Will it Ever Stop Snowing?!?

I am sure you all know about the huge storm that we had over this last weekend. We got about 28 inches in two days!

It took us about 2 hours to dig out both of our cars and that was with the help of a kind neighbor. We are fortunate enough to have such nice neighbors because at first we were digging out our cars with cookie sheets and a broom because we don't own a shovel. Two of our neighbors lent us theirs which helped a lot!!

We didn't bring out any of our snow clothes and the only gloves we have are the fabric kind so it was pretty cold and wet out.

What a guy!

This is the snow pile in front of our building. And it is supposed so snow again today and tomorrow giving us another 5 to 6 inches of new snow on top of what we already have! I seriously can't wait for winter to be over. The roads are terrible so we have for the most part been stuck inside for about 5 days now.

Baby Shower goodies

So a few weeks ago I helped throw a baby shower for my cute friend Dannii and I have to show off some of the super cute goodies I made for it!

These tiny cookies are so yummy! They are very addictive so it is a good thing they are so small. They are called Melt away cookies and their name describes exactly what happens when you eat one, it literally melts away in your mouth. The lemon frosting is what gives it, it's sweet flavor!

We had a rubber ducky theme so I made these little chocolates as party favors. I have to say, I was pretty proud about how they turned out. The picture doesn't give them justice. They were darling in real life. They are white chocolate dyed yellow and the bottom is dark brown chocolate. I have never made chocolates before and they are surprisingly easy to do. I highly recommend these for your next shower.

Dannii has a specially affinity with Nutella so I made these super yummy sugar cookies shaped like duckies (Thanks to Brooke's mother in law, Char, for the recipe!), then I put Nutella in between them and made little sandwich cookies. They were pretty good, but I think these cookies are better with frosting. I couldn't get enough Nutella between the cookies without it spilling out...

Even though we had a snow storm the day of the shower it turned out great and we had a good time.

A Very Crafty January

I decided that this year I would learn how to sew clothes. I have never sewn anything so I decided to start small and make a skirt. I figured how hard could it be? haha

Well when you don't have a pattern or a sewing machine it is pretty hard. It took a long time to sew it all by hand using only a skirt that I already own as a reference. It's not perfect but I think the flaws are small enough that only I would notice. In the end I had a pretty cute skirt that I was happy to wear out in public which was the goal all along. Hooray! And just for fun I used the same fabric as the skirt to make the headband I am wearing in the picture.

My other goal for this month was to finish the painting that I started at the beginning of last year. I am a really slow painter! But tonight I finally finished it! The picture doesn't do it justice because the colors look really different in real life. The leaves should not look quite so green... but you get the idea. I was inspired by the Robert Frost poem, "The Road not Taken" and titled it "Yellow Wood." My real New Years resolution is to paint more frequently this year so maybe it won't take me an entire year to do one painting.

Christmas and Recovery

This Christmas was not only exciting and fun but productive at the same time. I found out that I needed to have a laperoscoptic surgery to remove some cysts and the best time to schedule it turned out to be 2 days before Christmas. Lucky me! I went in for surgery on December 23rd and it was successful. Poor Abe had to wait, by himself for me to be done, at the hospital all day from 7:30 am to 4 pm! I am sure it was a long day for him but he took good care of me when I got home. I spent the next day sleeping.
What Abe didn't know is that I had secretly been saving my money this year to buy him something special for Christmas that I knew he really wanted but would never buy for himself because he is way too practical. So Christmas Eve I got up at 3 am to set out the gifts. I still felt pretty sore and groggy from pain meds but I was so excited for Abe to wake up that morning and see that Santa had come for him. haha

This was how it looked when he came out. The stockings were not under the tree before and neither were any of the blue gifts....

He could not tell why I was so excited for him to get up that morning because we had decided that other than the piano he bought for me we were not doing gifts this year because our Florida trip was our Christmas present to ourselves.
The funniest part was that when he came out he didn't notice the presents at all! He thought they were empty boxes that I had wrapped as decoration because there were two boxes that I actually did that to.

In Abe's stocking he got a hat(the one he is wearing) for when he runs outside in the morning and a large thing of red peppers because he loves them and puts them on everything. In my stocking I got a special Christmas treat that I love.

Next was the big gift which he still had not noticed. I told him to open it and he was surprised by its weight because he expected an empty box. haha It was definitely not empty though...he got a Wii system! He was really excited and totally surprised.

He also got a Wii fit which will probably be more for me than him but he was still happy.

