To the roommates of Carriage House #212!

  To the roommates of #212, here's to you and all our good times. There sure were a lot of them. I have so much fun seeing pictures of what everyone is doing with life these days. My Rexburg days are almost over....Ryan will graduate in April and then we're off to find a teaching job somewhere. Who knows where that will be. Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California??? Ok, April, maybe Colorado. (It's just so much farther from the rest of the folks in Ca!)  Well...enjoy the pictures! 

My beautiful roommates and their beautiful hair.

Midnight doughnut, anyone?

After my choir concert. I felt so loved that you came to see me. 

Who could forget the night Meieli was duck-taped to our front door? This creative use of time was courtesy of Meieli's Badger Creek pals, was it not?

Kim's shy side...

                             A little friendly rough-housing, eh?

Awww...so in love. This is at General Conference, I believe.

Yes, Tyra is on the hood of Kim's car.

Not really sure what is going on here, but Tyra's face is great.

Early morning birthday breakfast at JB's

Funny video from the zoo

Here is a video from the zoo visit last week. (It wouldn't load last time) The kids had so much energy that day, running everywhere, yelling at everything. Kyle was especially cracking us up the way he would yell about all the animals. 

3 years old

This week Lisa turned 3 years old. We went to the zoo and had cupcakes. I think she is now old enough to start getting the idea of birthdays and it is fun. 

When Lisa asked me to blow out the candles I thought we were doing it together, but it looks like she just wanted to watch. Ryan said after the candles were out she blew on them herself.

Lisa carried around her cupcake for most of the zoo visit. We had to keep her from getting to close to the goats who were licking their lips through the pen. I'm just glad she didn't get scared of the goats this time. Last year she was terrified.

This Macaw was very talkative

Getting three toddlers to look at the camera and smile at the same time is always a fun game

All partied out

Running of the Brides, Boston

Well, it took three blog posts to get all my favorite pictures of Boston and this post includes the most important part-the finding of the dress! It was a lot of fun. If you want to go in order, start by reading two blog entries down. 

Trying on the dresses

The "I can't breathe" face

Hmmm...maybe not. 

Finally-the perfect dress!

Oh, happy day.

More Boston Pictures

A quaint little courtyard just up the street from Paul Revere's house

I was in love with the window fronts at the restaurants in Little Italy.

On the Old Town Trolley tour bus

View of the water from the tour bus

Boston's State House with its real 23 karat gold leaf gilding on the dome. Erin was telling us that some students actually tried to climb up there recently and pull some shingles off. 

Funky architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

We walked to Granary Cemetery where you can find the graves of Ben Franklin's parents and Paul Revere, among many other historical figures. I was amazed at how old some of the graves were, dating back to the mid 1600s. 

At Fennuil Park they have a replica of the original Cheers Bar/restaurant where the show was filmed

While shopping at Fennuil Park we found an amusing stand selling bags made from one long zipper. Here is Jen helping Brooke zip up her new purse, which stretched out over 15 feet when unzipped! 

This house right across the street from Bunker Hill had a "For Sale" sign in front and Erin suggested we all move in together. It's such a beautiful quiet neighborhood.  I love the old town feel of this city.

Monument at Bunker Hill

Brooke and Erin on steps near Bunker Hill

Boston

My good friend Brooke is getting married! I am so excited. About a month ago she told me she was planning a trip to Boston to find the perfect dress. Why Boston? There's a crazy event called "The Running of the Brides" where brides go to race for discounted designer dresses. If you want to see some videos of the madness just look it up on You Tube. So Brooke, her mom, Pete's mom, her friend Jen, and I all went to brave the crowd. Several girls go camp outside the doors of the convention center, but we settled for showing up just an hour before they opened the doors. That put us pretty near the end of the line, but we were still excited. Once they opened the doors, we joined the screaming giddyness and ran in with the rest, but lo and behold, not a single one of the hundreds of dresses was left on the racks! There were certain girls we referred to as the hoarders who had brought more than just a few friends and gathered up as many dresses as they could for their bride to try on. The idea was that you would trade dresses until you found the style and size you wanted, but it was kind of hard when you didn't have anything to trade with. So the first 2 hours, which felt like 5, were rather unsuccessful. But after a yummy lunch at the Cheesecake Factory we decided to go back and try again. This time all the remaining dresses had been placed back on the racks and Brooke could actually go through and shop for a dress. She tried on about 20 more dresses until she found the one. Hooray! Pete's mom had to catch a flight out that day, but the rest of us retired to the hotel and all took a nice long nap. For dinner we met up with our friend Erin who lives in Boston and she took us to Little Italy for some yummy Italian food. The next day we took a "trolley" tour to all the historical sights around town and did a little shopping. Erin drove Pam to the airport for her flight and then met up with us to see some more sights. Dinner was at a fun little restaurant on Boylston Street. Our flights were quite early the next day so we tried to get to bed before midnight. After getting a cab to the airport at 4am, we all made our flights and headed home. Thank you Brooke and Pam for planning such a great trip! I'm glad it was a success with the dress and I can't wait for some more pre-wedding fun.

View from Bunker Hill

USS Constitution

Brooke and Erin on the wharf near USS Constitution

On our walk to find a good dinner spot I was fascinated by this church nestled right in the middle of the city, reflected on the modern skyscrapers

Dinner at a windy outside table on Boylston after the trolley tour

Lisa found the lobster hat in my suitcase and had fun wearing it around

Wheat grinding, bread lovers!

Last year, a talented friend of mine invited Lisa and I over for lunch and offered sandwiches on her homemade bread, bread that was made with her own ground wheat. It was so delicious! I was hooked and loved the idea of grinding my own wheat. So she gave me her recipe and let me borrow her electric wheat grinder and I bought 50 lbs of hard wheat and had so much fun trying to make this yummy bread. Than Becca moved to Canada (sad day--we miss you guys!) and obviously took her wheat grinder with her. So I contemplated buying a grinder for myself, but couldn't decide if I wanted an electric one or a hand crank model. A few weeks ago I finally decided to go with the hand crank and after a little research, we bought the Family Grain Mill. It definitely takes more time and more muscle to grind wheat than the electric grinder, and you have to run it through twice to get it as finely ground, but I think it's going to work out just fine. Lisa wanted a turn and gave her little muscles a good work out. Even Ryan wanted a turn. Considering I'll probably only make bread once a week it shouldn't be too bad having to do it by hand. And the bread is still delicious! Thanks again to Becca for getting me started with wheat grinding and bread making.