For the past three years, my friends and I have taken our kids to New York City to spend a day just before Christmas. This tradition started out as a conversation with my friend Karen. Our families had all just participated in a live nativity together, and she was talking about wanting to take her kids up to see the Christmas lights. When I told her that neither I nor my kids had ever been to New York City, we began to plan immediately for a trip for the next week, just before Christmas.

That first year, we had around 24 people in our crowd. Four of those were the moms, and the rest were little kids and teenagers. We were a bit of a hot mess trying to keep everyone together, but we had a great time! As per our usual field trip agenda, everything we had planned cost little to nothing, but we were still able to see a lot of stuff and we definitely covered a LOT of ground. Something like 10 miles…

I did a lot of research for this trip, and I was having a hard time finding a place to park two 15 passenger vans that wouldn’t cost us a fortune. I finally came up with the cheap solution of parking on Staten Island which cost us $8 for the whole day and then rode the ferry over to the city. The only caveat was that we would have to walk from Whitehall Street all the way up into Manhattan. This is a 4 mile walk with no stops along the way. We had multiple points of interest, so it ended up being a few extra miles once we had our route planned out.

A few of our stops that year included Ground Zero, The American Girl store and the Lego Store. We also stopped at Washington Square Park so the kids could run around for awhile. Yes, even after walking for miles, our kids needed to run and play. While we were at the park, we discovered that there was a film crew shooting for the show Blacklist Redemption. A few months later I looked up the show and found the episode from that day. Even though you couldn’t see any of our crowd, you could definitely recognize the sound of our kids screaming in the background! After that, we walked past several store fronts to see the Christmas displays on the way to our last stops at Rockefeller Center and Times Square.

We decided that first year to pack our dinner and stop for some authentic New York pizza for lunch. The waiter was mildly horrified when I asked him if the kids could have pineapple on their pizza. How was I supposed to know that pineapple on pizza in New York is a faux pas? Well, the tables turned after dinner, and I ended up being the one mildly horrified when I got the bill for dinner. We had only ordered 3 large pizzas with one topping each. After leaving the tip, I walked away with $100 less in my pocket and a vow to never buy pizza in New York again.

Our original plan that year was to walk up to Times Square, see everything we wanted to see and then walk back to the ferry and be back to our cars in time to eat our dinner. If you’ve ever been to New York City, you probably know right away that my plan would never work. No one can cover that much ground on foot and be finished by dinner.

We made it to Times Square by 6:00 and most of us wanted to cry when we realized that we would have to walk another 4 miles back to the ferry. We didn’t have money for a bus ride for that many people, and for whatever reason, none of us considered the subway. There was a man in Times Square that told us about a free bus that would take us back to the ferry. Needless to say, we were ecstatic and rushed to catch the bus which was indeed free and did indeed shuttle people to the ferry.

When we got off the bus, we discovered that we were at the NYC Ferry, NOT the Staten Island Ferry where we needed to be. We were still 4 miles away from where we needed to be. We were exhausted and hungry and weren’t even completely sure which direction we needed to start walking.

Thankfully, we had covered our trip in prayer, and God sent us a kind security guard at the NYC ferry who heard our sad tale and hooked us up with a FREE bus ride all the way back to the Staten Island Ferry. We had the whole bus to ourselves, and the kids sang Christmas Carols for our friendly bus driver all the way back to where we got off. It was truly a Christmas miracle in our eyes!

The second year went a bit smoother as we “discovered” the subway. We still parked at the same place, took the ferry and walked up to Manhattan, but this time we had a ride back planned for when we finished the day. We added a few stops this year and left some from the previous year out. Our crowd was made up of 25 kids and 5 adults and we walked 11 miles.

One of the highlight for this trip was stopping for lunch in Washington Square Park and meeting the “pigeon man”. We all had a chance to hold some bird food and have the birds flock around us, some of which ended up sitting on some of our shoulders, arms and even some heads!

The kids also enjoyed a trip to Dylan’s Candy Store. I mean, hey, what’s a few pounds of sugar between 25 kids when they’re going to walk it all off anyway? Am I right? It was a good trip.

Last week we took our third annual NYC trip. We had a slightly smaller group with 6 adults and 16 teen and kids. We decided to change things up a bit and after riding the ferry over, we took the subway all the way up to Central Park and spent most of the daylight hours exploring this beautiful park in the middle of the city.

I had a lot of stops planned for the day, but after a bumpy start that didn’t get us off of the subway until 12:30, we had to skip most of the southern end of the park so that we could make it to Rockefeller Center and Times Square to see the lights by the time it started to get dark. We walked to the Lego Store and then rode the subway again back to the ferry. Even with riding the subway up and back, we ended up walking nearly 15 miles before getting back to our vans!

All of these trips have been amazing memory-making experiences. Each year has been a little different. We’ve seen different things, had different people join and have stayed longer and walked more miles each year than the previous. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the bags that we pack for the homeless people each year.

We pack gallon bags with things like water bottles, granola bars, raisins, hand wipes and toothbrushes. We also stick a scarf in each bag that my mother-in-law makes each year. The kids each carry a backpack to hold their lunch as well as one of these bags. When we come across a homeless person in our walk through the city, the kids give them a bag and wish them a Merry Christmas. This, more than any of our other New York traditions, is what makes these trips so amazing. To see our kids being able to bless those less fortunate and to see them being the hands and feet of Jesus is truly a blessing to be a part of.

Next year, we’ll be going to New York again. We might try something new and walk the Brooklyn Bridge and maybe we’ll see some of Central Park that we missed this year. I know that we definitely will be packing our bags for the homeless people in the city again, and we’ll be praying that our little Christmas tradition blesses many and that in doing so, we are able to point others toward Jesus as we celebrate His birth.

Merry Christmas!