And lastly he got the Tiger Woods golf game from my parents to go with his new Wii and an extra remote. The golf game has turned out to be his favorite thing for sure!

It made me so happy to give him an exciting Christmas. It was also great because I was still recovering from surgery and I ended up sleeping the rest of the day and it gave him something to do.

Earlier in the month we got me this digital piano which I absolutely love! This was my big Christmas gift for the year. I also got Harry Potter 2, 3 and 6 so now we have them all which gave me something to watch while I was in bed recovering.

It is a tradition of ours to do puzzles during the holidays with this one I think we bit off a little more than we could chew. It is a 1500 piece Christmas puzzle and we are still not done with it. That afternoon Abe helped me make cinnamon buns for lunch which were super yummy, but that was not all Abe made that day...

That evening I woke up just in time to get the table ready and talk Abe through some cooking instructions so we could have Christmas dinner with our good friend's Bonnie and Chris. Abe made a turkey breast, candied yams, mashed potatoes and stuffing! What a great husband to do all of that by himself! Our friends brought over a yummy honey baked ham, green bean casserole, rolls and a delicious home made pumpkin pie. It was one of the first real meals I had eaten in days and it was so delicious I can't even tell you!

This picture was actually taken a few weeks ago when we first got my piano but since it was my favorite thing I wanted to show it off. I haven't had a piano in years but I love to play. It has been a lot of fun having music in the house again.

It was a great Christmas. After our yummy dinner the boys played Wii golf while Bonnie and I worked on the incredibly difficult puzzle. It was a great end to a great Christmas, we are very blessed.

I am now feeling much better and hope to be 100% in another week. I want to publicly thank my cute husband for taking care of me and doing so much cooking and cleaning.
You are the best, thanks babe!

Snow in DC???

This is what it looked like outside our window last Saturday morning. When we heard it was going to snow here we thought about how much it snowed all of last year and expected maybe a few inches that would stick longer than a day... We were wrong!

Little did we know we would be in DC for their biggest snow storm in about 17 years!
Lucky us!!

I know to all of my UT friends and family this doesn't look like that much snow, but a couple of feet of snow here is like a hurricane hitting the city. Everything not only shut down on Saturday for the storm but things continued to be closed on Sunday even church was canceled and it had stopped snowing Saturday evening. Then you would think they would for sure have gotten the roads clear by Monday but no, everything was still closed down and no one went to work!

Finally today things started to get back to normal minus the people here that don't understand how to drive in the snow and go about 5 mph everywhere they go even up a slick hill or on totally cleared roads! Now I know why when I went to the grocery store on Friday the shelves where empty and the check out lines went down the isles.

Cakes and Christmas Parties

For our Ward Christmas Party I made a very large and delicious Andie's Mint Chocolate fondant cake. I had never done piping with icing before, and while it is not perfect, I was pretty proud of how it turned out.

I really liked how the top turned out but I ran out of time and couldn't do what I planned on doing on the sides and ended up with these three trees, oh well...

It was four layers of Chocolate fudge cake with bits of Andie's mint in it, then three layers of practically pure Andie's mint melted down and then topped off with fondant. It was really yummy!

Two nights ago we got together with our friends for a Christmas party. Even our good friends the Kohn's were visiting from California and were able to be there! We ate at a restaurant called Taste of the Worlds and it was pretty good. You can get Indian, Thia, or Mexican food there and surprisingly it is all good.

After we went to our friends the Purdy's home for some hot chocolate , wessel some birthday Bochliva because it was Jess's birthday. Dannie did such a good job with everything it was very gourmet, not the package stuff.

We had a couple very intense games of Jenga.

We also played a gift exchange game where the Bells went away with about half of the gifts! Sadly, Abe and I ended up with nothing. I actually had about 3 items until they were all stolen, but Abe wasn't lucky enough to roll a 7 or an 11 with the dice the entire game and never got a chance to pick a gift.

I had never had Bochliva before and I obviously don't know how to spell it either, but it was really delicious! Even Abe liked it and he doesn't like a lot of desert foods.

We are so lucky to have such great friends! Merry Christmas to everyone!

Christmas Lights at the Maryland Temple

A few weeks ago Abe and I went to a Messiah Sing-a-long up by the Maryland Temple. Afterwards we walked around the Temple grounds to see the beautiful lights and walked through the Christmas displays they had in the visitor center. It is one of our favorite holiday traditions! This guy is there every year sitting outside the visitor center every single night and greets people as they walk around and wishes you a Merry Christmas. We thought it was so great we took our picture with him this year.

