A Little Birthday Trip

Jocelyn just turned 3! I can't believe it! She acts about 16, but she still is all toddler with her energy and her running around and her sense of humor. I can't ever get enough of that little girl. Mikey and Jess decided to take her to Disneyland for her birthday and us three girls just couldn't turn down the chance to prove our loyalty to Joce and join her (and Mickey as well!). Scott was the dearest of all hearts and let me go down a few days early to hang out with Danny, then take the train to Disney and meet up with Babes and Steph. What a trip we had!!!

Everyone was so excited the minute we walked through those gates! I don't think Joce even knows what she's looking at, but it all got it her excited!

Danny stopped by to join us all at Disneyland! All five of us!!!!

Jocelyn was so excited to see Sully. She even told him a secret that got him really laughing. She wouldn't tell me what she said, but Sully kept eyeing her!
Joce dressed up in her Princess dress on her way to a Princess banquet where she got to meet all the Disney Princesses!
Jocelyn right after she ate a popsicle. It was soooo cold!
Us girls!

Three sisters in Disneyland!!!

As you can tell by this picture, Jocelyn was moving a million miles an hour the entire trip! The energy of that girl!!!
Jess got in on the Disney Love also!
The birthday girl herself at a fun birthday breakfast! She ate all of Babes' sausages, TWICE! Babes didn't even need to look away for Joce's little hands to slam on her plate and take two or more sausages. She just kept doing it over and over and over again! It was hilarious. However, not for Babes, she loves sausage!
When it came time to head home, we realized we had more people than cars! Mikey and his clan didn't need to rent a car since we offered to take them to the airport. Well, us girls had only rented a small car, so here is how we filled it:

Joce and Ev in the back in their car seats

Jess sitting on Babes' lap

a suitcase and two strollers also packed in.

Steph driving

I sat on Mikey's lap in the front with a suitcase (a check-on one) at our feet

Joce was able to sleep through it all

What a great trip! Thanks Scott for letting me go, and thanks Joce for turning THREE!

One Year Older and Wiser Too

Our anniversary!!! One year married, and many, many more to come. Scott and I went and spent a few nights in Sundance and had a few adventures. We took our little baby SUV out 4wheeling, and well...

We also took some great hikes, played a lot of games (thank you Scott), and ate some really great food. Inspired by Kristina, I asked the waiter if I could get every potato on the menu that night. He did it! I had a great potato sampler!

Here is our little cabin room where we stayed. It was so cozy!

Remember the 4wheeling? Here's some of what we did:

Well... (pay close attention to our front tire)

Scott taught me how to change a tire! A very useful little something to know, and to was surprisingly actually easy to do.

A few really fun hikes that took us all around Sundance.

Happy Anniversary Scotty!!!

Boise... Finally

We started off school just right! Perfect apartment, perfect long awaited vacation! I have been begging Scott and Jonny to take me to Idaho for about a year, and finally they decide to listen to me. We spent a day in Boise, then went to the most beautiful place on earth – Stanley. Wow, what a place! The Sawtooth Mountains are a must see by everyone that can breathe. I love the mountains; nothing is more beautiful than full pine trees covering the Sierra Mountains – but these mountains give the Sierra’s a run for their Tahoe-Ski-Ticket money! Go see them is all I can say! And while you are there, check out the breath-takingly clear lakes. Holy Catfish!

Now this is Scott's kind of Wall Street!

These boys will play ultimate frisbee anytime, anywhere. Yes, that is Scott in the middle of the lake!

Scotty with a big gun and a shot to kill! Doesn't he just look fit for the job in his favorite camo shirt?

Johnny and Scott took this same picture about 20 years ago. We are still looking for it to match it up to this one. What great friends!
The beautiful Saw Tooth Mountains. I totally understand why they call them that. It look like God just took a saw to these mountains, you can see all the little teeth!

Sarah might not be smiling because Scott looks like a convict.

Part of our rafting crew.
While we were out shooting, Nate took on the babysitting. While he might not look happy, he definitely loved being with those kids more than anything!

This little kid made our trip! This picture captures a hilarious story. Little Johnny (as we call Johnny's nephew Tyler since he looks just like him) was sipping on this soda NONSTOP for about 7 minutes. A few minutes after the sipping marathon, Dave Boren (Johnny's dad) gave a prayer to bless the food. Little Johnny just couldn't make it through the prayer. Arms folded the whole time, Little Johnny wet his pants in the middle of the prayer! We love this guy!

In case this pic doesn't speak loud enough... like HUGE gun is pointed right at Nathaniel Newman!

After church in Stanley, we went to BBQ some food by this beautiful sight!

Me taking some shots! For all you unbelievers, I even hit the target I was aiming for! Yahoo!

A nice float down the river after some really fun rafting!

For the most part, Nate and Scott were great with the Johnny's nieces and nephews... with this exception!

Hard-Core Scotty on the bike. Vroom, Vroom Baby!

The Ride Home

The ride home was fast. We stopped by Short Hills on our way out, tried to see Wicked (see ya later $300), caught the mets, stopped by Deb and Jaran’s in Colorado and didn’t get one ticket all the way to Provo! I almost got in a car accident about 3 blocks from out house, but I didn’t - we had a clean ride. Except for when we thought there would be a gas station at the state line and there wasn’t… for 40 miles. We whipped out the car manual to find out how to save gas and found that if you drive 50 miles an hour, and no air-con, it uses the least amount of gas. Yep, that’s 50 miles an hour in the middle of the desert where windows rolled down may actually be worse than windows rolled up. It was a long 40 minutes, but we made it, barely!

