Summer days are long gone, winter is here to stay

It makes me laugh that our last post was in September about summer days. Those summer days are definitely long gone for a while. We received the first snow of the season on December 5th. Call me crazy, but I love the snow!! I love watching the big fluffy flakes fall from the sky! I love bundling up and going outside to play or walk in it! I couldn't help but share the view from our deck...

Summer Days

Trips, Visitors, Birthdays, 1st Anniversary, Moving...This pretty much sums up our eventful summer, and we loved every bit of it! Now it's back to school for Andrew. He's currently studying Immunology and Microbiology. You'll have to ask him what that entails...all I know is that it has to do with some crazy diseases because they are often rambled off to me by my dear husband while he's trying to memorize them. As for me, I've SERIOUSLY got to find something to do(I'm driving both my husband and myself crazy)! To see pictures of our joyous summer, look below:).

Trips

Trip #1

As soon as Andrew finished his first year of medical school, we headed off on a month long trip to Utah. We were very excited to finally meet the newest additions to our families (4 nephews and 1 niece), and to play with all the rest of our nieces and nephews. These are just a few of the cute little faces that we could hardly wait to see.Upon our arrival, we went to work in Andrew's parents' yard to finish getting it ready for his sister's wedding luncheon and open house. After a few days, I left Andrew to work in the yard while I drove down to Texas with my parents, sister, and her kids for my niece's blessing. Everyone thought we were crazy for driving that far, especially with 4 kids, but it was actually a lot of fun. After a few days in Texas, we headed back to Utah in time for the wedding fun to begin. We're glad we were able to be in Utah for Lynne Marie (Andrew's sister) and John's wedding. Congrats to them!! Lynne Marie works as an event planner for SLCC, so of course she had some great wedding events planned. One in particular that we enjoyed was the photo booth at her reception:).

While in Utah, we had the opportunity to celebrate our 1st anniversary. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in Midway, went to the SLC temple, ate at some yummy restaurants (namely Snake Creek Grill and Gloria's Little Italy), and had a taste of our wedding cake that had been frozen. It actually tasted pretty good, but seriously who ever thought of that tradition?! Marrying Andrew was the best decision I ever made. Thanks, honey, for an incredible year!!

We also had the opportunity to attend two of our cute nieces birthday parties. My niece had a Fancy Nancy birthday party in the park. The kids got to find little bags with fancy things for them to dress up in (feather boa, crown, sunglasses, ring, etc.). We got to go to "King's Crown Diner":) to eat pizza and cake. And then there was a cute crown pinata that the kids got to break. Fun! Fun! Fun!

The second birthday we got to participate in was for Andrew's niece. We got to go to Chuck-E-Cheese. I think the adults had more fun than the kids:). In fact, I ended up winning the jackpot at Skee Ball, and gave a bunch of tickets to my niece and nephew so they could choose an awesome prize.

Other highlights from our trip included: hiking the Y, a barbecue with friends, and family dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Judds where Andrew learned how to put in an IV thanks to his Aunt Chris who is an EMT(I would post pictures but they're too bloody:)).


Trip #2
Our next trip was a simple day trip to Antietam battlefield. We are so grateful for those who have and do sacrifice so much for a worthy cause. We love being surrounded by so much history.

Trip #3

Our third and final trip of the summer was to Niagara Falls and Palmyra, NY with some friends. After spending an afternoon in the rainy weather looking at Niagara, we spent the rest of our time visiting the church sites and going to the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra. Thanks Harbertsons and Hardings for the fun!!

Visitors

We love visitors!! So you can only imagine our excitement when we had three visits this summer from family and friends.

In June, my brother, his wife, and son came for an optometry conference in the Washington DC area. We were able to stay with them at the National Harbor for part of the week. For the first few days, we took the metro to the National Mall to see some of the sites. Then they came to stay with us for a few days. We saw a lot, walked a lot, and had a lot of fun!!



Two months later, my parents came to stay with us for a week. We loved having them here, and here's a glimpse of what we did...