The Temple is always beautiful but I especially love it when the grounds are all light up!

inside the visitor center they had displayed nativity scenes from countries around the world. The one above was Abe's favorite from Guatamala.

I had two favorite the one above was from Switzerland and it was really intricately detailed wood carvings and the one below I liked just because it was so tiny, I thought it was cute. Made with pearls in an oyster shell from New Zealand.

A very nice man offered to stand in the snow so we could have a picture with both of us in front of the Temple. Thanks nice man! It just doesn't feel like Christmas till we have gone to see the lights at the Temple.

Thanksgiving 2009

I know that I was super nervous about hosting Thanksgiving dinner, but it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Everything turned out good and we had good friends and family to share it with so it was great.

Abe's brother AJ, his sister Aliese and her husband Bryan and baby Lily and our good friends Kim and Paul Anderson came with their baby Rya. The food was really yummy especially the pies Kim brought! The Turkey that I was so scared of making was good but it was on the cool side because it got done 2 hours earlier than I thought it would. And even though we moved things up and ate an hour early it was not hot anymore by the time we sat down to eat. Oh well at least I didn't give everyone food poisoning or something. If cold Turkey is the worst that happened I am fine with that.

After dinner we played a very long but fun game of Phase 10 while we digested. It was a pretty competitive game and in the end Aliese was the champion. Good job Aliese!
It was a lot of fun and I would be happy to host it again anytime.

Birthday From Bad to Great

My birthday didn't start out so great this year but it ended with a perfect girls night out. The weekend before my birthday our washing machine broke down and the earliest they could come fix it was on my birthday between 8 am and 12 noon. I made plans to bring the little girl that I nanny for to my house for the morning to play while we waited for the repairman to come. She sometimes has a hard time napping at my house so I was really hoping that he would come before she needed a nap. I was unlucky about that, plus she happened to be having an abnormally fussy day due to having her H1N1 shot that morning. So I was trying to keep her happy all morning while waiting for the repairman. By noon he still hadn't arrived so I called Sears to find out that they were running behind and that he would call me right away to let me know when he would be there. I waited another 1.5 hours and still no call. When I packed the diaper bag that morning I only packed a couple of diapers because I thought that we would be home around noon and wouldn't need more than that...well we did. Luckily the repairman finally got there and it only took about 15 minutes for him to fix the washing machine. Too bad I had already called Abe to come home from work so I could take the baby home to change her diaper. So Abe came home just as we were leaving. Oops.

Abe was great though. He saw that I was stressed out and he went to pick up movie tickets for my friends and I for later that night to see "New Moon." He also went to the grocery store and bought me my very favorite kind of birthday cake and made it for me, Cherry chip cake with cherry frosting, yummy!

That night I went with my girlfriends to dinner at Cosi which was super yummy and fun and then after we went to see "New Moon." I didn't like the first movie at all so I had very low expectations but surprisingly I liked New Moon a lot! After the movie we went back to my house and had some birthday cake. It turned out to be a great birthday in the end thanks to my cute hubby, the really nice family that I work for and great friends!

First Thanksgiving Dinner

I have enjoyed a nice home cooked Thanksgiving dinner every year of my life and have never played a very big role in its preparation. It's probably just because I am the baby in my family, but I have never been asked to prepare anything very difficult for the meal. In fact until the last 5 years I was never asked to bring or prepare anything at all. Since my family decided that I was old enough to participate they have always given me assignments like, rolls or mashed potatoes...things they figured I could handle by myself.

Well this year I am not going home for the holidays and Abe has some younger siblings that live near us and would like to get together along with a few friends in the ward. This suddenly makes me the cook! I have to make almost everything myself and I am totally stressed about it! Well I am really only stressed about the turkey. I realized that not only have I never made a turkey before but I have never even watched a turkey be made or helped in anyway with the turkey. It was always magically there at dinner time I guess. Now that I will be making one for myself I am open to tips. My mom was kind enough to write me step by step instructions but if anyones has an awesome recipe they want to share with me I would love to get it. Otherwise I will be picking one at random off the internet. The easier the better, remember, I am a novice.

Walking for Donuts

I had a vision weeks ago of Abe and I and all of our friends dressing up like Super Hero's on Halloween and going for a morning run around Reston. Today my dream became a reality.

We made a few changes though...not everyone was dressed as a Super Hero; only the coolest did, especially our friend Steve who really is Super Man! And instead of a run it was a slow walk because of the kids that came with us.

