Yellowstone National Park

Jace and I went to Yellowstone National Park in August with my grandparents, aunt & cousins.  We had the best week ever!

The Grand Prismatic Spring.  So awesome.

We hiked up a bit to see another view of the Grand Prismatic Pool.

Grandma & cousins.

Fishing.

Stunning.  Is this real?

Old Faithful.

New York City!

Jace and I loved New York City and loved Central Park. : )

We rented bikes to ride in Central Park and they asked if they could take a photo of us for their website...?

The Hummus Kitchen!  

The food was great and it was so fun.

Baklava.  Craving Baklava.

Long time, no blog

It has been so long since I last blogged so I thought I would try to catch up by posting some pictures.  Jace worked in New York City this summer and we had a great time exploring and falling in love with the city. One of my best friends, Whitney, and her husband, Al, came to visit us in NYC and here are some pictures of our adventures.

A candy store.

The Apple Store.

Serendipity.

Whit and I trying to massage our feet on the bumpy sports shoes after a great deal of walking.

Columbia.

The Mets Game.

Ithacan Garden

This summer a few friends from church were renting a plot of summer gardening.  I have NEVER planted a seed in my life and have never attempted to keep a plant alive but I have always wanted to try to have a vegetable garden.  One summer back in Utah, Jace and I thought about starting a garden and even starting preparing the soil- but that was as far as it ever went.  This year we thought we would join the group and finally make our attempt at having a vegetable garden.  I have LOVED having a garden.  LOVED IT.  I wondered if it might be one of the things that we started and then it would slowly fizzle out but that hasn't been the case.  We have become increasingly devoted to our little vegetable plants. : )

Pre-weeding and soil prep.

Tilling the soil.

Making our rows.  

(Jace did most of that part...)

This was our final product.  Soil weeded and tilled.  Rows formed.  Starter plants transplanted.  We decided to do a lot of starter plants because we had never planted anything before and worried we may not have the skill to grow from seeds.

Plants continuing to grow.

June 2009.  

The picture above is several weeks later.  Some plants did die but most have grown and stayed very healthy.  I also decided to start three rows of seeds, the first two rows in the picture above are the start of the plants which have grown from seeds.  It was amazing.  I planted the seeds about a week or so ago and then suddenly these plants appeared!  Lol.

Weeding.

Our lettuce plants and cucumber plants (which we just transplanted after our last cucumber plants died- we hope these are able to stay alive).

Tomato plants.  Strawberry plants. Broccoli Plants.  Chives.  

Yesterday we noticed that the strawberries have cute flowers on them and as we looked closer, realized the strawberries were forming in the center of the flowers.  Yay!  

The strawberries are the plants at the back on the right.

Our garden.

Annie and Carter's visit to New York

Annie and Carter came to New York for a visit...Dave graduated dental school and Jace and I drove up to Buffalo to celebrate!

After the graduation ceremony.  4 years of dental school completed.  Check.

Lunch at an Italian Restaurant in Buffalo.

Annie and Carter then came to Ithaca.  Our first visitors here in Ithaca!  I might have been a little over zealous in showing off all the sites of Ithaca which included, The Commons, Cornell, Wegmans (our favorite grocery store adventure), and of course the beautiful outdoors.  Above is Buttermilk Falls.

Buttermilk Falls.

Annie and Carter.

Moi.

Then it was off to New York City.  Above is Central Park.

A carriage ride through Central Park.

Taking an iphone break at one of the many thousands of Starbucks in NYC.

Washington D.C.

Back in March, Jace and I took a weekend and went to Washington D.C.  We were only able to go for a weekend and found that we hardly scratched the surface in doing all that we wanted to do.  We LOVED D.C. and hope to go back again soon....

My good friend and college roommate, Heather, lives right outside of D.C. and we had a chance to see Heather and her family while we were there.  

The White House.

The Holocaust Museum.

This was one of our favorite places we went to while in D.C.  We thought we would stop by for a couple of hours and ended up spending almost a whole day there.

The Natural History Museum.

More pictures of the White House.

The Phillips Collection.

We found this museum in a guide book and thought we would check it out.  We didn't know what to expect were so glad we did.  A couple in D.C. has collected art throughout the years and eventually turned their home into a museum.

Below is a Renoir which is located at The Phillips Collection.  Jace and I had seen this painting before in pictures but were stunned by how magnificent it was in real life.  We would recommend The Phillips Collection to anyone visiting D.C.

Birthday Party!!

Saturday afternoon I  headed out to see a movie with my friend Kaci...We went to see Confessions of a Shopaholic, which was funny but predictable.  Little did I know, Kaci was instructed to distract me so that my husband could complete preparations for a surprise birthday party for me.  Kaci dropped me off after the movie and into the house I walked.  I was quite surprised to have a house full of people yelling "SURPRISE" at me.  : )  My husband has been known to go out of his way to make me feel special and this was no different.  Thanks to everyone who showed up to celebrate my 26th Birthday with me...and especially thanks to Jace for his cute sneakiness.

   

Me and Tiffany with the yummy cake she made.

Notice the knife Jace is holding....

Me with my birthday cake filled with candles...that would be 26 candles.

It took a lot to blow out all those candles, I think next year I might need some help in blowing out all those candles.

Nate and Grace.

Shannah and Skyler.

Melissa and Mia.

Brooke and Jared.

Sarah and Taylor.

Jen, Scott & Conrad.

Lindsey, Ryan, Tom & Kaci.

The shoes.