Guess what????

I promise an update about our fabulous holidays soon, but I didn't take any pictures (okay maybe like 5) so I need to convince my family to send them to me before I post about those.

In the mean time I thought you all should know that we are moving to Boulder, Colorado! Steve has signed a job offer with Amgen, a biotechnology company there and will be working on the development of medical devices! He is really excited about his job and we are both so excited to move there. We can't wait to be thousands of miles closer to our families and be back in the West where we belong :)

Yup... We're still alive

Hey blogger friends/family! Its been so long you may have forgotten that I exist. If you did that's okay. I forgive you if you'll forgive me for not updating you on our lives for the last 5 months. It has been a crazy semester and I can't lie- I am SO happy its over. I learned a lot of things about myself and about life, about my relationship with Steve and with my Heavenly Father, but I can't help but be happy that I am reunited with my husband and that this extremely trying semester is finished. I will only post briefly about our past five months, though I'm sure it will turn into a novel by the end. I think because we were apart during the week, we made sure the weekends were fun. We tried some new things this fall including apple picking at a local orchard, a 19 mile bike ride from our apartment to Lexington, Mass where the "shot heard round the world" was fired and the American Revolution began.

Apple Picking!

Steve of course got right up in the branches to pick the perfect apples! The man is part monkey I swear!

We had heard that you have to try apple cider donuts when you live in New England- this orchard had an apple cider donut factory going on. They were delightful and so was the apple cider there. We guzzled it in a couple of days and bought more from the grocery store almost all fall. I love apple cider!

Our 15 lb bag of apples! We made a lot of apple crisp. I had plans to make a great variety of apple yummy-ness but got too busy. So we like I said we ate a lot of apple crisps!

This is random... but so typical of Steve its funny. The day we went apple picking, we stopped at 2 or 3 farmers market stands, Trader Joes, and our regular grocery store. This is Steve carrying all like 15 bags of groceries up the stairs so we didn't have to make two trips! What a guy :)

These pictures are from our 19 mile bike ride. It was on the Minuteman bike path which is a nice path for pedestrians and bikers only. It was pleasant to have a bike ride where I didn't have to worry about drivers at all. This is the side of the Buckman Tavern, where the Lexington Militia gathered to meet the British army. They went to the Lexington green (pictured below) and then the first battle of the revolutionary war ensued.

A mini-replica of the battle of Lexington

Later in the fall, one of my best friends from college and her sister came to Boston for a weekend and stayed with us! Our first visitors ever! We took them to see some of the sites, shopped and ate great Italian food in Boston's North End. On Sunday we went to Walden pond to look at the beautiful fall colors. That is such a pretty place, I can see why Thoreau chose it to escape.

Glimpse of the fall colors...

I had a birthday this fall- #23 for me. I can't believe it. Sometimes I can't believe I'm only 23 and other times I can't believe I'm already 23. Steve got me some awesome kitchen gadgets that I have been wanting for a while.

The famous "Make Way for Ducklings" statue in the Boston Public Garden. Its cute huh?

So this fall was also another round of interviews for Steve except this time they were for real jobs! He had one very intense week of 12 interviews. He was exhausted by the end you can imagine but he did really well and got some second round interviews! One of the companies he interviewed with was Boeing, and they flew wives out for the interviews as well so we could see what the city was like! Cool huh? So I flew to Seattle on a Friday morning and we spent the weekend exploring what the city had to offer and enjoying a free vacation together!

This sculpture was in a 'sculpture' garden. What I want to know is how this is considered art? Hello its just a bunch of random pieces of metal thrown together and painted red. That's what the whole sculpture garden was, random weird pieces of 'art', I suppose some people think this is art. I guess I am more of a DaVinci girl. I want to see some real effort go into something called art. However, we thought this picture was cool with the space needle in the background :)

Pike Place market was fun, very touristy and crowded but I love all of the random things that the peddlers were selling.

We meant to go out for a fancy dinner on Saturday night but we were tired after a long day of walking around and exploring some of the suburbs. So instead of going out we ordered room service! I'm holding up my mini ketchup bottle- cute huh?

This is like the only picture of Steve from the whole trip- We were at brunch- which was delicious if you were wondering :)

This was a huge Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel we stayed at. They were having a festival of trees the weekend we were there and they were beautiful. The hotel was really beautiful too, it really reminded me of the Joseph Smith Memorial building in Salt Lake. We had such a great weekend in Seattle- Thanks Boeing!