We walked through the Town Center Mall near our condo and even though it was pretty chilly and windy it was worth it to get the strange looks from people as we went by.

After our walk a few more friends joined us for Super breakfast of Donuts and Orange juice, Yum! P.S. this is my good friend Danni and I apologize to her that once again I am posting a picture of her with her eyes shut. Every time I take her picture she has her eyes shut! It's all right though because she is so pretty nobody would notice.

It was a fun morning and I think Abe and I may have created a new tradition for our future Super Ford Family! Thanks to all my friends that could come and bring my vision to life. Too bad it made my cold get worse and turned it into a sinus infection...oh well, we had fun.
Happy Halloween Everyone!

Ward Halloween Party

Yummmm! Doesn't this look delicious? I made this cake for the desert contest at our Ward Halloween party tonight. It was red velvet cake with butter cream frosting and a layer of Cherry preserves in the middle. All the viens are made from Twizzlers pull and peels dipped in red butter cream. Sadly I forgot to eat some at the party and didn't get a chance to taste my creation. I heard it was good but who would tell me if it wasn't? If you are wondering right now if I won or not let me save you the suspense right now and tell you no, I did not win. :(
I got second place. First place went to someone that brought a pumpkin cheesecake which apparently was super delicious...but come on how much creativity went into that? Just kidding, I am sure they deserved to win. I just get really competitive sometimes.

This is a cute little girl from one of the families that Abe home teaches. She was very excited to show Abe her hat once she saw that he had one too.

These are a few of Abe's cub scouts. The two on the ends are also in my primary class. It is fun to work with these kids, they keep us on our toes.

I knew there would be another opportunity for me to wear my Minnie ears somewhere other than Disney World. I had Minnie Mouse gloves for my hands as well but I wasn't wearing them in this pic.
It was a fun party with a great turn out. Besides the desert contest there was also a chili cook off and Abe was a judge so he got to taste every kind of chili there was. He had no idea that there would be 21 different chillies to taste! He definitely didn't have room for any desert after all that chili. I played it smart because I was sitting with Abe at the judging table, I waited till I heard which chili was the best before I got in line to dish me up a bowl. They picked a good one and it turns out that it was the same person that won the chili cook off last year that won. We really love the Reston Ward!

The end of an Era

For anyone that knows me, they probably noticed my wooden beaded hand bag that I have had forever! The first one I got was a much smaller wooden beaded hand bag, the same style as my current one only smaller. I was about 15 years old when I got it and because I liked it so much and it went with almost everything, I stuck with the same one all this time. Each time one purse wore out or I accumulated so much stuff that it wouldn't fit any longer in the size bag I had I would upgrade...same purse just larger size. Until last week.

I was in Anthropologie with a friend of mine when I saw this super cute bag! It was love at first sight. I picked it up and it just so happens to be the softest leather I have ever felt. I wasn't really in the market yet for a new hand bag but I just couldn't help myself, I had to have it!

Two days later my sweet, loving husband took me back and bought it for me! Yeah!!!
So I would like to introduce everyone to my new hand bag. She my look quite different from all that came before her, but she is just as special. I am looking forward to taking her to new and exciting places and many wonderful years together. Welcome home super cute hand bag!

Quick note to my old hang bag...I hope you know how much you mean to me. You have always been loyal and treated me and my things well. It was not you, it was me. I hope we can still be friends and I promise to still take you out from time to time. Thank you and farewell.

Autumn is here

My favorite season of the year is here! I love Autumn especially on the East coast because of how many trees there are. This is the lake that boarders our condo complex. check out the rest of the views in our neighborhood, it is just a taste of how beautiful it is here right now!

These are the trees surrounding the pool area.

A few weeks ago Abe brought me home these pretty flowers. What a sweet husband I have. He said that they reminded him of lions...I can see where he was going with it because they look like giant dandy lions. P.S. this was almost 3 weeks ago and two of them are still alive and looking pretty good.

Navy vs. Air Force 2009

We decided that since we couldn't go to a BYU game this year, we would go to the Air Force vs. Navy game instead. We thought it would be fun to see the events leading up to game time.

This is the Air Force Falcon. I am actually terrified of birds especially the large ones with huge talons and sharp beaks. I won't even hold a parakete I am so afraid of it pecking me. So standing this close was pretty daring for me. I even got up the courage to pet his belly! It might have helped that the bird's eye's were covered with a blind fold and the guy holding him held the bird's face while I touched him just in case he tried to peck at me.

It was cool to see all the Navy men and women filling the stands all in White.

