Merry Christmas!!

I know it's been a couple of months since I've written anything. First of all, once November started life got super crazy and honestly, until this weekend, I can't remember the last time that I sat down and didn't have anything pressing to do. Secondly, I've decided that sometimes it takes a lot for me to sit and reflect and write about events and experiences. Often times it's easier to just keep moving, don't think, just move. But I've also discovered that it's not always healthy that way either.

So without further ado, I will tell you about the wonderful December that we have had. It started out wonderfully with the Heath's coming in to town to visit. Our first visitors! Not to mention it was the Heath's :) You know those people that you can just share everything with and you know they understand you and you can express whatever it is that you want without being judged? Well that's what I'd say the Heath's are for us. Cousins + Friends = a wonderful weekend.

The second major event was that we went back to Utah for a long weekend. It was so wonderful to see family again. Man how I miss them! We got to drive on the nice I-15 freeway system, eat at Cafe Rio, go shopping, but best of all we spent time with my family making gingerbread houses and we even had a mini Christmas the Saturday before we left. It even snowed the night before so we got our white christmas :)

This would be my sister husband and brother playing on our new Ipad Mini for Christmas! This picture is currently my background on the Ipad and I laugh every time I turn it on.

When we left I was so overwhelmed with love I felt from my family and particularly my parents. I think the real Christmas present I received this year is that the power of love is strength. It's what allows us to go forward and what makes life worth it. The world is full of messages about how love hurts and is painful. We're taught that strength comes when we don't feel love because love makes us vulnerable. But after this weekend I realized that the real truth that should be spread is love is strength and power and I can't think of anything more beautiful.

Jason and I are back in Boston and will be spending Christmas together, just the two of us. Kind of romantic, I'm excited :) But I hope that Christmas finds you well and at the very least feeling love from Heavenly Father since that was the true gift that was given those many years ago.

Hurricane Sandy

The hurricane is coming. And Jason is giddy. He, with his Idaho background, is apparently built for natural disasters and survival. I just have to thank his mom and dad for doing such a good job raising him with a lot of practical skills. A tree branch (aka full size limb) fell in the middle of the road narrowly missing two cars. As Jason was bravely facing the storm (exaggeration here, it was lightly raining with minor gusts of wind, no bravery needed) to get the flashlight from his car he watched as the branch fell and he went and pulled it out of the street. Now he is home and at the slightest noise he looks at me with big hopeful eyes and asks "did you hear that?" to which I reply yes, it was our neighbors upstairs and then his hopes crash when he realizes he can't go pull another branch out of the street. Now he's going to go in the basement of our house to see if the owners have any tools to help us survive. Tell you what, I definitely married right since natural disasters are not my thing. Neither is survival really. Overall we don't feel too threatened and we now realize the security that comes with having food storage which I think we will make a goal to build from now on. Anyway, here's a couple of pictures from the last of our fall activities as winter is fast approaching....By the way it was a win win for homemaking this last weekend, I cut Jason's hair for my first time ever  and it actually looks good! I felt so accomplished! I also made pumpkin cookies which are addicting and we have a mildly clean house :) 

After a really hard week Jason brought home these glasses and new shirts for a good smile on Friday night.

I promised my sister pictures of the fall colors so here you go! These were trees from the temple and few on my walks to work.

Oh and don't forget Salem for Halloween, crazy stuff here, definitely beats frightmares at Lagoon.

Midterms

As much as this blog would make you think that we do awesome things all the time, it's not entirely true. After all we (Jason) are at school which comes with the fair share of college life including midterm papers, projects, worrying about paying rent and finding quick meals to make. I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this post other than it's therapeutic and Jason is over in the dining room typing a midterm paper so why should I let him have all the fun? It's been two months to the day that we arrived here. I feel like life has settled down somewhat into a pattern which I've decided isn't always the best. It's nice to feel like things are different, like you have a new start, and everything is fascinating. When I settle into a pattern I start to think about my life and where I'm going which isn't always so fun. Also with the seasons changing I find myself homesick for the Utah mountains full of colorful leaves, normal fall temperatures, roads that I can actually drive on and grocery stores I can actually go to more than every other week. Not to mention a warm house, the smell of pumpkin cookies and being surrounded by family where life is just comfortable, you can just be you wether that's the tired, stressed, worried "I don't know what to do with my life," or the "life is awesome and I just want you all to know." *sigh*

Wonderful Conference Weekend

Wasn't General Conference wonderful this weekend? So many beautiful messages of service and that Heavenly Father and Christ are there for us no matter what. Besides the wonderful messages it was also nice to have a weekend to spend at home curled up on the couch. We were very grateful for the internet which allowed us to enjoy conference from our own home. We also had Columbus Day off so we got to go see a couple things too. 

