Carnegie Chronicles: Great week. Big day tomorrow!

We’ve been in New York City since Tuesday morning, and we’re here because our daughter Jenna is singing with the Valencia Vikings high school choir on Friday night, April 9, 2010 at Carnegie Hall. It’s been a great few days. First stop? Central Park. Our mission? To find Balto, the statue of the sled dog who traveled miles through snow and sleet to bring diphtheria medicine to kids and families in Alaska in the 1920s. The animated movie was a favorite of Jenna’s several years back, and we ALWAYS hunt for the Balto statue when we have the good fortune of visiting NYC and Central Park. We always seem to get lost hunting for Balto, but we did eventually find him, and got some good pics.

April in New York City is a great time to visit. The flowers and trees are in full bloom. GORGEOUS!

After Central Park we walked down 5th Avenue to do some shopping. Jenna is a clothes horse, and she LOVED the H&M store. It’s huge and reminds me of Las Vegas, with the big ads.

I’m glad Jenna likes H&M, because you get A LOT of clothes for the money. She looked so cute today, in her ruffled H&M mini-skirt, black tee, leggings and boots. Here she is in the outfit sitting next to Ron at the 92nd street park on the Upper West Side of NYC. We made a special trip to this little park because it was featured in one of my favorite movies, You’ve Got Mail, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. The park is where the two main characters meet for the first time.

On Wednesday we headed to Brooklyn to meet up with my brother Christian, his wife Andi, and their six-month-old son Cassius. Cassius is a doll, and we were SO happy to finally meet him! He has the sweetest personality, and is really curious about the world around him for such a little guy! Check out his big, adorable, amazing eyes.

Christian and Andi’s apartment has a lot of character, and is a “railroad” apartment, where all the rooms are in one row from front to back. They are casual, hip people– Christian is a musician and Andi is a professor teaching acting. They know how to entertain– comfortably and casually. Here’s the cheese platter Christian threw together in a couple of minutes. It was PERFECT!

It was cool to see Brooklyn, as it has some neat neighborhoods and some pretty streets. Like in Central Park, there are lots of flowers and trees in bloom, and the brownstone buildings are unique, historic, and interesting to see. So different from our suburban world in Southern California.

I love how so many streets have buildings with stairs out front where you can sit and relax and watch people walk by.

There’s even this gorgeous park, Marine Park, that has a view of the Manhattan skyline, along the Hudson River. It was about 85 degrees in Brooklyn yesterday, so lots of sunbathers took advantage of the warm weather and nice view.

Today we had another great day walking around the Garment District of Manhattan, but the highlight was having dinner at Maze, a restaurant by Gordon Ramsay. The food, as you would expect, was exquisite. A fantasy for the taste buds! And after dinner we went to see Ron’s client Kelsey Grammer star in La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway. The show was so much fun, hilarious, and well done. Kelsey played the part of Georges, who owns a transvestite club in France. After the show we went backstage to see Kelsey. Jenna was thrilled to meet him, and when he found out she was singing with her choir at Carnegie Hall, he was impressed. “It takes a long time to get there,” he said. Here’s a shot of Jenna and Kelsey backstage.

What a night! After the show, as we were walking back to the hotel, a nice pedestrian took a shot of the three of us, happy and beaming from the incredible evening.

And we haven’t even gotten to the most important day of the trip– tomorrow at Carnegie Hall! Can’t wait to tell you all about it! Thanks for joining us for the Carnegie Chronicles. Stay tuned!