At the beginning ceremony they had the Navy come out to on the field in their troops and they filled the entire field. It looked really neat. Once they got into the stands the Navy Choir sand the Nation Anthem and it almost brought Abe and I to tears hearing our countries armed forces singing throughout the stadium. There is definitely something different about hearing it sung by the people that fight to protect our freedom.
At last the football teams took the field and right as the Navy team stormed out 3 fighter jets did a fly by over the stadium and they were so loud that you couldn't hear anything else. That was the coolest part. The game started and for almost the entire first half Air Force looked really bad and we thought it was going to be a blow out. Abe and I were sitting on the grass and there were tons of fans with no where to sit standing behind us. We both decided that we didn't really care who won and we felt like we saw what we had come to see. So we packed up just before half time and left early. We love Annapolis so it was really fun to go and experience this long time rivalry game. When we got home we found out that the game had turned into a much more exciting game in the second half and had even gone into over time with Air Force losing by a field goal! Oh well, at least we didn't have to battle traffic and Abe was home in time to go to Priesthood session. It was a really fun day and the weather was so beautiful that it was nice just to be outside.

Last Day

The last day we were there we woke up and got ready to go to the Orlando Temple. It was really beautiful and we were so glad that we were able to go while we were there. It was not without some struggle getting there though. I left my temple recommend at home and didn't realize till we were leaving and when we got there both Bonnie and Chris noticed that there's expired 2 days earlier. Luckily we were able to get a hold of our awesome bishop and stake president and they let us in.
By the time we got back to the hotel we didn't have time to go to a park so we thought we would go to the pool for a bit. We ate lunch and while eating we started watching the funniest movie ever, "The Incredibly Shrinking Woman."
It is a classic eighties film where this woman start shrinking and they don't know why. Long story short she ends up living in a doll house wearing barbie clothes, she get catapulted off a pillow by her sleeping husband, she is rescued by an ape and in the end she becomes normal size again by falling into some spilled chemicals. Need I say more??
We were so into this incredibly stupid movie that we never made it to the pool that day and by the time it was over it was time to pack up and leave to get to the airport. It was a great trip and we had a ton of fun, but it was good to get home and back to normal again.

Epcot

On day four we went to Epcot. One of the first things we did was go on this ride called, "Mission to Mars." For anyone going to Epcot in the future, DO NOT GO ON THIS RIDE!!! In the picture above I am obviously sick. It is a virtual reality ride that simulates a space shuttle launch. I am serious when I say it really feels like you are on a space ship getting launched into outer space. They warn you about 20 times before you get on the ride that you shouldn't go on it if you get motion sick and we all laughed about it and went on it anyway. Well...we all got sick! Luckily nobody actually through up but we all had to sit on a shady bench for about 30 minutes before we could anything. After we got our stomachs back a little we walked around the lake and visited the different countries. It was fun. We ate lunch in a Mayan Temple in Mexico and got disgusting deserts in Norway. Unfortunately, we did not have the energy to stay for the night show. Although we hear that it is a really cool show. We were just way too pooped and went back to the hotel for a soak in the hot tub and hula show.

Magic Kingdom

Day three we did the Magic Kingdom and it was super fun. I just want to point out that the second day we were there Bonnie and I both bought Minnie ears but I just noticed that in all the pictures I have posted I am the only one wearing them. I promise I was not a geek by myself. The Magic Kingdom was really fun. Although we took a vote at the end of the day and all of us like Disney land better than the Magic Kingdom. There are a few more adult rides at Disney Land. Our favorite part of this day was Splash Mountain.

Our hotel

Thanks to my parents we were able to stay at this beautiful time share resort. This is the view out our breakfast area screened in balcony.

It was 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and fully equip. Basically bigger and nicer than our condo.

This is my very favorite part...the bath tub in our room was the size of a small swimming pool. It was great to soak in after a long day of walking in the humid heat.

Abe in the living room on the computer just like at home. We went to the pool a few times and the last night we were there they had a Hawaiian band play with hula dancers and everything it was fun.

Hollywood Studios

Day two was Hollywood Studios. It was the only day that we were able to stay from open to close. Mostly because it wasn't quite as hot, and also because most of the attractions there require you to sit for a long time so our feet didn't get quite as sore. We saw some cool things but the best part about this park is the night show is "Fantasmic". It is a little different than the one at Disney Land in California but still a great show! We were all glad that we stayed to see it.

