Day 3

It's a New Year, a New Day! Our third day came too soon. No one wanted to wake up. Finally, we did and Justin and I went to eat breakfast at the hotel. We were checking out of this hotel that morning and all had to shower and pack up. I think we actually walked out of the door right at 11 am.

We drove over to Shane's mom's in Closter, NJ. We gave them thier presents and made plans to have dinner there. We then left to finish out our NJ plans.

First stop, back to Maywood, NJ to Velocity 17. We had purchased 4 Groupons, 1 for each of us, for the high powered go-carts. WOW. These things are not a joke. It's hard to steer and goes really fast. It was a lot of fun for us. However, just a thought, if you have people who clearly have not been there before, it might be nice if you let them go on their own instead of letting Joe Schmo who is there every weekend get on the track with them. The main reason that this is annoying is because one of the rules of this track is that when you get lapped by someone, when they come around again, you have to pull over and stop to let them pass. This causes you to not be able to build up a flow and groove, if you will. So, it was a little frustrating. Groupon # 5 was done!

We then drove up to Nyack, NY to go to the Palisades Mall. This mall, is insanely huge. It's not the largest mall in the world or anything, but still. WOW. Four floors, full sized stores, a ice skating rink, bowling alley, theater with IMAX screens, ferris wheel and tons of other stuff all inside one giant mall. I was blown away.

The whole reason for going to the mall, other than to witness it's awesomeness, was to go shopping in the Body Shop. I had purchased Groupon #6 for there. I was able to get an amazing deal which I will detail later in my Groupon blog.

We did a little other shopping and headed back to Shane's Mom's. She made us an amazing dinner! It was so nice to be able to sit and have dinner with our family.

After dinner, we all loaded up into their SUV and drove into NYC. We checked into our hotel which was in the financial district, the downtown area of NY. We could see the Statue of Liberty from our hotel room! Oh my goodness! What a view! Aerin and Justin decided they wanted to stay in, so we headed out with My mother-in-law and Shane's sisters to explore Rockafeller Center. We took the subway up there. My first time on a subway...it's really not that bad.

We got to Rockafeller Center and got to see the Christmas tree and all the lights! It was amazing. Sandy bought us tickets to go up to Top of the Rock observation deck. So amazing. If you ever go to NYC, you should definitely do this. We went up 70 stories and out onto the deck. You could see all of Central Park, the Empire State Building, and most of the city. Of course we were there at night, so you could see everything lit up.

We then did a little bit of shopping in Times Square. The stores stay open til 11-12 at night! Whoa! We went into the Forever21 store and it has 4 levels!

After that we headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep!