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!

Because we want you all to come....

We'll give you a sneak peek of our apt. We love it. We feel so blessed. It's four rooms including a full kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom. It's in a beautiful neighborhood and we have great neighbors. We also love the people that we are renting from who have taken us to Costco, Market Basket (the local grocery store), Mount Auburn cementary (which is one of the coolest places in Cambridge), Walden Pond, and Concord. The quirky but charming things about our house are that it was built over 100 years ago and so it smells like a Nauvoo house (we got an apple spice candle to help), the oven is heated with gas so there's a pilot light in the oven, EVERYTHING makes noise, and our bed is smaller than what we thought so our comforter is too big, whoops, we also have a china cabinet and there are NO cupboards in the kitchen. It's wonderful though because we feel like we are actually living in a house. We have a front porch, a tiny lawn, the garbage man comes every Tuesday, we actually have space to host people, and both of us can actually cook in the kitchen because there's so much space. There is a standing invitation for anyone who wants to visit because frankly, it's better in person :)

Road Trip!

We made it! Four and a half days of driving later..... Here's some snippetts from our travels

 First was packing which was so hard! Trying to decide what to take and what to fit was hard. We have basically been living in a suitcase for two days. Thanks to Jason's amazing packing abilities we fit everything we wanted in our car and there was no space left!

 Then came the driving. This was after a day or two when Jason started driving like a Grandpa....

Then came the church history tour. We travelled across the country with Jonathan and Beth and they were so fun to be around. We got to go the Nauvoo Temple and do a session as well as baptisms for the dead, thanks to the temple workers it was so wonderful.

Here is our quintessential cross country road trip road

Then we got to stop in Kirtland and see the temple for an hour which we weren't planning on but it was wonderful.

And finally to Massachusetts! 

We finally got to our apartment today and I think we're really going to like it. The neighborhood is wonderful and the apartment is cute. We really like the people that we are renting from and they showed us around the town. We haven't made it in to Boston yet but that will be more adventures for this weekend. I'm missing everyone from Utah very much but I can't sit too long to think about it or it makes me sad. As you can probably tell by my post we are tired and just happy to be here. I promise more interesting posts will come :)