Animal Kingdom

We flew in Monday morning and after checking into our hotel and dropping off our things we went straight to the Rain Forrest Cafe located at the entrance of the Animal Kingdom for lunch. It was more for the atmosphere but the food was really yummy too. After that we went into Animal Kingdom. We only had a few hours because the park closes at 5pm but I think we packed in all the best things. We loved the animal safari tram ride because we saw so many cool animals. At one point a bunch of Rhino's came right up to our tram and even walked across the path in front of us. One of them got so close to wear Abe and I were sitting that we could have reached out and touched his tusk! It was really cool. The two funnest rides are the river rapids ride which we went on and all of us got completely soaked...hence the above picture where we are all wet. The other ride was the funnest ride I have ever been on in my life, the Mount Everest Ride! It is so fun, I laughed I screamed and then we went on it again. I recommend this park to anyone on the fence about it. There is a lot of stuff that we didn't even have time to see. I was kind of bummed that we didn't have a full day at this park because I think it was my favorite out of all of them.

Orlando Slide Show High Lights

Visitors

Our good friends the Nate and Cass and their baby Bridger came out to visit us a few weeks ago. It was so fun to have them here. Bridger is so stinking cute and was such a good little traveler. Abe did much of the tour guiding for them because I had to work. They did a ton of fun stuff and I hear that they had a lot of fun. I did get to go with them on a tour of the Capital building and the American History museum. We also went out to eat a few times. This picture was taken at the Cheesecake Factory on Cass's birthday. It was really yummy!!

BYU Football

Our friends Jen and Peter hosted the second game and Jen made the cutest little treats!

These little things that look like footballs were just about the yummiest little deserts I have ever had. They consist of crunched up Oreo cookie's mixed with creme cheese then you dip the whole thing in chocolate and decorate with frosting. They are to die for! I will have to come up with a reason to make these some time.

They set up two TV's so they could have another game going on mute at the same time.

They won again, go BYU! We are now 3-1 and if Max Hall can try to not throw the ball the the opposing team so much I think we will have a great season.

Ragnar 2009

Just imagine for a moment...six sweaty men crammed into a van for about 31 hours straight. That is Ragnar!

Stretching is twice as fun if you do it with a buddy.

Team "Hold the Mayo" after completing this incredible feat of strength.

Way Behind

Okay okay... I have heard your complaints and you are right it is time for me to start blogging again. I have been so busy lately that is has been hard to find time. Now that I am so far behind the task seems so daunting that I have been putting it off even when I have had time. So here is my recap of what we have been up to.

I have been very busy with my day job as a nanny for the cutest little girl in the whole world. She is getting older and much more mobile which means that I have to now be much more mobile in order to keep up with her. Other than that I have been very busy in the evenings doing friends and ward members hair. I am also busy on the weekends with doing wedding hair. August and September were the busiest wedding months I have had yet. It is great, but it is also exhausting at times. Especially when I have a picky bride or a huge wedding party to work with. I am also training to do the Richmond half marathon on November 14th. I have never been a morning person, Abe can attest to that, and pretty much the only time I have time to run is in the morning. So I have been getting up early to run which means that I am usually wiped out by about 7:30 pm each night. Basically Abe and I are now 80 year old people that go to bed at 8 pm. It is really good to be busy though, I actually really enjoy it most of the time.

Abe has been working hard at Freddie and is now in his third out of four rotations and he really likes it so far. He got to take off 3 days in a row last month for a training class and today he got the day off to go to a Freddie Mac recruiting thing. Two weeks ago he ran the DC Ragnar Relay Race with some of his friends from church and they had a blast. Those of you that don't know what that is, it is a 200 mile relay race and you are in groups of 12 runners. Abe ran 3 different times and his total mileage was around 13 miles. They start on Friday morning and they run all day, through the night, and into the next afternoon. Crazy...I know! People that know Abe know that this is right up his alley and to make things even better, his team's name was "Hold the Mayo". Abe actually had nothing to do with the name funny enough. I was surprised he would even wear a shirt that said "Mayo" on it at all. I have a few pictures from his race that I will put in the next post along with picture high lights of the last month.

Funniest Video Ever

Good Bye Kohn's

We said good bye to our good friends Lauren and Phill a few weeks ago. They moved to Reston at the same time Abe and I did and they are such a great couple. They moved to California and we miss them a ton!
(left to right Me, Dannie, Jen, Bonnie, and Lauren)
We had a going away party for them and went to dinner and got some gelato. We are so blessed to have such good friends!