Tuesday: Duckpin Bowling















Wednesday: Gettysburg

Thursday: Smithsonian

National Air and Space Museum

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (near Washington Dulles Airport)

(Note: If you haven't been here and you like planes or have kids that like planes, you should really consider going. There is a $15 parking fee, but no entrance fee. There are a lot of interesting planes and artifacts that have to do with flying. There is also an observation tower where you can watch planes take off/land at Dulles airport. We had a lot of fun! My dad absolutely loved it...I think he took a picture of every single plane in the museum.)

Friday: Fort McHenry

Saturday: B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore

Orioles Baseball Game

(Funny story: There was only a 10% chance for rain. As we were getting out of the car to go to the metro for the baseball game, my mom asked if we should take the umbrellas. We all said we wouldn't need them. But lo and behold, we got the 10% chance for rain, and it was a good storm at that. If you can't tell from the bottom picture, we're drenched!!)

Sunday: Church

Mount Vernon

Games and Dessert with relatives in Alexandria

Monday: National Aquarium in Baltimore

Lunch at Five Guys

Time to say goodbye:(

And by the end of all of it, this is how my parents felt:).

Over Labor Day weekend, our good friends, Heidi and Isaac, came to visit. We gave them a tour of the city. We showed them where Andrew goes to school, walked around the Inner Harbor and Little Italy, and ate at Five Guys. We then took them for their first duckpin bowling experience. We finished off the day watching the big BYU vs. Oklahoma football game. It was a great relaxing weekend...playing games, eating yummy food, and talking up a storm. It was so good to have them here. We hated to see them go!

Birthdays

Andrew and I both have summer birthdays. Mine comes first, which makes me older than Andrew for two weeks(the rest of the year we're the same age:)). For my birthday, I received some beautiful flowers from my parents and Andrew.

Andrew also treated me to a birthday dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Then we went over to our friends for cake. Cathi made an amazing cake. It looked yummy and tasted even better. Thanks Bryce, Cathi, Cody, Meagan, and Andrew for celebrating with me!!

For Andrew's birthday, we decided to go camping at Cunningham Falls State Park. It had been stormy, so we just decided to reserve a camper cabin.

It was very dirty, but we stayed dry and made the best of it. We hiked to see the waterfall,...

waded in the lake,...

played some games, and read outside.


















Then we decided it was time for dinner. After two hours, a magazine, half a roll of paper towels, a few paper plates, a trip to the camp store for "dry" firewood, lighter fluid from neighboring camp, a 2nd trip to the camp store for a fire starter log, and half a box of matches, what did we get?...We finally got a fire big enough that lasted just long enough for us to roast our hot dogs and marshmallows.














Overall, it was a fun camping trip, but next time we'll go a little more prepared to light a fire when it has been raining. A few days later, we invited friends over for cake.

Other Summer Fun

#1 We moved to a new apartment and are absolutely loving it.

#2 We had a pizza night-homemade pepperoni pizza for dinner and fruit pizza for dessert. It was delicious!

#3 I decided to try growing a small tomato plant in a flower pot on our deck. As you can imagine, I was so excited to see this...

Andrew doesn't like tomatoes, so I've enjoyed eating them all by myself. I've eaten 3 so far and am waiting for 7 more to turn red. Yum! Yum!

#4 I also made my first lasagne. While serving a mission in Italy, I received a copy of Silvio's lasagne recipe. Silvio cooked the meals at the mission home when missionaries would arrive and leave, and I remember the food being unbelievably good. My lasagne wasn't anywhere near Silvio's lasagne, but it was still really good.

WHAT WE'VE BEEN DOING LATELY....

April

The first weekend of April was spent watching General Conference. I love conference and always get so excited for this weekend!! This year I found some fun ideas on www.sugardoodle.net to help kids pay attention to general conference. While I was sharing the ideas with our siblings for their kids, I decided that Andrew and I might as well incorporate a few of the ideas into our conference weekend. We set up our "conference reverence tent" in the front room and played conference bingo with jelly beans and m&ms. It was a lot of fun, but more importantly, we learned a lot from church leaders and felt the spirit. What a great weekend!!



