New York

I know it's been several months since we got home from our Europe trip, but I'm just now going through pictures to print them and I thought I'd throw some up here to share our experiences:

We flew standby, which means two things 1) you can fly in style for really, really cheap 2) you never know what flights you'll end up on so when one looks semi-decent you take it! And that's what we did on our way to London. We were planning to take a flight early on a Friday but it was looking pretty packed so instead opted to take a flight the night before at 11 p.m. We got to New York early Friday morning and had about an 9-hour layover. And man oh man, did we ever take advantage of it!

Note that all we took with us to Europe was a single backpack each.
We couldn't find lockers in the New York airport (which makes sense
for security reasons) so we hauled our backpacks around with
us all day. Let's just say it was a really really good workout.

We got off the subway right in the middle of Time Square.

One word: magical!
I could sit there and watch people and cars go by
all day long and be perfectly happy. I loved it!!



We caught a glimpse of Good Morning America being recorded...

...saw lots of cool things and took lots of random pictures...

...saw the Trump Tower - which I recently read a book about
and have much more appreciation for now. Notice the
trees on the atrium of the building (on the right),
you don't see that very often in New York...

And of course we had to stop in Central Park.
We only scratched the surface considering how large the park is,
but boy did we soak it in. We took a nice nap on that grass straight
ahead. The park's another place I wouldn't mind spending a whole
afternoon taking in sights and sounds.

We saw some tree huggers shooting a commercial...

...ate some sub-par New York hot dogs...

And we loved every minute of it. It was an electric way to start off a fabulous trip.
We hope to make it back someday soon and soak it in a little more!

Christmas is coming

We're gearing up for Christmas around here.

I am thrilled about it this year and more prepared than I've ever been

since I'm not trying to finish up finals and projects.

We decorated our cute tree right after Thanksgiving and I love it!

Maybe I'll keep it up all year round and just put Easter and 4th of July ornaments on it and such.

Wouldn't that be a great idea!

In other news, we finally finished our laundry closet,

so we can now wash clothes at our very own house!

Exciting stuff.

Tyler put a lot of hard work into it and it turned out great.

I haven't taken pictures of the final project,

but this actually shows the progress much better

2 New Additions

Within a matter of a month we've sold both our cars and replaced them. We had plans to sell our Jeep, but we weren't planning on our Hyundai dying so soon. Just 4 days after we sold our Jeep (and before finding a replacement for the Jeep), the transmission went out on our Hyundai. Funny story involved there...

I came home for lunch one day and as I was backing out of the drive way and the car just wouldn't go in reverse anymore. I revved the engine but to no avail, I could not back out. Luckily it shifted into first gear so I pulled forward into the drive way and gave up on it. So there I am stuck with no way to get back to work. I couldn't call Tyler to pick me up, because he didn't have a car (we sold the Jeep) so what could he have done, given me a ride on his bike? I tried to take my bike, but as Murphy's law would have it the tires were flat. So what was I left with? My ever-trusty scooter, that's right, my Razor scooter. It was only a few blocks but I just felt like a 6 year old gliding through the parking lot on a scooter! We all had a good laugh about it though.

Needless to say, after that little experience we felt that it was time to get a new car pronto! So we borrowed my sister's car (thanks again) to go look at a few cars in Bountiful and Salt Lake and came home with this Mazda 6! I really love it and especially love that it's reliable and should be a good car for us for a long time.


Well, Tyler did a little trouble shooting and determined that the transmission was shot. Since we bought the Hyundai for $1,000 we couldn't justify spending twice that to get it running again, so we decided it was time to move on. Tyler was okay with riding his bike to school for a little while, until it starting getting cold and rainy. We've been wanting a truck for as long as we've been married. Okay, we had my 1985 Ford F-150, but really, we've been wanting a real truck, like one that runs. So we did some research and decided on a Chevy. Tyler absolutely love it and it should be another good car for us too. I'll get better pictures later, but here it is: It's blue, Aggie blue, which I love. Our "A" plate will look pretty good on here.


It definitely wasn't in our plans to buy two cars in a month, but I guess that's how life plays out... not the way you plan. But we hope we're set with some reliable cars for now and we love them both.

New Do

So here I am Friday morning. Yes, I look sleepy, but ignore that. Focus on my how long my hair is. I had Tyler snap these pictures of me before leaving for work because....
I came home looking like this!

I've been wanting to chop my hair off for several months and I finally just did it thanks to some prodding from my co-workers. They also convinced me to go darker, but I'm absolutely loving it!

Looking Back

I know that summer has long come and gone, but we had such a good one that I do want to mention a few things that happened. We got to see a lot of family, which was more than great. We got together with my mom's entire side together over July 24th weekend. My awesome grandma rented out the Bountiful Bubble for us one night and then we spent the next day at Snowbird doing all sorts of activities and then the next day hanging out at my grandparent.
Later on in September we had a wonderful visit from my cousins in Sweden. Filippa and Bodile (pictured below on either side of my mom) stayed for two weeks and we sure filled their time with "cultural" events. We took them repelling and to a demolition derby among other things. I was curious to see how they would like it but the verdict came in very positive for both events.
We sure enjoyed repelling. Tyler was an animal out there and even tried going Australia style (face-first). I did it a few weeks before he did and I tell you what, it's no easy feat. We sure got a kick out of watching him give it a whirl:

Here's the repelling gang:
In other news, we celebrated our 2 year anniversary in August by having a blast at Lagoon then staying at the Little America. I highly recommend their breakfast-in-bed, it was quite the feast!
Life continues to keep us busy. Hopefully more updates to come soon.

As of Late

When it rains it pours right. I was just getting to the point where I said to myself yesterday, "Things are going pretty smooth right now, and actually kind of boring. It's unusual, but I'll take it!"

Then, there was today. I found out that I really will have to go to jury duty tomorrow. I returned their surveys and stuff thinking the whole time that they'd cancel the case. They do 2 of 3 times everyone told me. But not my time. Nope, I have to go to jury duty tomorrow and I'm NOT thrilled about it.

Today also happened to be the day that we sold our Jeep. We're happy to sell it so we can upgrade a bit, but I'm so sad because it's been the first car I've absolutely fallen in love with. There's just something about owning a Jeep. Buy one and you'll see. Tyler joked that it was probably good we sold it because he was starting to get jealous, thinking I loved it more than I loved him. Not true. I do have to say though that even my iPod pitched in to make my last day with the Jeep a great one, it played only the best song one after another.

On top of this and a million pieces of mail to respond to, work details to smooth out, and now car shopping, we are right back into the busy swing of things.

I still have a cute nephew

Natalie asked me to take 9-month pictures of Dax and even though I'm not a pro photographer, boy, who needs to be when your nephew is this cute! The poor kid was pretty grumpy so even though he wasn't much of a smiler, they still turned out pretty cute.