Great Hike

Two weeks ago Abe and I went hiking with some of our friends in the Shenandoah mountains. It was a little over 8 miles and we went up apx. 2000 feet and back down 2000 feet. It took us 7 hours from start to finish, including stops. It was a pretty tough hike, but really fun.

All along the hike you pass by various swimming holes, waterfalls and natural rock slides. Luckily it wasn't too hot because of the shade by all the trees, but it was crazy humid! You can actually see the humidity in some of the pictures.

Abe's favorite part was the slides.

We had a great time!

Yeah Abe!!

This is a late post but Abe Passed his first CFA Exam!!! I am so proud of him for his hard work and we are excited to start studying for his next test.

Summer visit to Utah

Aren't they cute! These are our nieces and nephews on the Price side of the family. We did a ton while we were in Utah. Sadly, we did not take our camera with us to any of these activities! These are all pictures that other people have sent to me so I could document our trip. That is why they are only of family things and Abe and I aren't actually in them. haha.

The main reason we went out to Utah was to go to my sister Lissa's wedding. She and Steve got married on July 11th and it was beautiful. It was a small backyard wedding with family and close friends. Everything was perfect. We are so happy for them.

Of course I was the hairstylist for the bride and her daughter Natalie. I have to say I was pretty proud of how her hair turned out.

These are her three children from left to right: Natalie, Joey (who got a black eye from jumping on the bed the day before the wedding. haha) and Jake. Steve added one more child to the family and his name is Tyson.

The Monday after the wedding we went boating with some of the family as well. Lissa and Steve have a boat and they invited my brother Rob and his family and Abe and I because both of our families were visiting from out of state. Since our family is so big not everyone would fit on a boat at one time...
The goofball in the picture above is my brother Rob wake boarding.

My mom and dad just cam along for the ride. My dad did get in the water for about 2 minutes. He quickly decided it was much colder than he expected and returned to the boat to warm back up. The kids in the picture are Lissa and Steve's four kids and my brother's two kids, Jaxon and Savannah.

Abe is the best uncle! I am sure he is the favorite of all because he is so playful and loves to rough house. I think he strategically placed the kids all around him to hide how white he was in his swimming suite.

Fun things that we did while in UT that are not documented include the aftermath of the boating trip where Abe and I were bright red and sat icing our burns for the next two days, various dinners and lunches with friends, several trips to Cafe Rio and a Ford family pool party. We were busy the entire trip and we had a blast! It was great to see everyone and we miss you always.

The Fourth of July 2009

Every year on the fourth of July since Abe and I have been married, I have made a trifle. I decorate the top differently each time. This is this years trifle. One of our favorite deserts, yummy!

Our friends had a BBQ to raise awareness to the disease ALS or lue garricks disease. They did a great job. The food was great and everyone went away knowing more about this not very well known disease.

Chris and Abe manning the grill.

Bonnie and I decorated.

After the BBQ we all went to a Nationals game where proceeds from ticket sells was to be donated to ALS research. It was a really good game and the National actaully won!

After a great Fourth of July Day is done there is only one more thing to experience and that is the fireworks on the National Mall. They were amazing as usuall. We went to our favorite spot which is sitting on the grass in between the Washington and the Lincoln memorials near the concert bandstand. We enjoyed a free outside concert and the most spectacular fireworks we have ever seen anywhere! After the fireworks it is a race to the metro to beet the crowds back and I think this year we did a good job because it only took us 1 hour to get home. Then we ate a late night snack because we hadn't eaten all day since the BBQ.
It was another great 4th of July here in DC. Our favorite day of the year!

Night at the Smithsonian

On July 3rd Abe and I went with a couple of our friends, President Roosevelt and Robin Williams, to see their new hit movie night at the Smithsonian. Because of our VIP friends we got to see the movie at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum at night!
Just kidding, we obviously didn't get to go with any famous friends and the theater is open to anyone. We actually went with our friends Bonnie and Chris and it was so fun!

The movie was hilarious. We liked it even more than the first one, we highly recommend it. We love living in DC because of little things like this that we get to enjoy.

Weekend in New York

Most of these pictures are in chronological order but there are a few misplaced ones too. We went to New York this last weekend and had so much fun! I put a ton of pictures on here so I will try to be brief in my descriptions and only highlight the really good stuff.
The view above is from Central Park at sunset.

