Thanksgiving

Wow I can't believe Thanksgiving has already come and gone. It was such a great experience this year! Katie and I made our Thanksgiving feast and Everything was delicious. We were able to put a make shift table and chairs together and a serving table too. It was Katie, Jeff, Trav, me and another friend of the boys from their program. It was weird to be away from family, it makes you appreciate them and all the work that goes into cooking so much more!

It is amazing to me to reflect on this time of year and realize how truly blessed I am and how much I have to be thankful for. Sometimes it is easy to loose sight of those things when life is busy or stressful.

We were able to go to some friend's place that live right were the parade passed, it was awesome. See below for some pictures of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and our FEAST!!!


WEEKEND IN DC
After our great Thanksgiving we were able to go down to DC for a few days. It was great! We hopped on a bus on the way down, $25 and four hours later we were there. We had a great hotel right near the capital. Let me just say DC is sooooo clean. The subways there are really really nice. Of course I am comparing it NY where the subways are disgusting. There is also a lot to do there, lots and lots of museums and history. And the great thing about it was that pretty much everything is FREE and on a student budget that is AWESOME. So we were able to go on a tour of the Capitol, Air and Space Museum, Holocaust Museum, Arlington Cemetery, watched the changing of the guards, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and reflecting pool, White house, Ford Theater, Vietnam Memorial, WWII Memorial, and I know I am probably missing a few things. All and all it was really fun.......except the ride home, we made the mistake of taking a CHINATOWN to CHINATOWN bus. It was not a very nice bus and it was stinky, not only that the driver was terrible and we were all nauseous from the ride, the ride that was 6 1/2 hours!!!!!


Thanksgiving!!!

DC

Rick and Brittany come to VISIT!!!

I know, I know I have been terrible at blogging the last couple of weeks, but I am getting on it today! Just to update you New York has been awesome, Christmas time marks the half way point, which when we came out here was the only thing I was looking forward to. But now that we are half way I am kind of sad. The time has gone by so fast, it really has been so much fun. The city is getting decked out with Christmas trees, lights and decorations, it is so fun to see it all.

Other than that Trav is still really enjoying school. He is super busy right now as he is in the middle of finals, so I probably won't see him much this week, but we will have a month in Salt Lake to hang out with family and friends, I am excited!

Two weeks ago Rick and Brittany Mason came to NY to visit. We seriously had so much fun, it was great to have friends out here! We were able to do a lot of fun things and they were able to see Christmas in NY in the making so that was great too! Here are a few of the fun things we did.....

Brittany and I were able to go to FAO Schwartz and play on the giant piano, that was a first for both of us!!!


We went to Rockefeller, Saks and Macys to see all of the Christmas decor going up. We saw the New Years Eve ball in Macy's it is really cool!



One of my favorite things was when Brittany and I went to Canal street....we literally went into just about every little shop we passed, we were down there for hours, it was a lot of fun. It was the first time that I was able to spend some time down there looking, because there were no boys :).

We also did Little Italy, Wall Street, Ground Zero, Times Square, St. Patricks Cathedral (we saw a wedding there), Central Park, Grant's Tomb and the Brooklyn Bridge....

Another really cool thing we were able to do is attend our Stake Conference, Elder Holland was in town so he spoke at the conference. It was such a good talk and testimony that he shared. It was neat to see him speak in a setting other than General Conference because you could see by the tone of his voice how passionate he is about the Gospel. Elder Holland talked a lot about the trials in life we will go through and that it may be easy to fall away from what you believe, but that it is so important to stay close to God so you can get through whatever it is that you are going through. Another thing he said was that "everything is going to be ok". As simple as that sounds it was so comforting to hear an apostle of God tell you that "everything is going to be ok". Sometimes I worry and stress about things that are beyond my control, well not just sometimes, ALWAYS. But I am working on knowing that if I do all that I can in whatever circumstance is that I don't need to put myself through the torment of not thinking I am doing enough.

All in all we had such a great time with Rick and Brittany, thanks for coming out guys!

Connecticut

As I mentioned Trav's parents were in town for a conference for Ben's work. It was a builders conference and Trav and I were able to take the train to Connecticut for the day to do a home tour with Ben and Deb. Unfortunately we didn't take very many pictures, but these houses were really amazing. There was a lot of neat woodwork throughout, kitchens the size of our apartment, sitting rooms off all the bedrooms, seperate closets for just shoes, huge garages with ridiculous cars, butler kitchens, two story librarys, etc. Let's just say they were amazing. I really bummed I don't have more pictures. But thanks Ben and Deb for letting us tag a long! Oh and Connecticut was beautiful I was amazed at how pretty all the streets were and all of the huge trees with the leaves changing it is like in the movies.