First was our first experience with seafood! And it was surprisingly really good, we felt completely satisfied and wouldn't have ordered anything different. Crab cakes and New England Clam Chowder were so good! (By the way, did you know there are different clam chowders? google it, you'll be amazed)

Then Sunday morning before conference (since it starts at 12 here!) we went on a walk to Mt. Auburn Cemetery which is just down the road from our house. Here were a couple of our favorite tombstones and the leaves have started to change! 

Finally we went apple picking today at Honey Pot Hill. We brought home so many apples! Jason was pretty skeptical at first but he came with me anyway and I think somewhat enjoyed it. Especially those fresh apple cider donuts. Can't get much better than that. 

Happy One Year Anniversary!

One Year ago yesterday we got married. Isn't that crazy?! It's been one whole year, I feel like it's gone by so fast. For our celebration we went to the temple and did sealings on Friday and then we went up to Portland, Maine to see the lighthouse and stopped in a beach town, Ogunquit on our way up. It was beautiful. The leaves are starting to change colors and I discovered that we both love the rocky ocean shores. For me those have always been the places that have been most reflective and I was thrilled to find out this was something we shared. We then came home, perhaps did a grocery stop on the way home, and we ordered take out Italian which was delicious, shared our wedding cake, and watched the video from our wedding. Here's a few pics...

We saw a couple who were getting married taking pictures which inspired this photo shoot...

We finally found a Wendy's! Jason's favorite place to eat. It felt like we were back in Utah/Idaho again, kind of homey in a way.

This is the famous Lighthouse in Maine, we both aspire to own a beach cottage on the rocky shores of an ocean some day.

This is the top off of our cake a year ago that my mom graciously sent to us in dried ice :) It was pretty good and better for the memories

And I guess this just sums it up. I love you Jason.

 If the first year is the hardest as they say then I'm excited to see what the next year brings. I'm not going to pretend that our one year was perfect. We had our bumps and some times I wished the first year would just end, however, the happiness and peace that marriage brings far out ways the hard times. I feel so lucky to be married to my best friend. For me, the fairy tale love wasn't when we are dating but has manifest itself into the quite moments of our married life for the past year and it's better than I had dreamed or hoped for.

And we're up again

Jason and I successfully survived our first full week of working and going to school! This is something to celebrate about since I worked 40 hours, Jason did school more than that, we went grocery shopping, paid bills, cooked yummy dinners, and we succeeded going to the temple for the 5th week in a row! (Why we were never able to do that in Utah, I really can't answer) I feel exhausted but pretty accomplished. And since we both recovered from our sickness we celebrated by going into Boston on Saturday to visit once again the freedom trail and the Haymarket. Probably our biggest success of the day was going to Mike's Pastry which is world famous for their Cannoli's and man were they delicious. Food is honestly the best way to feel satisfied when touring, even if it was over priced :)

Statue of Paul Revere 

 Mike's Pastry Cannoli's....Amazing!

 You can't see it but this is a sign for the garden of Sir William Phips...the discoverer of sunken treasure! Oh not to mention he was also the first royal governor of Boston, Boston seems to think sunken treasure is a better thing to remembered for and hence is Jason's new goal.

 This is the Old North church, the second Anglican church to be built in Boston in 1723 and this is the church that Paul Revere had the lanterns hung to warn that the British were coming.

And this is us, just enjoying Boston from the other side of the Harbor, one of the best views of the city.

So far Jason and I haven't decided quite what we think of Boston itself. It's an interesting city because it is so small and so everything is compounded. The history is amazing and the harbor is beautiful. My favorite place in the city so far is Columbus Park because you can look at the Harbor and listen to the street performers and it's just peaceful. The not so fun parts is everything is really expensive. Since Jason and I live here it's different than if we were tourists and could justify all the money. Instead we budget and see things in pieces. We have yet to go to any of the museums that I hear are amazing because it will be about $40.00 for us to go into one, not saying that we won't, just that it's something we have to budget out for. The other not so fun parts are experiencing the people that you can avoid when you live in your own little world. While walking through Boston Commons there were masses of people who were smoking marijuana and we felt like we were in the middle of a drug town. When we got home we found out it was a rally to revise marijuana laws...at least that explained it. There were also homeless people asking for people to "help them get drunk" as well as all the bars we passed with people just getting drunk. Then on the other side there are the super rich people that buy EXPENSIVE stuff for who knows what. It made me really thankful for the gospel in my life and that I have some direction and I feel like amidst all the confusion I know where the real happiness comes from.

