Mallory's Graduation

I was SO lucky to be able to jet out to NYC to help Mallory celebrate her graduation from NYU.  I'm so so glad I was able to be there to show her how proud I am of her and see her graduate in Radio City Music Hall.  It was beyond surreal and I'm indescribably proud of her.  I arrived the day before her graduation and we spend a few hours shopping and eating delicious food, of course.  We made a quick stop at this little supermarket near her apartment.  She calls it the "Jesus Market" because it's always blasting Christian rock music and has this tasteful sign on the door.  I love it.

 The next morning Mom and Dad arrived and we met up for a delicious brunch at Vinyl and a quick visit to NYU campus before heading back to shower and change for the graduation.  It was so amazing to walk in to Radio City and find our seats in this gorgeous, historic theatre and wait for MY SISTER to walk in with the purple-clad graduates.  So cool.  

 The graduation ceremony was great.  Fun speakers and just the right length.  Then I got all teary watching Mallory strut her stuff across the stage.  I can't really express how proud I am of my little sister.  She's been through an awful lot in the last two years living in New York City and going to a very difficult and prestigious graduate school to earn a degree that will allow her to help people as a profession.  I'm just so proud of the woman she is and everything she has overcome.  It was a beautiful experience to be in the room when she graduated.  One I'll not soon forget.

 Dad, Mom, and I with the graduate!

 Radio City Music Hall.  Unreal!

We celebrated after graduation with the best Indian food ever at Bengal Tiger.  So many good choices were made there, as per usual.

 The next day we met up at Central Park and found some bikes to rent for a couple of hours.  It was blissful.  The few hills were a nice little workout and the rest was a gorgeous breeze in our hair in one of the most lovely settings.  There was much picture taking and some conjecturing over what might be happening behind some crime scene tape.  

It was my favorite activity.  It was so much fun to hang out together while getting a little exercise and seeing so much of the park.  I'd do it again in a second.

 After the park it was lunch at the Halal Food truck and then cake from Magnolia in Rockefeller Center.  

 Next was a brief jaunt downtown to check out our favorite shoe store, Shoegasm and a few other spots before rushing back uptown to make it to our show.  

Alfie Boe was starring in Finding Neverland and we had to see him.  It was SO fun to see this show again and the company was pretty great too.  Mom and Dad were even patient enough to wait after the show with us to see if we could get Alfie's autograph.  Alas, he snuck out another door.  He must not have known we were there.  He would never have left us hanging like that if he knew we were there. 

Our last morning we met up and went to the 9-11 memorial museum.  It was so wonderful.  They did a brilliant job of taking you back to where you were and reminding visitors what was happening at the time.  The individual stories tied in with survivors, victims in the towers, fire fighters and passengers that wove together to give an overall timeline and picture of the day and aftermath was really well-done.  So powerful and painful at the same time.  This was a piece of the steel from the exact spot on one of the towers where the airplane struck.  It was horrible to think about how much impact it carried with it to twist this enormous piece of steel like it was just a piece of ribbon.

 Every exhibit really was so beautiful.  This one might have been my favorite.  The remains of many victims are behind this wall and the artist created this mosaic by painting hundreds of times his memory of the color of blue the sky was on the morning of the attacks.

The museum was so beautiful.  There were hundreds of deeply personal glimpses into the lives of the victims with items found in the rubble afterward and somehow, miraculously, traced to individuals and returned to the victim's families sometimes months afterward.  A beautiful tribute to the lives lost and the heroes proved and national sense of pride and unity that resulted from the senseless violence. 

After the museum Mal and I ran to Shake Shack to grab some lunch which we ate at the memorial before rushing back uptown.  I had to pack and Mal had to run to her first job interview!  Which she ended up getting a couple of days later!  

It was a great weekend to explore NYC with Mom, Dad, and Mal and to celebrate Mal's amazing accomplishment.  Thank heavens for my sweet Glenn and dear friends who stepped in to help with the kiddos so I could skip town for a few days!