Second Anniversary!

Last Tuesday July 14th was our second wedding anniversary! I can't believe that two whole years have passed since that wonderful day. I don't think either of us would have ever guessed we would be celebrating it in Boston! It has seriously been the best two years of my life and I wouldn't change a single thing about them. Happy (late) Anniversary Steve, I love you!


We waited to celebrate until Saturday and had a great night out! We went to a local Brazilian bbq (like Rodizio Grill) where we enjoyed lots of good meat. Our favorite was the Brazilian sausage. Then we walked down the street to a local ice cream place. It was SOOO GOOD! This place had crazy flavors like bacon, lemongrass, and lavender, just to name a few. We chose pretty normal flavors and enjoyed it very much. We also wanted to see Harry Potter 6 but since it was opening weekend we were worried we wouldn't even get to sit together-- so we decided to watch a movie in the comfort of our own home and are saving HP for another weekend :)

As for the rest of life here, I quit my job at the pharmacy. My last day was last friday. I am so relieved not to be working there anymore. It was a TERRIBLE job. I am looking for new jobs, I am officially an employee of a temp agency and am hopeful I can find work through that for the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, I am loving being at home for a bit and playing house wife-- Cooking and cleaning never felt so good! Steve is constantly swamped with work and projects and never gets enough sleep. Luckily, he likes his classes, his group and the subject material a lot, so that makes up for some of it. He is doing really well in his classes and gets good grades!

As a side note, Steve's sister Laura just had her baby girl on Monday! We are so excited to have a brand new little niece. She has a head full of thick dark hair and is adorable. She doesn't look like a wrinkly old man which is great! We can't wait to meet her!

Life in the big city

After Lake Powell, Steve flew home to Boston and I stayed behind for a couple of days to hang out with Kiersty and Brittany! We had a ton of fun and I was sad to go. These are pics from Gardner Village-- we spent an afternoon there shopping. If you live in Utah and you haven't gone to Gardner Village, I highly recommend it! There are a whole bunch of cute cute boutiques and home decor shops, I LOVE this place and could spend thousands of dollars there (if I had thousands to spend). I can't wait for another Sisters' Trip!

Boston:

So we've been in Boston just over a month now and are adjusting and really liking it for the most part! We really love our location and apartment. Our ward is full of young couples/families most of whom are in graduate school. Steve LOVES the weather here. I think there has been like 3 or 4 really sunny days other than that it's either overcast or raining. The hottest temps we've seen are around 85 and the coolest around 55 degrees. Needless to say- Steve is in HEAVEN since he hates being hot, and he gets hot when its about 75 :)
The city is awesome with lots of things to explore and YUMMY places to eat. So far, we walked the freedom trail. There is a painted red line that runs through downtown Boston and snakes around to most of the Historic sites that were key in the founding of America. Some sites include: Sam Adams, Ben Franklin, and some other important people's graves, and the Old North Church, the place where the Declaration of Independence was first read, King's church and lots more!

The Old North Church (Where Paul Revere hung the lanterns to warn the British were coming)

Paul Revere's ride

Paul Revere's House

Mass. State House

Another weekend we drove to New Hampshire with a couple from Steve's program and hiked Mount Monadnock. It is the second most hiked mountain besides Mt. Fuji, and is the tallest peak in New England standing at 3,165 feet (so not exactly the tallest mountain you've ever seen.) The hike was a 2 mile uphill rock scramble! It was hard!!!! However it was all worth it when we got to the top. The peak is just rock, no trees or anything so you have a 360 degree view! It was a beautful day to go too- no rain, just cloudy skies and like 75 degrees and everywhere around was SOO green.

We went with some other friends to the nations largest 'scooper bowl' which is where a bunch of ice cream vendors (local and national) come together and you get to sample all of their ice cream (with an $8 fee of course!). Some of our fave's were Ben and Jerry's oatmeal cookie dough, Haagen-Daaz lemon sorbet, and Brighams cookies and cream!

It's a good thing we did all of this stuff early because Steve is so busy now the poor man hardly has time to eat and sleep! His program was smart and gradually eased them into school but now it is in full swing. We are adjusting (I think I'm having a harder time than Steve!) and life here is becoming more normal so that's good. I found a job working full-time as a pharmacy technician but for a number of reasons I am going to keep looking for another job.I am happy to have a job in this economy, I just hope I can find a better one!

Yesterday we celebrated the 4th by going to the fireworks extravaganza here. It was hands-down the most spectacular fireworks show I have ever seen! The Boston symphony played and Neil Diamond sang a few songs including Sweet Caroline.

So this is our life right now! I will post pictures of the apartment as soon as I get pictures up on the wall!

the usual catch-up!

