December visit with my parents

At the beginning of December, my parents came to visit us and see New York City.  They came down on Sunday afternoon and were staying in Times Square, so we just met them there.  We had bought them tickets to see the Rockettes Christmas show at Radio City, and my parents decided we should try to get tickets from the Tkts stand in Times Square.

My mom really wants to see Jersey Boys and Wicked, but Tkts pretty much never has those (from what I hear), so I literally spent an hour on the phone with them going over all possible musical options, which ones they would want to see, the priority of each show, and the maximum amount of money based on section they were willing to spend.  I love musicals, so I was happy to see whatever.  The Tkts place opens at 11 AM on Sunday, so I offered to go wait in line, figuring the line wouldn't be too long, and just meet up with them when their train got in.

Well first, the line is very long.  I waited in line for almost 2 hours.  That in and of itself isn't too bad, especially considering that we got orchestra section tickets for half off.  The bad was that it was very cold and raining.  And I was in line in front of some real winners (a know-it-all mother-daughter duo who kept breaking into show tunes that no one knew, the mother kept going on and on about how she could have almost maybe might have been an actress in NYC, and a group of ladies who kept encouraging the singing).  We ended up seeing Chicago, which was very good.  After dinner, we walked over to look at the tree at Rockefeller Center.  There were a lot of people ice skating and taking pictures everywhere!

On Monday, we met my parents for lunch and then they saw the Rockettes show in the afternoon.  On our way back to the train, we saw those people who dress up like cartoon/children's characters.  We happened to catch Elmo and Cookie Monster at the same time, so I got my picture taken with both of them!  Elmo is slacking though...I gave him a dollar and he couldn't even look at the camera!  No matter - Cookie Monster is my favorite anyway!

For dinner we went to Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill, which was all right.  We had a nice time, and the food was good, but I wouldn't be in any hurry to go back.  (I would, however, go back to Landmarc in a heartbeat.  Love that restaurant, and Marc Murphy is a super nice guy.)  We headed back to our apartment after dinner and watched some of the Monday Night Football game, and then they headed back to their hotel.

My parents were leaving on Tuesday right after lunch, so I met up with them and we went to the M&Ms store before they headed home.  My mom is a huge M&Ms fan.  I remember growing up she always had a 3 lb or 5 lb or whatever it was - a giant bag of M&Ms that she would snack out of.  She kept it in a big cabinet and it was always off-limits, but it was a mainstay of my childhood.  She had a blast at the M&Ms store!  The Red and Blue M&Ms were there while we were there, so my dad snapped some pictures of them.

The Red one caught him taking a picture and even struck a pose for him!