here are 10 of the things we've done in the last 5 months:
1. We went to DC for Thanksgiving to stay with Adam's sister and her family.
While there we took time to see some Smithsonians and had to take a picture by the Dorothy shoes and reminisce of when I was Dorothy in the school play.
Of course we HAD to take a picture of Michael Jackson's hat in honor of Mariah and the larger than life cut out in our apt last year
And of course we had to take a trip down the National Mall and see the WW Memorials, Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, etc
Last, we all had a picnic out by the rapids and the most intriguing thing was a man stuck in a huge hollow tree
2. Going to the blessed AZ for Christmas, spending weeks in the glorious weather, and telling the fam the big news.
While there being able to show Adam the absolute HIGHLIGHTS of growing up! What would we have done without The Wall? Believe it or not this cinderblock wall that we carved our initials into in 1996 holds the very best of memories for me, Garret, and my cousins. Amada, Steph, Garret...I didn't initiate Adam without you, but I hope it's okay I showed it to him :) We took these pictures of it too.
I also went through everything my mom saved for me from childhood. I threw most of it out and took pictures of the very best things I wanted to remember. First, I love that I made this page for a school class - in case you haven't noticed, my cousins mean the world to me!
Second...Steph, Amada...please tell me you remember this "life's a bummer"
Third, I found these old pics of my dad. I don't know if they were pre-mission, pre-marriage, pre-med school, but isn't it fun to see him since pictures of him are so rare?
Of course, Mom and Dad were so nice to treat us with real food at real restaurants since we're on such a tight budget :) Rustler's Roost is a fam favorite since it overlooks the Phoenix Valley.
3. Because of my calling we've been able to do a number of fun activities with the youth. Here is me trying to ice skate. This is a bad idea for 2 reasons: first, I am an AZ girl through to my bones and don't function well on ice. second, my doctor specifically told me no ice skating while pregnant. oops! Obviously I was barely even moving.
4. Hostess went bankrupt. Personally, I don't really like Twinkies as much as the other hostess products but Adam loves them and has great memories eating twinkies and chatting with his sister so of course we had to mourn the bad news and try making a twinkie shake from the recipe book I found for Adam for Christmas (yuck). It was gross, but I made some modifications and turned it into a delicious chocolate shake.
5. Visiting the Big Mac Museum. There is a "museum" (that's free) 15 minutes away from us in the township that invented the Big Mac. After we found that out we HAD to go and check it out for ourselves. Had I ever tasted a Big Mac before? no Do I really even like McDonalds? Not usually. But because we live SO close to a museum honoring the Big Mac we just had to go.
Even though I didn't really like the Big Mac, I'm so glad we went.
6. Conservatory. They have a famous plant conservatory in Pittsburgh that we've been wanting to go to. We waited till a particularly gray stretch in the weather and treated ourselves to a nice date night in the ginormous conservatory among the India display, flowers, plants, and greenery.
It may be hard to see but they had a desert room which reminded me of home!
Last, I made Adam take a picture of this fish display because it said "get your fresh fish!" It's for you Amada - "fish, get your fresh fish"
7. It's a boy! When we found out our little guy is going to be a boy I made steak and potatoes for dinner.
8. The Tradition - RED dinner for Vday. (red lasagna, red potatoes, red jello, red Jones, red fruit, red apple craisen salad). thanks to mom we even had v-day plates and chocolates!
9. Dr Dreadful Date Night. We went to a baby consignment sale to try and find super cheap baby stuff. While we were there Adam found this 'at home science zombie lab' thing that his older brother had growing up. Adam always wanted to try it. Since it was only a couple dollars we got it and did it for date night. strange, i know. It was fun but super disgustingly sugary.
10. St Patty's Day!!! This is my second favorite holiday and we are SO FORTUNATE to live in a city where the second largest celebration parade takes place. So, we joined 250,000 people on St Patrick's Day to see the parade. Punxsutawney Phil was there, St Patrick came, VP Biden came, the unicyclists came, and the clowns came. fun! Big City Parade! Green, green, green!
(they also randomly decorate these stone dinosaurs around the city so this one is dressed in green Irish garb)
Okay, finally, we took a trip to Palmyra, Kirtland, Erie, Niagara a couple weeks ago....that would definitely be on the list but this is already way to long. Maybe I'll post some of those pics later.
I hope this makes up for going silent for the last little while and that you enjoyed it!
