Fall is Here!

It is now Fall which is probably my favorite season.  We have a lot of fun things planned for the next couple months including a Thanksgiving trip with friends to a cabin in the Shenandoahs and a trip back to Utah to be with family for Christmas.   Also, Aimee is finishing her Master’s degree in December!  It will be great when she is done because it has been a lot of work to do the degree while also working full-time. 

Life for us lately is pretty much like normal and consists mostly of going to work (which doesn’t make for interesting blog content).  I am glad the elections are over.  The only major change in our “lifestyle” is we are trying to eat healthier by cutting out as much processed food as possible.  We have started making green smoothies everyday which are really good probably because ours are mostly fruit with a little spinach or other green mixed in. We have also tried to eat less pasta.  That has been a hard one because we usually use some form of pasta as a base for many of our meal ideas. 

In our spare time we have found some interesting things to do.  Last weekend was beautiful 70 degree weather and we had to be outside so we decided to go to the zoo.  We hadn’t been there for a long time so we enjoyed seeing some of the changes they have made in the last few years.  We decided to go via metro which turned out to be a bad decision but we still had fun.  Afterwards we went to a birthday dinner for one of Aimee’s school friends at a really nice Thai place in Shirlington.

  
The male lions put on quite a show with their roaring and pacing but the females were content with just relaxing.

 
The Metro has some pretty long escalators.  Every time we take Metro Aimee is amazed that I can handle riding it every day.

We have really been enjoying our new apartment which, while it is only a one bedroom, is significantly larger than our last place.  It is so much quieter here that I don’t know how we handled our last apartment for so long.  It also gets darker at night because we don’t have a Mercedes dealership across the street.  To make it even darker at night we bought some blackout curtains but after using them for two nights we quit using them because we found it a lot harder to wake up in the morning without natural sunlight.  Oh well.  At least they weren’t too expensive!  We have done a little exploring in our new neighborhood. Here are a few pictures we took.

 
Notice how long Aimee’s hair is getting!

Colorful flowers. 

For Christmas last year Aimee got me a certificate for a Composition in the Field photography class.  The classes filled up pretty fast for the session I wanted so I ended up using it just a few weeks ago.  The class took us around Georgetown neighborhoods to help us get some nice pictures.  The normal instructor had to cancel and we got a substitute that wasn’t very good but I still had fun.  It turned out to be a really good night to go because Aimee went with some friends to the ballet at the Kennedy Center the same night.  Here are a few of the places we went.

They have tracks in the road for where they used to have a railcar system.

We passed a storefront selling these delicious look macaroons.  Luckily one girl in the class slipped inside and got a few to share with the class.  They taste even better than they look!

We also made it up to Annapolis for a fun little daytrip.  For dinner we went to an Asian restaurant that had odd seating.  The table was sunk into the floor and you sit on the floor with your feet hanging into the pit with the table.  It was interesting but I think I prefer a normal table. 

We’re definitely looking forward to Aimee being done with school for a while so we have time to do more than homework!

Vacation!

We decided to spend my last week of summer break in style by visiting my sister and her family in Florida and then heading on a cruise to the Bahamas. We had a wonderful time with no access to email so we didn't think about work the whole time! The first thing we did when we got home was start trying to figure out when we can take another vacation!

We started our time in Florida with a day trip to Naples. We got to see dolphins from the pier and swim in very warm ocean water. We found lots of nice sea shells including some with some exciting "fighting conchs" inside.

The next day we went to the Miami zoo. Stacie and Tony rented a four person pedal cart and we had a lots of fun exploring the very large zoo!

On Sunday we went to church and had some time to play games and relax a little. We tried to convince our nieces and nephews they liked our butternut squash lasagne we made for dinner, but I'm not sure we were sucessful!

Monday morning the kids went back to school! Rylee to her first day of second grade and Eric off to preschool.

The other kids decided they needed to go to school too!

We convinced them to stay home, but Paige started insisting she was Rylee and we played school all morning.

Sam decided he was content to stay home and drive his truck around.

He wonders why we think we needed a picture of this moment!

That afternoon Tony drove us to the Port of Miami and we headed off on our cruise!

It was so nice not having to worry about anything for a few days!

Our first stop was the grand Bahama Island where we went to a beach with the most wonderful sand in the world! We wandered around the straw marked and other shops, and we tried to get used to seeing people driving on the left side of the road.