The first night we got there around 12:30am and check into our room that was supposed to have two beds in it because we were sharing with another couple (Bonnie and Chris). We got to our room and there was only one bed and the room was TINY! They actually had to remove some furniture to get the roll away to fit in the room. We had to have 3 people sleep in the big bed and one on the roll away. It was quit the experience sleeping between Abe and Bonnie all night with Chris snoring nearby. It was pretty funny. But because of this unfortunate room hotwire.com got upgraded us to a 4 star hotel for the next night where we got 2 rooms for free! So we didn't even have to share rooms and we had a night in a great hotel over looking central park! One bad night of sleep was totally worth that.

I just thought this was a pretty picture in Central Park.

On Friday we went to Liberty and Ellis island.

For dinner on Friday we went to our favorite pizza place in the whole world, Grimaldi's Pizzeria! In this picture the owner was giving Bonnie a hard time because she was wearing a Boston Red Socks hat. He jokingly forced her to take it off even though she really didn't want to show everyone her hat hair. Once she finally took it off he kissed her on the cheek and told her to put it back on. He then took a photo off the wall and showed it to us. It was a picture of him in his restraunt with Mickey Mantel and one other really famous Yankee players back in the day. He was a really funny guy and even though he gave Bonnie a hard time, he was so funny that we all couldn't stop laughing. He finally told us "Just give me your money and get the h#*# out of here." He was this old Itallian guy that totally seemed straight out of a movie. It was great.

The best pizza ever, an all white pizza with basil. yummy!

View from the Central Park Castle.

Grimaldi's Pizza is right under the Brooklin Bridge. This peir is about one block away and is a great photo opp.

At Grimaldis the owner is Itallian, all of the waiters are Russian men and all of the cooks are Latino.

Abe and I with AJ and his friend.

Abe doing the Bonnie picture pose. I thought it was funny that he is trying to smile cheesy in this picture and it is closer to a natural smile than if he were just trying to smile normally for a picture.

After Grimaldi's we went to a chocolate shop that looked like it was a scene from Harry Potter. There was chocolate and candy everywhere. We got some yummy deserts.

On Saturday we ate at a really famous restraunt for lunch called Tavern on the Green in Central Park. It is so beautiful!!! A lot of movie scenes have been filmed at this restraunt. It was kind of pricey but worth going at least once.

It about as ritzy as Lacille is in Utah just to give you an example. The first Ghost Busters movie has a scene at this place that you might recognize.

After lunch we hurried to Broadway and saw the "Lion King." It was amazing! The music was so incredible it made me cry.

This is about as close to being on broadway as I will ever get, so I thought I would relish the moment.

This was actually Friday night. We walked along the water in Brooklin after dinner and the sky was so amazing! I have never seen clouds like this before. They looked like thousands of tiny round cotton balls in a brightly colored sky.

Our last day was Sunday. We spent the morning walking around Central Park again and then went to China Town for lunch. We are plugging our noses in this picture because there was a crazy funky smell in the streets of China town that literally made us sick to our stomachs. We ate at Joe's which is known to have the best dumplings ever. The food was really good but because the smell outside had already turned our stomachs it wasn't as enjoyable as it should have been.

After Lunch it was time to get on the China bus to go home. There is a bus that runs from DC China town to NY China town every hour on the hour for only $17.50 each way. It is a 4 to 5 hour bus ride but you can't beat the price. This was definitely the funnest trip we have taken on the East coast so far, it was great!

Running Buddies

It is Spring and I have been busy with running. I have always done races with Abe and I love running with him but I am way slower than he is and I always felt bad that he had to run so slow with me. I have finally found a running buddy that runs at my pace.

My friend Bonnie and I have run 3 races in the last 6 weeks and it has been a lot of fun. I keep forgetting to post about them so here they all are at once.

The first race we did was a 4 mile race for spinal disease research here in Reston. It was great because it rained very lightly for the last half of the race which felt great and kept us comfortable.

It was right about here that we decided to race each other to the finish.

I think it was a tie.

This is a little out of order because this was actually the last race we did. This was this last Saturday up in Georgetown we ran a 10k for heart disease. This guy in the pic above juggled the entire race!
We were feeling awesome till the last mile and I got way tired and my ankle started killing me. We still made it, I just slowed us down a little bit.

I felt pretty good about how we did though because I don't think I have run 6 miles in about a year. Bonnie is just awesome and she kept me going.

Two weeks ago we did the Susan G Koman Race for the Cure 5k up in DC around the National Mall. It was so fun! There were over 50,000 people that did it. It was seriously crazy how many people were there. I have never seen so many people wearing pink in one place before.

A special thanks to Abe and Bonnie's hubby Chris for being at the finish lines and taking all of the pics for us!