Sorry I have been such a bad blogger-- I know I don't really have an excuse because I don't have a job nor do I have school or really anything to do all day. However, I have been busy exploring Boston and making friends- So there you have my excuse! I will make this one short with a lot of pictures so I can catch up to what's going on lately!

We took some family pictures with the Hales before Lake Powell. It has been two years since the WHOLE family was together and there has been a new addition to the family since. We had a lot of fun taking them and I am really happy for some new "couple" pictures of Steve and I!

We also celebrated Steve's 29th birthday while we were in Utah! I can't believe another year has gone by! He already got his birthday present back in February (Recall his mountain bike aka his mistress). But Sandra made him a delectable birthday dinner and a really yummy cake! Abbie and Landon helped him blow out the candles on the cake because 29 candles is a lot of candles :)

This was the first time we got to meet Mike and Erin's new son Noah-- He was ADORABLE. He was like the happiest, most smiley baby ever! Aww I miss him!

Next we left for Lake Powell and had a week full of soooo much fun! It was awesome to be with the whole Hale family and lay around in the sun, play cards and play on the boat! There isn't much to be said except for Wow what a great vacation!

Steve taught Abbie how to fish!

Sandra got duped into taking a crazy tube ride with Erin- I just feel like her face says it all!

Just Steve being awesome on the wakeboard- what's new!

The beautiful canyon in the early morning...

I had a major face-plant on the first run of the week. I didn't really want to do that again so I wasn't very adventurous on the wakeboard this year. I did enjoy the new girl's wakeboard though!

Hahahahahaha

Steve doing his traditional 'party trick' on the slalom ski

The May's, some the Hale family friends came with us and one of them set up a huge rapel! I didn't try :)

Girls special swim! haha.

We did water weenie wars and jumped from tube to tube. No one was hurt and we had so much fun! I think everyone came away with some awesome bruises though.

That's the end of lake powell! I will get caught up soon!

Recent Happenings....

Over Mother's Day weekend we got together with all of my family for a quick reunion before Steve and I took off. We had a great weekend filled with good food and lots of fun. We hung out played games, went to the zoo, watched movies and ate at Bahama Bucks twice... yum. We spent Saturday at the Phoenix Zoo and saw all sorts of animals. Unfortunately it was sooo hot and the animals were all quite lethargic and were mostly being boring. The orangutans we super cute and very entertaining to watch though! I am soooooo glad we got to do this before we moved so far! Love you guys!

Me and my beautiful sisters!

Trying to be tigers... :)

Keeping cool at the splash pad, really it was meant for kids but we took full advantage. The only bad part was we were always dry like five minutes after we soaked ourselves.

Random frog picture-- Mom Hale this one's for you again :)

I'm a college graduate! It all seemed a bit anticlimactic but I am glad I walked anyways. I can't believe I'm done. I keep trying to think of all of things I want to cram into the next week before I have to "go back to school" but I have three and half months until I start again, woohoo! Luckily my graduation was only about an hour and half. Then Steve, my mom, mom hale, dad hale and my aunt nanette went out for a lovely dinner at the Olive Garden to celebrate. The next morning was moving day.

We started our road trip to Boston on Friday morning and drove to Amarillo, Texas that night. The next day we went through Oklahoma, and stopped in St. Louis, MO. The next day it was onto Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and stopped in Pennsylvania for the night. Monday we drove the rest of the way through PA, then into New York, Connecticut and finally Massachussetts! I have never ever driven so far and I'm not sure I want to do it again. We had a great time driving with Mom and Dad Hale though. Thanks so much for all of your help guys!

We stopped for some Braums Ice cream, we had heard that it is really good and we weren't dissapointed!

What I looked at for the better part of 4 days...

Almost there...

When we got to Boston at like 5 in the afternoon, the traffic was CRAZZZZY. It was like there were no rules and we were driving in Mexico or something. I couldn't believe it. When we pulled in to our apartment our new ward was there to help us unload the truck and they were GOOD. We had it unloaded in like 45 minutes. It was awesome! I will post more pictures of the apartment when it is all put together. It is coming right along.

Graduation Celebration dinner #2. We went to Ruths Chris steakhouse in Boston and got a yummy steak for dinner after a very LONG day of trying to figure out how to register our car... It doesn't sound that bad but it was terrible!

We went to a Boston Red Sox game on Wednesday, everyone there was super into it! The red sox won and we had a great time! Thursday we left to head back to Utah for Lake Powell with Steve's family. So in one week we crossed the whole country in a truck, and flew halfway back on a plane. Call us crazy-- We know it! I will try to keep this thing updated about what is going on! But this is what i have for now! Love you all!!!