More recently- Steve finished his internship, I finished my semester and we moved back in together! Yeah! We finished unpacking his things today and then immediately began packing for a holiday adventure in Arizona and Salt Lake City! We are so excited to see our families! I can't wait till tomorrow afternoon when I see them! Woot woot! On the job front, Steve has received two offers that we are seriously considering. One is for a biotech company in Boulder, CO and the other is for Boeing in either Seattle or the Portland, OR area. We have to make a decision pretty soon here, so wish us luck with this! I'll let you know when we decide where our next step will take us!

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all of you!

Three Year Anniversary Trip

We had our three year anniversary on this month!!! Isn't that crazy? It's hard to believe that time has gone that fast but at the same time I can hardly remember life without Steve. I love this guy so much and I'm so incredibly grateful that he is my husband forever. We've spent every one of our anniversaries living in a different state. We spent our first year anniversary in Arizona, second year in Massachusetts, and third in Connecticut- And next year we will likely be in a new state... Crazy! For this anniversary, Steve planned a surprise weekend getaway to the Adirondack region of New York. We've been dying to get up to these mountains since we've lived here but haven't really had a chance, so I was really excited he picked to go here. We spent three days and two nights up there.... Here are the details....

The first day/night we were there we stayed at a resort that had a private lake and we had our own little private tupa (aka cabin). It was a cute little place! We didn't get there until early evening on Friday, so we went for a little bike ride down to the lake and went for a canoe ride. That night, we decided to make our own fancy dinner instead of going out. Steve grilled us delicious new york strip steaks, corn and pineapple, with watermelon on the side. For dessert we had lava cakes with vanilla ice cream! Yes- it was a delicious meal :)

Saturday morning, we woke up and headed to the lake to do some swimming, paddle-boating and sunbathing. It was such a fun afternoon. There was only 3-4 other people on the lake so it almost felt like we had it completely to ourselves. What more can you ask for on your anniversary weekend?

Our little 'tupa'

We decided to only spend one night at this resort to save money and then find a campground somewhere near the Lake Placid region. We just assumed that we would be able to find a campground because there is like 250 in this region, so we didn't make advanced reservations. Well it turns out that during the fourth of July weekend EVERY SINGLE campground gets booked full. Except, we found one with availability called Rainbow Pines. We were so excited to find vacancy we called immediately to ask if there was vacancy. The lady told Steve that there was always room for a tent. Then he asked if we could reserve it, and she said they didn't take reservations but they would hold it for us.... At this point we were about thirty seconds from hopping in the car and driving there... Just as we were packing up I noticed a banner scrolling across the bottom of their website that said "This campground is men only". Weird huh? Well after a couple of seconds of searching we found out that Rainbow Pines is New York's premier Gay campground... bahahahahaha!!!!!!!! We laughed for like ten minutes! I wonder what they would have done if we would had showed up- They would have rejected me and invited Steve to join in all the fun!

Our next resort was to start looking for cheap hotels- we eventually found one with vacancy in our price range! We reserved it and began the drive to Lake Placid.Hooray! We checked in to the hotel, found a restaurant to go and had a lovely pizza dinner. When we got back to the hotel, we were going to put a movie on, so I turned the covers down- much to my surprise I found a whole pile of mouse droppings right on the pillows, as well as chewed up sheets and pillowcases. I could have puked! At this point we were worried that we weren't going to be able to find another hotel (plus it was like 11 pm), so we did some google searching- found another hotel with vacancy- got our money back and got out of there as FAST as we could. Ew, I feel gross just remembering this... The next hotel we went to was perfect and we were finally able to get a good night's sleep :)

The next day was the fourth of July! We decided to drive to the top of Whiteface mountain, which is a really tall mountain there, it boasts views of Vermont, Canada, and on really clear days, New Hampshire. We got to the top and discovered that a lot of other people had decided to do the very same thing :) It was really touristy but also really pretty.

This is a view of the ski resort that two Olympic games have been held at- pretty huh?

Aerial view of Lake Placid from the top of Whiteface

An observatory on top of Whiteface plus a lot of tourists :)

We were going to try to do some biking this day but I was not feeling very well. It was super hot and I was feeling pretty dizzy, so I didn't think that biking would be a very good activity for me... bummer because I bet there was a lot of pretty trails. Instead of biking, we drove for a little while, stopped at a beautiful river and then headed in to the city of Lake Placid to do some exploring.