Weclome to Miami!

So we just got back from a week long vacation within a vacation......so well deserved right? No not really but we had a good time! Travis had a conference in Miami for school and since he had a few extra days off class we decided to make a vacation out of it. Of course Jeff and Katie came too, so while the boys went to boring conferences ;) the girls went to the beach. And when I say went to the beach I mean walked out the back door of the condo and went to the beach EVERYDAY! We were really lucky, we found a condo that was newly remodeled and literally right off the water. We booked it on homeaway.com this is my new favorite website to book condos for when we go out of town. You can get really great deals on things and so far with the places I have booked they have been awesome. Now for a plug for Trav's parents condo in Kauai they have it listed on homeaway so check it out, we went with some friends last year and it was a lot of fun. Let me know if you are interested so I can get you the friends and family discount!!!

Other than the beach in Miami we drove and walked around the city and South Beach, ate yummy food, went to a Halloween extravaganza, downtown in one of the main shopping plaza there were hundreds of people dressed up in costume, it was crazy. Katie and I saw HSM3, and yes I know I am 26, but it was fun! We also went to Michael's Crafts, we can't find any craft stores in the city so we had to take advantage of the chance we had to go get scrapbook paper for a little project we are working on. I am all rested up and now have a little color to my skin, it was a fun trip but is also fun to be back in the city to finish watching the leaves change.

The beach out our back door!

South Beach in the evening. And no I am not pregnant it is just the shirt!

Trav striking a pose

This was pretty funny these girls came to the beach to take some pictures, the were crawling in the sand and jumping in the waves :)

The Big Apple with Ben and Deb

A few weeks ago Trav's parents came to town for a conference and we were lucky enough to have them stay with us for a few days. It was a lot of fun to have family out here. It was Ben and Deb's first time to NY so we were able to see a lot of fun things, in fact most things Trav and I hadn't done or seen yet.

We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset it was really beautiful and I was really surprised that there were so many people, it was pretty crowded.

Ben, Deb and I went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. It was really neat we did the audio tours and it tells you so much about the history. It was fun to go to Ellis Island, Deb had ancestors come through there at the turn of the century and we were able to find their name on the wall. The Statue of Liberty was really cool too it is huge her index finger is eight feet long!

One of my favorite things that we did while they were here was go to see Wicked. I hadn't seen that play yet but knew it was a must while we were out here. I am so glad we did it was an amazing play and definitely recommended.

We were able to go to the Frick Museum, Rockefeller Plaza, the top of the Empire State Building, Grant's Tomb, Times Square, the Flat Iron building, Macy's the largest department store in the world, we stopped by Canal Street, Soho, Little Italy. Wow we did and saw a lot, needless to say Ben and Deb wore me out I needed a day to recuperate! We had so much fun and can't wait for more visitors!

SOOO Funny

Ok this was seriously so funny I had to post it!!!! I hope you enjoy.....

Catch up!

I feel like I am always playing catch up with this blog I need to be more on top of it!!!

First off a shout out to Nikki and Dave Stokoe on welcoming their baby girl Sophie on September 28th she is a doll, but how could she not be! I can't wait to meet her!
I also missed some birthdays Sean, my brother in law, was on September 25th happy freaking birthday!!!

Jesse my nephew turned five on September 17th he started kindergarten and lost his first tooth this week, love and miss you HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Owen another nephew turned 2 on September 8th. He is such a cutie and can't believe he is two. Love you big guy Happy Birthday!!!

And another shout out to Hannah Banana my niece that just turned NINE wow I can't even believe it, we love you so much and think you are such a great kid! Happy Birthday!!!

One more shout out to little Maggie, my sisters baby girl, she is still having health issues and is not growing as fast as the doctors would like so keep Maggie and her family in your thoughts and prayers! Love you guys!

In the last few weeks it seems like we have been able to do and see a lot of things. Most of which I don't have pictures, of course! My all time favorite thing that I have done since we have been in NY is seeing SARAH MCLACHLAN.....I know this was seriously the best thing ever. I don't know how or why I was lucky enough to get tickets to this really small promo she was doing but I am sooo happy I did. This past Monday Trav and I went to the TimesTalk theater in Times Square the venue sat less than 400 people, we were on the third row and Sarah Mclachlan was promoting her new album, she was interviewed and then performed three songs. It was just her and her guitar and piano so surreal, I know I know I sound like a dork but for real it was the one performer that I absolutely love!!!! Oh and you really need to check out her two new songs I just keep replaying them, I love it.

