We ran into Whoopi Goldberg while shopping in Soho. We also went to my favorite pet store and saw a Mini Siberian Husky for the first time. Before the pet store, we stopped at Magnolia Bakery for their world famous cupcakes and banana pudding…delicious!

You will never believe me… We were sitting in a café one morning eating our bagel just like every other New Yorker does and a fire truck pulls up outside on the street. One of the firemen was wearing an Alabama (Roll Tide) baseball hat – how cool!

Mama - Levi and I hated to see you leave. I miss you so much already. Thank you so much for all the gifts you bought me while you were here and for all the gifts you always send me. Levi loves his toy and bones too - Spot is still in one piece!

Happy Birthday Mama! ILYMTTWWWABA! I can’t wait until Thanksgiving!

We spent most part of each day shopping and we never missed a makeup shop! While walking around, Kathleen found a way to pass time – taking pictures of numbers and sewer caps. She actually got a lot of great pictures!

We went by Mood Fabrics – more material than you have ever seen in one place at one time. If you watch Project Runway, you may remember the designers running through this fabric store in a frenzy. We also walked through Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. The highlight was seeing the old original newspaper printing press letters. I think we spent about an hour deciding which letters we wanted to buy. We toured the Guggenheim Museum – too bad the scaffolding was covering the entire outside of the building!

Dinners each night were a lot of fun, especially our interesting dinner in Little Italy. However, I have to say that Butter night club topped off our week! We had so much fun! I had so much fun with you Kat and I am so glad you were able to visit. Come back and we will hit Butter on Monday night!

We spent all of our time in the golf club hitting golf balls off of the second floor of the driving range. The balls are actually hit out onto the pier which is surrounded by nets. The view is amazing as you look out past the pier over the Hudson at New Jersey with boats docked on both sides.

The balls automatically pop up on the tee for you ready to hit. After you hit, the next one pops up and tees itself up. We both hit some nice drives out over the pier and we had so much fun we’re ready to go back again!

The torch was replaced in 1916 and the original torch resides in the monument’s lobby museum. We went up to the top of the monument, but no one has been allowed back in the statue up to the crown since 9/11. The views of NYC were even better from the monument.

Next, we took the ferry to Ellis Island which used to be the main entry facility for immigrants entering the United States from January 1, 1892 until November 12, 1954. More than 20 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between these years. The main building now houses a museum in addition to being a historic site.

Thanks to Jill and Jeff for hooking us up with passes and allowing us to skip all of the lines with them. Being a Saturday, this could have taken all day long on our own. We ended up going out to lunch and had a nice dinner together later that night. We had a great time with you guys and look forward to getting together again soon!

We went to the Central Park Zoo this weekend for "Chill Out Weekend". The highlight of the zoo was the penguins and the sea lions. Neither one of us have ever seen penguins before (that we can remember at least), and they sure were interesting birds. It was fun watching them waddle around, swim up to the glass to look at us, and dive out of the water onto land.

The sea lions put on a heck of a show - and they are very smart. When the feeding crew came out, they were ready. They were giving high fives, doing hand stands, clapping, and diving off the rocks on command. We also saw a couple of polar bears (all sprawled out taking naps), some colorful birds, monkeys, and snakes. A good time overall!