We walked around the city for a while, got some Ben and Jerry's ice cream and decided to see Toy Story 3 to get out of the ridiculous heat. It was cute and a good activity for me since I was not feeling well! After the movie, it had cooled down significantly so we busted out the bikes and went to go see Lake Placid but there weren't any trails around it and you really had to have a boat to see it, so we just kept riding our bikes around town. The town of Lake Placid actually surrounds Mirror Lake- so we rode around that lake for a while and decided we better stake out a spot to watch the fireworks. We ended up RIGHT by the lake- we could have put our feet in if we wanted. It was a perfect spot :) We ate our dinner of peanut butter and honey sandwiches and played cribbage while we watched the sun set over Mirror Lake. It was perfect :)

The town of Lake Placid at dusk- beautiful.

After the sun set, the fireworks started. We ended up right next to the spot they were lighting the fireworks. It was cool to be so close because the fireworks literally filled our whole sky and it was so loud and fun. Steve found a fireworks setting on our camera and got some pretty cool shots of the fireworks. After the fireworks we decided to take just head home so we didn't have to pay for another night in a hotel, and so we didn't have to fight the terrible traffic that would be inevitable on Monday. We got home at like 4 am exhausted but happy after a super fun and memorable weekend!

A heart shaped firework- the perfect way to end a romantic anniversary weekend!

Welcome to a happy place :)

Acadia National Park, Maine

Over Memorial Day weekend, Steve and I drove to Mount Desert Island, Maine and enjoyed a four day stay at one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. I loved Acadia and want to go back there (right now!). We had a lovely weekend filled with perfect weather, bike rides, hiking, good food, lots of exploring and spending good quality time together after a long and grueling semester.

These pictures were taken from the top of Cadillac Mountain- the highest peak in Maine (or on the Atlantic Coast... I can't remember... but it's some kind of high peak :) It was beautiful at the top. It looked out into the beautiful blue ocean and you could see all of the little islands that surround the coast. You can even see the coast of Nova Scotia from the top of this mountain!

I love this picture! What a good lookin' guy!

The only sandy beach in the whole park- unfortunately the day we went there it was about 65 degrees and the water was probably about 45-50 degrees- needless to say Steve only dipped his feet in and I didn't get in at all! I was sitting on the sunny rocks with my jacket zipped all the way to the top!

One of the most awesome features of Acadia is that there are miles and miles of carriage roads. John Rockefeller built this amazing system of carriage roads so he didn't have to compete with automobiles. He built them to near beautiful lakes and over rivers and streams. There stone bridges like the one above all over the place. They are so beautiful and we were always excited to see one.

The really great thing about the carriage roads is- only bikes, horses and hikers are allowed- hardly anyone used them and it was the perfect type of biking for me-- meaning we were in a beautiful place, on a road (not a scary mountain bike trail) and it was relatively challenging without being to intense. We biked miles and miles of carriage roads and saw beautiful places on them. We both felt like this was the best way to explore this park because you could see so much more than if we tried to hike them all. I'm not sure if you've figured it out already but I L.O.V.E.D. the carriage roads :)

A vista overlooking Eagle lake

On one of the gorgeous stone bridges, taking a break after a long uphill climb

One of the days we spent hiking a trail that overlooks Somes Sound- It is the only fjord on the Atlantic coast and it was really beautiful. For a while we were right near the water and saw some lobster boats come check their cages. Then, the hike took us into the forest where hiked to the top of one of the mountains and then back down.

A working lighthouse near Acadia- it wasn't the most beautiful but we had to stop and see it anyways! I don't know if any of you have seen the Disney movie Pete's Dragon but the whole time we were there I couldn't stop singing "I'll be your candle on the water" and other songs from that movie. In fact, Pete's Dragon is the next movie to come in our netflix queue and I can't wait to make Steve watch it!

After our hike in Somes Sound we drove in to Bar Harbor, Maine and got a seafood dinner- Steve got a lobster and I got fish n' chips. We went a saw a movie that night. I'm sad I didn't get any pictures of the town because it was cute- but oh well :)

On another carriage road ride...

This Jordan pond- isn't it lovely? There is a restaurant that sits right on the water and serves famous English popovers- we went to get some for a snack and there was a 45 minute wait! What???? So instead of eating popovers overlooking this lake- we ate nature valley granola bars and then headed out for another bike ride

This is a gate house to the carriage roads- it was pretty cool but you couldn't explore it because it was a private residence... It was cool but I don't think I'd want to live there :)
That was the last picture we took- So there you have it- Acadia National Park. One of the best vacations I've ever had. I hope we get to go back before we move too far away.