Yes that is where she sat and no we couldn't take pictures when she was on stage :(.

What else have we done? Oh Katie's friends from SLC came out to visit, the were so nice to let me tag a long. It was a lot of fun to have them come out for a girls trip we got some fun shopping in and were able to see two broadway shows, Legally Blonde and Mary Poppins both of which were great!


Oh and I WON!!! Yes that is right the girl who never wins won tickets to David Letterman. I got online about a month ago and requested tickets to the show not thinking that I would get them, I heard they were really hard to get. Anyway someone from the show called me and left a message so I initially thought ah man I missed my chance then I called back and left a message and then they called me back again. They actually called while Katie and I were down in Central Park watching David Blaine hang upside down, which by the way was not that cool. Anyway they gave me a trivia question to answer it was "Rupert G is on The David Letterman Show, what does he do?". I don't know how I answered correctly but I did he is the deli guy. I was super excited, we went last Wednesday we saw Kate Walsh, the director of Pushing Daisies and Darius Rukker. It was fun to see how the show all came together.

Trav wouldn't take his picture with me the little nerd so it is just yours truly

Regis and Kelly! Yesterday Katie and I decided to go down to the Regis and Kelly show and stand in the standby line. We got there at 6:45 and there was already a line :(. After three and half hours of waiting we were finally let into the second taping. It was really neat to be on their set, it was a lot smaller than I imagined. We saw Jason O'hara from Life on Mars and then we saw a chef.....it was cool, I would totally do it again.

Yeah we look good we woke up so early!!!

We went to Connecticut last weekend with Katie, Jeff and MaryLyn for Jeff's birthday weekend. It was a lot of fun, we stayed in Milford which is really close to New Haven. We went to visit the Yale campus. It was really amazing it is seriously so old I couldn't believe it the buildings and architecture are beautiful and similar to places in Europe. So we spent some time on the campus and then we went down by the beach, which was also very beautiful. There were some really neat beach houses that lined the beach. It was fun to get away from the fast paced city for a weekend. Thanks for making it great guys!





I have so many pictures I think my next post will be just slide shows!

Pictures!!!

Well it feels like it has been awhile since I posted last, so this is the third post for today just to make up for it :). So far so good out here in NY. I really can't complain, Trav is loving school and now that we have adjusted to the city things are getting easier. We really are having a great time and seeing and experiencing some great things. Sometimes I forget what we have been up to until I look back through our pictures so I will post a few.

So we went down to Wall St. a few weekends ago and that was cool. Ground Zero is down there too, but it isn't very neat anymore, they took down all of the memorabilia and you can't even really see where the towers were.

The Trinity Church

Trav and I went to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). They were having a prefab housing exhibit that Trav was really interested in seeing. These were the models we were able to walk through. That tall one in the back was amazing!

Here is me standing on the "patio" of a 76 sq ft prefab house. It was seriously so tiny but had everything you would need to live.

Here is another angle to show just how small that "house" was.

On September 11. McCain and Obama came to Columbia to speak. We weren't able to get tickets to see them inside, but they broadcast the interviews on the big screen on campus. Here is the crowd it brought, so so so many people and almost all Obama supporters.

This is a picture from the top of our building on Sept. 11. Trav took this and it is amazing the clouds look so neat and the two blue beams of light are representing the twin towers.

Last weekend we did a walking tour through Central Park. It was great, we were able to see a lot of neat things. This is the tribute to John Lennon in Strawberry Fields.

Oh Trav, so cute!

We stopped by Saks and Radio City on Friday, we bought our tickets to the Christmas Spectacular!

I need to figure out how to post a slideshow, because I have a lot more pictures :). This weekend we went down to Canal Street again, gotta love cheap shopping, and it just so happened that right around the corner was the festival that was going on in Little Italy. So much fun, really delicious food and a bunch of people and a parade with priests, what more could you ask for?

And then on Saturday we rented bikes and rode through Central Park. You seriously could spend days in the park, so much to see and the people watching is the best!

New York truly is the city that never sleeps. There are so many wonderful things to do here it is just a matter of getting out to do it. We are trying to take advantage of good weather before it is gone so we are outside walking or at parks all the time. We haven't seen anyone famous yet, but we are hoping to go down to Central Park tomorrow to see David Blaine hang upside down, supposedly for three days!!!!!

Oh one last picture........


What a way to end a post right?