The next weekend was Easter. On Saturday we woke up and had eggs benedict for breakfast- a tradition Andrew's family had while he was growing up. Then that afternoon while Andrew was studying, the easter bunny found our house and left a trail for Andrew to follow to his easter basket (something the easter bunny did at my house one year when i was younger). We finished the day with a trip to the temple and the easter video on the church website. On Easter Sunday we did a spiritual easter egg hunt to help remind us of the real reason we celebrate Easter-the Savior's Resurrection. We are so very grateful for this gift and the knowledge that our Savior loves us! For dinner, we had a yummy dinner of ham, cheesy potatoes, Rhodes rolls, peas, and strawberry shortcake. Our celebration didn't stop on Sunday because on Monday we received an Easter package from my mom. We hid the eggs she sent and ate some candy!

March

Spring break and feeling a little green...We invited our friends, Meagan and Cody Harding, over for a little green feast on St. Patrick's Day. We had the traditional corned beef, a bunch of green food (salad, green jello, green mashed potatoes, kiwi, broccoli), and dessert (brownies with mint chocolate chip ice cream). Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures, but we had a lot of fun!!

Andrew had a whole week off for spring break and I was able to take Thursday and Friday off, so we decided to take a trip to Philadelphia to visit some friends. It just happened that BYU was playing in Philadelphia for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, and we really wanted to go. When we first searched for tickets, the only ones we could find were $75, but luckily we found some cheaper ones and were able to go watch the game. Unfortunately there wasn't much to watch, but it was still fun.

After that we went to BJ and Meredith's home(which they've fixed up very nice I might add). We tried our first philly cheesesteak, and enjoyed visiting with them. The next day we woke up and headed to the city to visit some of the historical sites. We were able to see Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the location of Benjamin Franklin's home, and Elfreth's Alley. There was a lot more we could have seen, so we'll have to go again sometime. We then drove to Valley Forge to look around. After that it was back to BJ and Meredith's for Tanner's birthday party. Thanks BJ, Meredith, and Tanner!! We had a lot of fun and are sure glad we came!

February

A whole lot of work and a whole lot of school with a little romance...The day before Valentine's Day my wonderful husband sent me some beautiful flowers at work. And props to the flower delivery man for finding me even without a complete address:)! Then on Valentine's Day I woke up and made heart-shaped cinnamon rolls with pink frosting, eggs, and sausage. We ate breakfast in bed and played some games (tic-tac-toe and cards). That evening Andrew made a delicious dinner of chicken pillows, carrots, and salad. We also watched a movie. Oh how I love Valentine's Day...it really should be Valentine's month!



From pink/red to orange...I didn't really feel like cooking after work one day so I thought of the easiest and quickest thing that I could possibly make and still include all the food groups. We ended up with juice, carrots and dip, cheese sandwiches, and soup. When we sat down to eat, I just started laughing. Take a look why...

Christmas and the new year

This was our first Christmas together and it was great to get to go back to Utah for a few weeks to see everybody. Both of our families live in Vernal so we were able to see both families...even though sometimes it felt like we spent a lot of time going back and forth. All of our brothers and sisters were home for Christmas, except for my sister Amy who lives in Texas. The best part of the trip was playing with all of our nieces and nephews. We have 3 of each on my side, and 8 nieces and 2 nephews on Tara's side (one of those nephews was just born earlier today). Between the two of us we have 3 more nephews and 1 more niece that will be born between now and March. We're pretty excited, not only because that means more little kids running around to play with but because it means we don't have to be in any hurry to have one:)!

It was hard to leave Utah and family, but it was good to get back to our own home. Unfortunately, coming home meant Tara had to go back to work and I had to go back to school, but we're surviving :). As far as school goes, we just finished our second course, Cell and Molecular Biology, and started Functional Systems (aka physiology). CMB wasn't my favorite course so I'm looking forward to functional systems even though it won't be any easier. I still have a long way to go but it's nice to be done with half of the first year.