Summer is over

We can't believe summer has come and gone so quickly. We definitely had some amazing highlights.

1. We graduated with our Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language.

2. We traveled Europe with Lon and Jennifer.

3. We lived with my brother, his wife and family for a few weeks with Nick's brother and family. Duncan and Devan were looking for a place to live because Duncan got into med school!

4. We went to Maine and did a lot of swimming and relaxing. Sorry no pictures taken.

5. I ran away for a weekend in Nashville to see Shania Twain live with my sister.

6. Brought Joe to Boston for a week and change.

7. We bought a car and we moved to a bigger apartment... With a ton of windows.

We had a fun and crazy summer!

Moving 2 miles

During the month of July Nick and I moved. The new apartment needed a lot of love and so for most of the month we worked hard fixing up the place.

Both the new place and the old one had its pros and cons. The first Con of the new place is the shape it was in..... HORRIBLE

We signed the lease because it was an as is apartment, however the landlord said we could paint and do whatever. The location is GREAT and the apartment wasn't too bad so we took it.

We stripped most of the paint off  the walls and trim because we didn't really have a choice.

You will find before and after photos here. Sorry some are blurry.

 Nick Stripping paint

 We were so lucky that the Missionaries came by to help us out often. We owe them big time!

Under the stove looked disgusting

After a short time looking at the color choices at Lowe's we discovered this color family. We took all of the colors home and narrowed down our choices to these 6. We have heard horror stories about couples trying to pick colors, so I'm grateful that Nick and I agreed and made quick and good decisions. However the colors may be too bright/bold for most.. but that's our personalities.

We had a lot of fun experiences while living in two places. After working all day I went to the new place to help Nick with whatever needed to be finished for the day. We would get so caught up in our work that we often missed the last bus back to our (old) apartment... many nights were spent walking the 2 miles back. We looked at it as time that we got to talk about everything. It worked out.

Because we were between apartments we often would bring food but not a way to hold it or cook it, so we had to get creative. Hotdogs over the burner... YUM!

 cold canned soup in a cup... not bad!

The results of our hard work was worth it though. The place looks much better and we honestly feel at home here. It's funny how just painting the walls and cleaning can do that.

More pictures will be posted of the apartment in time. If you need our new address just message me and I'll send it over.

Valentine's Day 2015

Since being snowed in basically the whole time we have been here we decided to get out and go on a day long date.

We woke up and got all dressed up and left for the temple. The bus system is not running on schedule so it's a hit or freeze situation. As we just left the house we saw a bus pass by and we knew that the next one would be 30-60 minutes away so we walked to a different bus route. We didn't have luck on our side so we froze for about 30 minutes. Lucky the bus was warm enough that my feet regained some feeling. The bus took us to the subway tracks and we jumped on our train and headed to downtown Boston. In downtown we had a subway exchange so we could head up past the Harvard area where the temple is located. We finally arrived at the end of the red subway line and saw this while waited for our bus. 

A super tall wall of snow... we are running out of places to pile it and it just keeps coming.

The bus finally arrived at half past frozen feet and we were off to the temple.....well toward the temple at least. It turns out the temple is a half mile walk from the bus drop off point. No sidewalks.. just us walking with cars driving.

We made it though and it is a gorgeous temple on the inside and out. After the temple we walked back to the bus stop and again as we were almost there we watched a bus pass. I cannot explain the feeling of freezing and depression mixed together when you learn that these buses run 1 hour apart. This was one of those times where you could say it couldn't get any worse.....THEN it started snowing. We had good spirits about it though and lucky a bus rescued us about 40 minutes into our wait time.

We made it back to town and ate an early dinner and grabbed dessert for the road.

Then we went back underground to jump on the subway to head home... five stops into the trip we figured out we were going the opposite way of home so we jumped off and jumped on the train going the right way. We finally made it to our station and we eventually got on our bus and got home safely. My Valentine's Day surprise was waiting in mailbox and I was super excited to open it. Nick gave me the greatest gift ever. He adopted a sea turtle for me!!!!!! I can either name a baby sea turtle or I can track a sea turtle but I can't do both. I think I'm going to go for tracking a turtle because then I can keep track of him. I'm super excited about it! As I was reading through my Adoption papers Nick was drawing a bath for my feet because, didn't I mention I couldn't feel them anymore?

Well our day getting out of the house was eventful to say the least. I hope all of you had a great Valentine's Day and a great 3 day weekend. 

If you take anything away from this blog please let it be one of these three things. 1) the temple and cannolis are always worth the risk. 2) proper foot wear is a must! 3) if you are handed a snow ball... make snow cream :)

Blizzard Juno January 2015

We have had a great few days with all the snow around. Sunday we were warned the storm was coming so we walked to the grocery store near us and restocked our 72 hour kit and other things for the week first thing Monday morning. The snow began mid-afternoon and did NOT stop until sometime early Wednesday morning. Tuesday was so windy and snowy we didn't dare exit the apartment. Wednesday however we woke up to the sun shinning through our window and knew it was going to be a fun day. We both put on two or three layers of the warmest stuff we had and then headed outside.

Nick jumped off the porch first thing!

We walked around and enjoyed watching others shoveling the snow! HAHA
Okay, Nick did offer a few older ladies but they declined his awesome arm strength.

We just had a FANTASTIC time!

Our apartment in the snow!

Nick kept trying to convince me that jumping in the snow would be fun. It was suppose to be light enough that I would sink through it... well it didn't happen the first time so........

......I tried again and it worked a little better but still not what I expected it to be like... Because I didn't get the effect Nick wanted he later pushed me in a deep area of fluffy snow... 3 freakin times.. as I would begin to get back up he would push me again. Once I tried to tackle him and missed and landed face first in the fluff. It was a great time.

Now time for some Hot Chocolate and getting back to the business. Hope everyone is staying warm!