Then we got to spend some good time in California to catch baby Evelyn and the rest of the gang.

A Bit More on Boston...

When Mom and Steph were in town, we went to visit the Mansions. This is the Vanderbilt mansion... can you believe it! What a yard!!! We could set up at least 4 baseball games at the same time!!

We love baseball, even if it means sitting with the Green Monster. (Notice what shirt I am wearing!). Scott came to meet me at the stadium right after he got of work. Man we love Boston! Go A's!!!!!!! Stay in Oakland!!!!!!!

Not the best picture, but this is one of our favorite places in all of Boston. In the North End you will find a small little bakery that is PAKCED FULL with people at all times during the day. It's Mike's and they sell Italian pastries like you have never had them before! Scott loved the cannolis and I was obsessed with the peanut butter cookies. Oh how I will miss them. To Mikes!!!
We went into New York for the McCartney concert. It's as close as I will ever get to seeing the Beatles live, and it was amazing. I felt like crying with joy that the Beatles once were, and crying with sorrow that I missed that period of time. I should have been born in the 50's!

Scott and I hit up a Coldplay concert. It was the same tour that Mom, Babes, and Pati Noceti went to. It was definitely one of the best concerts I have ever been to! The band had such an irresistible stage-presence, and the camera guys were so prepared with killer lighting and music-video type filming. It was just the best! Then, in the middle of the concert, all of the sudden Coldplay pops up about 20 feet away from us out in the cheap seats! It made me feel so good that they would come out to me! The whole thing was just incredible (not the mention the free CD at the end). Oh yeah, we knew parking would be expensive, so we brought our bikes and parked about a mile away and just road up to the stadium. It made for a quick, traffic-free getaway.

Here's a picture of the chapel we went to in Cambridge. It was an old boiler factor, so the inside was super cool!

When Jess came to visit, we found a killer beach! We got to swim out to a dock and chill in the sun (we tried to forget the dock was covered with bird poop)!
We also all got to go to LDS night at Fenway!

August 2009

This month we got a great visit by Nate, Johnny, and Steve! We toured the city (I am becoming a great tour guide), found a great beach (thank you Scotty), and had a real lobster adventure. We found a place that let us pick our own live lobster and then we watched them boil it, and then we got to eat it. The weather was great so we ate outside and had a little fun at the same time!

What a mess we made!

And on the way to the beach, we got a nice visit from a huge bug...

Here’s the sad news. We leave Boston this month. I have had so much fun I can hardly believe it. The city is just wonderful. It’s perfect, everything about it. I knew it would be sad to go, but that sadness has stayed with me for 6 months now. One day we will return, I just know it.

One last Concord Cheese Shop visit...

MATCH

Who would have ever put me up for a math tutor… well I am and I like to think I’m pretty good (despite the fact I have to call my brothers every night as I prepare for the next day because I have no idea what is going on!). I also get to tutor grammar and I’m teaching English! MATCH Charter High School is just a block down from our apartment and in June Scott convinced me to walk in and see if I could help out at all. Well, they hired me as a Summer School teacher in July and I am having so much fun. The kids come from the inner-city and all have incredible plans of graduating from a 4 year university. I can hardly believe it when I hear them talk about it. Take DeShaun – “Well, I wanted to play professional basketball, but now I guess I’ll just have to go to college and get a good job instead” and he is serious about it. And he’s really good at basketball too, but he decided to transfer to MATCH, a school with no sports teams, to get a better education and go to college. These students are all banking on scholarships so they work as hard as humanly possible to get academic scholarships to schools like Yale, Dartmouth, NYU, BU, BC, etc. It is so impressing. I could go on forever about it!

July 2009

Not only am I lucky enough to share a birthday with my sister-in-law Jess (which one you may ask… I do have three), but with OJ Simpson as well. But this year – the big 2-5 I was able to spend in my beloved Boston – a place that holds my heart and soul and all my baseball hate (we don’t say Red So***). Scott and I decided to make a night of it. We started my birthday a day early with watching Waking Ned Devine, an incredible movie about everything perfect and wonderful. The next day I met Scott at work and we made our way toward Faneuil Hall. We headed over to a place we had been pretty excited about, yet saved for my birthday – Ned Devine's. It’s a bar at the end of Faneuil, but with a name like that I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately neither could Coors Light who decided to throw an invite-only party at Ned’s and not even invite me on my own birthday. Whatever – I wouldn’t have gone even if they did…

So Scott and I ate wonderful noodles at the Wok and still had a great time. (It’s over six months later and I am still holding a grudge) And thanks to wonderful moms (mine and scott's), I had a lot of presents too!

The Revolution Has Begun... Again

Boston dedicates this entire week to celebration of our Nation's founding. Yahoo for the Fourth of July. As I'm walking down the rainy streets of Boston, after spending time learning about Torries fleeing to Nova Scotia, I see the funniest thing. Its pouring rain, nearly everyone has umbrellas, and all of the sudden a Red Coat Soldier is sprinting past me being chased by two Patriot Soldiers. They look so real! The uniforms, the guns, the anger, the chase! Everyone on the street with me watches them run by and starts laughing. There is no follow up. No tour group watching a reenactment, no crew following up filming, just pure Revolutionary War. Go Patriots!