I had my hair French braided, which was very painful since I have a very tender head, but It was fun and convenient since it lasted for a couple of days.

Day two was Freeport. Again we spent time exploring the town and then we took a boat out to snorkel near a tiny little island called Athol island.

This is the supreme court of the Bahamas. They had a broken window but they wouldn't let us inside because our t-shirts and shorts weren't nice enough!

Day 3 was spent on the beach of Norwegian cruise line's private island.

we had such a great time! We aren't sure how we will go back to work tomorrow!!

 

Birthdays and Cathedral

Last week was my birthday.  I turned 27.  I suppose it is on the upswing to 30, but I really don’t feel old at all.  Aimee did a nice party for my birthday.  We grilled some steaks with friends, saw the Avengers movie, tried out our pool and had a delicious fruit tart cake.  For the last few months we have been pretty boring because Aimee was finishing her last graduate school classes, which were pretty demanding.  She only has one project left that she will do next fall.

This weekend we decided to break out of the boring rut and do something fun.  We decided to go to the National Arboretum to take some pictures and enjoy the outdoors.  Unfortunately, DC has terrible traffic.  We got on the freeway and immediately came to a screeching halt.  Aimee checked on her phone and noticed the traffic was backed up for miles.  As we finally came up to the bridge crossing the river into DC I decided to take the first exit I could find regardless of where it went.  The exit took us north into DC (not the direction we had intended to go) and in the distance I saw the National Cathedral and decided that we would go there instead.  It turned out to be a good decision and we had a fun time.  We even attended a 4:00 service which was very different from normal LDS services. There was a lot more audience participation that involved reading sections and psalms out of a prayer book.  It was very interesting to compare it to our religion.  I accidently pledged my allegiance to the church – Aimee was careful not to read that line and gave me a look afterwards.

It was a beautiful day so we took some pictures.  Here are a few that I thought turned out well. 

Aimee on the lawn with the Cathedral in the background.

Amazing stained glass windows.  There were so many good ones.  We were particularly impressed by this one that looks like it represents the cosmos.

 

There was a peaceful garden called the Bishop’s Garden that we could have stayed in all day.

The Cathedral itself is still being fixed after the 5.8 magnitude earthquake last year.  It had netting on the inside incase any pieces of stone fell.

The architecture and detail are so intricate.  It is humbling to think of how much time and care went into the building.

 

A nice reflection.

I even let Aimee get a picture of me.

Hello again internet!

So I am all done with my grad school classes! All I have left is a final project to finish in the fall and I seriously love not having homework to do all the time!!

I started a new job this school year as an elementary math resource teacher. I work with the first and sixth grade teachers at my school to plan and teach lessons to their classes, understand the math they are teaching, and help them learn new teaching methods. I also sometimes work with small groups of students who are either ready for advanced work or need extra help. It has been interesting learning how to help people change their teaching, but I really like my job, my co-workers and the students I get to work with. The students I work with are nearly all learning English as a second language and are also nearly all living in poverty so it can be really sad to learn about the struggles they face at a very young age.

Some things we have been up to lately are:

Growing a garden

Touring some European embassies

Thanksgiving and Update

We are now officially on Christmas vacation.  This year we have two weeks off so we are spending the first week with Aimee's parents and the second week in Cache Valley with my parents.  Aimee finished her second to last semester of grad school last week and will be finished with her Masters degree in May.  Last month we went to Williamsburg for Thanksgiving with our friends Stephanie and Eric.  Before we went we had thanksgiving dinner at our apartment.  The turkey and all the food turned out perfectly, but there was one hiccup.  Just before we were ready to eat Aimee decided to touch up her nails.  When she was carrying the nail polish containers out of the bathroom into the living room she stumbled and they fell onto the carpet. Unfortunately, several containers crashed into each other and shattered all over the carpet.

      
No matter how much nail polish remover we used we couldn't get the stain out of the carpet.  Good thing we are renting!

We drove the three hours down to Williamsburg the next morning.

We toured the Governor's mansion. 

Looked at the unique Christmas decorations.  BTW Aimee got new glasses a month or two ago.  I think they look really good!

And we saw the fifes and drums march. 

It was a really fun trip!

Last weekend, before we came to Utah, we went to see the Christmas displays at the botanical gardens.  They make decorations out of natural materials like wood and acorn seeds.  Some of them are pretty amazing.

There were also lots of beautiful flowers and plants.