continue to read everyone's blogs, and it seems like you all had great holidays.  We are excited for this new year and the challenges and successes it will bring.