"There are as many loves as there are hearts"

One of the benefits of being sick is that I finished the 800 page book I started about a month and a half ago called Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. It was a beautiful book and it has been in my head for the last few days since I finished it so I figure I'll write about it. First of all, Tolstoy wrote this beautifully. I don't know how he did it but he wrote a wonderfully intriguing social commentary on Russian aristocracy and love for 800 pages which basically chronicles several people's lives and it captured my attention the whole time. It was like an 800 page book of Pride and Prejudice about Russian Aristocracy about a woman, Anna, who ruins herself with her love affair. I think one of the major themes of the book is the difference between our ideal and our reality. All of us have a reality that we would like to live, and a lot of times it feels like other people live our ideal. However, once we get inside of the other people's lives it becomes clear that maybe our life is exactly what we want and we find a peace and happiness. Although fear and deception can inhibit our happiness ultimately it is within our power to put the good into our lives. It also has a lot of religious themes and love themes that are beautiful and made me think a lot. Now that said, I know there is a movie coming out about this book that looks beautiful and one of the reasons I initially picked it up. I just watched the trailer again and to my dismay found out that this is rated R! After having read the book I can not fathom why it is rated R and not only will I not watch it because I don't watch R rated movies but if they made the movie rated R they have probably twisted the book in a way that I wouldn't care to watch anyway but still I am not happy about it...

Sick, sick, sick

Yes I'm sick, and now Jason's sick. I've been sick for now almost a week and a half and after trying to be so positive and taking it in strides, yeah well I'm done with that. It's killed about every motivation I've had to cook and exercise and meet people. Jason and I couldn't even do anything for Labor Day weekend. The best I did was go to the grocery store...I long to go into Boston again and see things and have energy and be able to breathe. I'm so over this cold. Today even ice cream couldn't cheer me up, in fact it only made me irritated as it proceeded to melt faster than I could eat it...here's to hoping for a better weekend. At least we discovered amazing sipping chocolate from Burdick's which is right across the street from his school, honestly it was like drinking and melted chocolate bar, yum.

Boston Adventures....the beginning of many

Dear whoever reads this,

This week has been fabulous in Boston. We are loving it here and besides missing our friends and family we feel very happy and at home. I think we have officially seen more new and cool things in the last week than we have since we've been married. It's so refreshing for a change to have so much to do!  I had no idea how many awesome things there would be to see and do. Did you know that Henry David Thoreau lived here and Ralph Waldo Emerson? Well I certainly didn't. Here's a little bit of what we've seen the last week starting with Walden Pond.

This is where Thoreau's cabin was and now there is a pile of rocks that people have stacked together, I kind of missed the significance but still cool

Then we toured Longfellow's house that he owned in Cambridge when he taught at Harvard and wrote his poems. The coolest part was that we had no idea it was his house, we were touring it because George Washington actually used this house as headquarters when he led the army.

Beautiful! I want a house just like it.

This was Longfellow's writing desk where he wrote most of his poems. Apparently he liked to stand when he wrote his poems. He also liked to have a statue of Goethe stare at him while he wrote it. Jason's jealous of the statue, he wants one. Also, did you know that Thoreau was the first one to translate Divine Comedy into English?

Next house on our list was John Adams. We went down to Quincy, south of Boston, and toured all of John Adam's houses. 

John Adam's birthplace, the oldest birthplace that we have of one of our Presidents.

This is John Adam's Mansion house which was so beautiful, I could also own this house. 

And this would be the part I'm most jealous of. John Adam's grandson built this and it is a building solely for a library! It has thousands of books and was built so that in case the house burnt down the books wouldn't burn. All it needed was a piano and it would be perfect! 

So far we spend a lot of time in Cambridge but we do make goals to go down to Boston which we've done a couple times. Washington D.C. is still my favorite city but Boston is very eclectic and I think I'll grow to like it more and more.  

This is a view of the Boston skyline from a tower in Mt. Auburn cemetery which is one of the most beautiful cemetery I've seen. Beautiful skyline though huh? 

One of my goals this summer was to see an outdoor concert and goal was accomplished! This is Hatch Shell down in Boston by the river. 

Cool Navy ship we got to see taking the Ferry from Quincy to Boston

Boston skyline from the ferry, isn't it pretty?

And this is the madness called Haymarket. This picture doesn't do it justice as there are probably a hundred of these little tents but I've never seen produce so cheap in my life. I mean a whole pineapple for a dollar and strawberries and asparagus and romaine lettuce each only one dollar! It doesn't get better than that. 

After being in Boston I can say that I am totally overwhelmed, so many people and different types of people and so much going on but I can also say that I love it and could have spent much more time there. I can only wait and see what this week will bring. Jason starts school orientation tomorrow and thus the real adventure begins. We are both really excited for him but he's nervous so wish him luck!