She's Certified (or Certifiable?)

Saturday was Sara's last day of Dental Assistant class. She is now certified to be a dental assistant. She passed the class with a 94 average, and we are very proud of her. She has spent the last couple of days looking for a job in a dentist office. Her plans are to start taking some of her college classes in the spring (if schedule and finances work out), with long-term plans to get her degree as a Dental Hygenist. She knows it will be a touch road with a little one, but she is very determined and we know that she can do it.

New York Pictures

As promised, here are some pictures from my trip to New York.

These first three are in Central Park. The first is a few of the pond when you first enter the park from the South end and the second is Belvedre's Castle. Belvedre's Castle is now used as a weather observation tower. The third picture is under the Bethesda Bridge. The 'interior' of the bridge was totally refurbished to it's original state.

This picture is of the Flag of Heroes at Ground Zero. It contains the names of the emergency personnel that lost their lives during 9-11. This was the only evidence that we were able to find commerating that awful day.

This picture was taken on the subway on our way to Greenwich Village. The gentleman in the picture is Glenn. Glenn is a good friend of John's brother Jim. We met him in Louisiana when we went down there for Jim's memorial service. He became an instant friend and I am so glad that we had a chance to get together while I was in New York. He told me that the next time, I needed to make my flight home a couple of days later so he can show me Connecticut.

There are so many more pictures that could post, but I chose some of my favorites.

New York, New York

For those of you who I haven't talked to in a while, I had the amazing opportunity to go to New York City for work last week. It was amazing! We (myself, my manager and a co-worker) left Wednesday morning for New York to attend lots of meetings and meet some of the people that we work with in out of our corporate office. My manager and I were able to stay over Friday night so that we were able to see more of the city. I will try to get some of the pictures posted later this week, but wanted to get a post out there.

Wednesday after our meetings, we headed to a Korean restaurant for dinner (yummy food) and then spent a couple of hours wandering around Times Square. We saw Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, St Patrick's Cathedral and Grand Central Station. Since it was later at night, we didn't actually go into any of the buildings (except Grand Central Station), but the sites were unbelievable. Grand Central Station is, I think, more beautiful in person than what you may have seen on TV shows.

Thursday we went to Little Italy for dinner and had a scrumptous dinner on the patio of an Italian (what else) restaurant. Afterwards, we went to a place called Ferrara's for some really delicious Cannoli and espresso. With all that food, we had to walk a little bit, so we went over a couple of blocks to Chinatown. Unfortunately, since it was after 9pm, most of the shops were closed.

Friday was a pretty short day for us, so Bridget (my manager) and I left the office about 1pm after the other Dallas people had left for the airport and headed to Central Park. Let me tell you, that it is amazing what a beautiful area it is! We hardly could believe that we were in the middle of a large city. It is huge, and without the help of a map and some friendly people, we would have gotten lost in the middle of it. We went back to the hotel for a little rest, then headed over to Grand Central Station to meet a friend who was coming in from Connecticut. We went to Greenwich Village for dinner (found another great restaurant) and then spent some time wandering and people watching. We had a wonderful visit and didn't get back to the hotel until about 2:30am. Would have been later, but Glenn needed to catch a 1:49am train back to Connecticut since it was the last train of the night.

Saturday we headed down to the World Trade Center site. They have started construction on the site, so there wasn't as much to see as I had hoped. Got some great shots of the Statue of Liberty and visited the Irish Hunger Memorial. This memorial is an actual Irish cottage brought over from Ireland and reconstructed on the site, with native Irish foliage. Then we headed back to Chinatown to see what we had missed on Thursday night. It was very crowded with all of the "bargain" shoppers and the booths were very tiny. Had another great meal and then headed to the airport to catch our flight out.

All in all, it was a wonderful time and I hope I get another opportunity to visit New York again. Don't think I could live there, but definitely could visit more. We ate a lot of good food, but also did a ton of walking and were exhausted by the time we left. Both Bridget and I were asleep in the plane before we left the ground.