The Mann Family take New York

During the month of December I took on the mammoth project of watching 25 Christmas films in 25 days. If you read my stuff on Digital Hippos you may be aware that I failed in my mission and only reached 19. I did watch about 3 more than that but never got around to the reviews. That's because my entire family arrive on December 21 for 2 weeks of sight-seeing, eating, Christmas and New Years Eve. As you can imagine, I spent the two days before their arrival madly cleaning and making the necessary preparations (much to Timon's boredom). I arranged for my parents to rent an apartment 1 block from ours and my sisters would be sleeping on our newly acquired sofabed (refer to earlier post on this nightmare). The rented apartment was slightly stressful because I found it on a non-regulated website and had already handed over masses of cash in the form of a deposit, sight unseen. Luckily when we checked in on the morning of December 21 the place was clean and pretty cool - much bigger than our own apartment - AND it had a washing machine. We set it up with new bedding (the existing stuff was yuk) and stocked the cupboard with tea and coffee. Back at our place we decorated the Christmas tree and made some dinner for later.

When we arrived at the airport we had some stressful moments trying to figure out which area they'd be arriving in. Seeing my parents walk through the sliding door was pretty exciting and all the anxiety just went away. Timon went and found the guy who would be transporting us all back to Manhattan in a fancy limo! Yes, that's right - mum had asked me to organise some special transport for the weary travelers. It was awesome to a) not have to get back on the subway which takes over an hour and b) see the city from a new, fancy viewpoint. When we arrived at my parent's apartment it was bucketing down with rain in the perfect New York welcome.