Boston - New York City

This summer has already been one of the most fun summers of my life! For the first time since we've been married (and probably the only time until retirement) me and Dane are both free from work and school at the same time so aside from a little bit of research that Dane's doing we've been spend all day every day together...it's been so wierd but so fun!! So last week we decided we better take advantage of this time and take a little vacation (one of the only vacations we've ever taken that didn't include Disneyland haha)

First we drove up to Boston to with our good friends Kimball and Briana who live in a super cute apartment downtown. Aside from the fact that Beck woke us all up at 6 am everyday and was determined to break anything they owned worth over $100 it was awesome! The first day we went to Boston Commons (the first public park in America) and walked the Freedom Trail, which is a walking tour of several American Landmarks (including the cemetery where Paul Revere and John Hancock are buried).

The next day we drove to Salem where all the Salem Witch Trials took place and took a fun little trolley tour around the town and found some crazy little shops, I wish we had gotten pictures of everything we saw that day but we didn't.

Friday we got up early (thanks to Beckett) and drove to NYC!! When we got there we had a list of places that we heard were good to eat but we were too hungry and ended up eating at Subway!

We took the train into town which took us right next to ground zero. Then we walked down Broadway and Wall Street to Battery Park to see the Statue Of Liberty

If you look REALLY close you can see the Statue of Liberty behind us in these pics

Saturday we took the train downtown to Times Square we could have spent all day in all of the fun stores they had there!

I know this is wierd but one my favorite places we went was the Toys R Us in Times Square, mostly because of the giant indoor ferris wheel, it was SWEET!! I wanted to ride in the barbie car, it would have been a childhood dream come true, but we had so much we wanted to see that we didn't want to wait an hour to get on

Check out these giant gummy bears! If they weren't $45 dollars I would have bought a couple for myself and one for all my sugar lovin girl friends back in Virginia

The highlight of the trip for Beck was probably hangin with his new girlfriend Briana, he made her hold his hand for like an hour in the car on the drive from Boston to New York

The piano from the Tom Hanks movie "Big", it was so fun, they let the kids play on it for awhile and then the some of the workers at the toy store came and played the song that Tom Hanks played on Big

I'm telling you these toy stores were sweet!

Another huge highlight that I had planned on going to was this awesome candy shop called Dylans Candy Bar that is 3 levels of candy!! Aside from the fact that I couldn't bring myself to spend $13 for a candy bar I was in HEAVEN!!

We went to serendipity but didn't want to wait for 2 hours to eat there, it was nothing like I pictured but I'm sure I would have loved the food!

We had the best time in Boston and NYC and LOVED hanging out with Kimball and Briana. They are such a fun couple and we had a blast staying with them exploring NYC together. This trip we made some good good memories!

Memorial Day BBQ

For memorial day we had a BBQ in our backyard with our great friends, and set up a slip-n-slide, not just for kids but for anyone that wanted to cover themselves in dishsoap and take a slide down the hill. We were a little worried that the slip-n-slide wouldn't turn out after we had told all the kids that there was going to be one, but we'll never doubt Dane and Tommy again and their very impressive slip-n-slide making skills
Brian, Emily, Josh (and darling little Will)

Me, Nichole, and Emily

An extremely attractive picture of me and Sara haha

The lovely Alicia

Jackie, Katie, and Brittany

Danielle and Sara

We couldn't ask for a better group of friends to be able to spend holidays with!! It's always so much fun!!

Swimming

Kings Dominion

We've been loving spending some of our summer days with friends at Kings Dominion. Beck acts the same way on these rides as he did when he went on the rides in Disneyworld, he looks like a deer in the headlights the entire time totally expressionless, and then as soon as I go to get him off he gets really upset because he wants to go again. Usually me and Dane stand to the side and wave to him everytime he comes by and we get nothing in return, but the other day we were busy talking and when we glanced over at him he was staring at us waving like crazy and blowing us kisses. I guess we just have to play "hard to get" with him if we want him to give us the time of day

This should probably embarrass me

I can't believe I'm posting this picture for 2 reasons:

#1 - Because I'm showing everyone that looks at this blog how lovely I look after spending the day at the waterpark - no make-up, wet ponytail, and wearing sweat pants!

#2 - Maybe because I'm just standing around chillin with ROZLYN FROM THE BACHELOR!!!

Holy smokes!! This was even more exciting to me than river rafting with Harrison Ford in Jackson Hole. I have no shame admitting that I LOVE and look forward to the bachelor every Monday night I think I'm even in an extra good mood on Sunday just because it's the day before bachelor Monday jk.

So anyways - we were hanging out at Kings Dominion with some of our friends in the ward, and the boys were watching the kids while us girls went on one of the rollercoasters, so as me and Sara were getting off the rollercoaster I noticed a beautiful blonde girl standing there and thought "hmm I know her from somewhere". Well as soon as I saw the look on Brittany and Emily's faces (who had just got off the rollercoaster before us) it clicked in my mind pretty quick where I knew that girl from IT WAS ROZLYN!! So all 4 of us sat there in a little huddle trying to figure out how we were going to go about meeting her. Finally Emily (the only one of us who doesn't watch the bachelor) all the sudden just marched off and walked up to her and said something to the effect of "I've never seen the bachelor but are you Rozlyn?". So then we all trailed up single file behind her and talked to her AHHH!! Wait let me clarify...Sara, Emily, and Brittany talked to her while I sat there star struck and silent! Sara asked her all kinds of questions about the show (we were all wishing we could have at least had a little time to brainstorm all the questions we had) but she was super nice to us and shared a few secrets from the show. So after talking to her for a few minutes we walked away and acted like giddy little 12 year old girls and ran to tell our husbands who were just thrilled to hear every detail jk. But unfortunately none of us had our camera's with us so we didn't get a pic, but then later while the boys were on a ride and we were watching the kids we spotted her again!! So Emily was kind enough to sit with some of the kids while me, Sara, and Brittany grabbed whichever kid just happened to be standing closest to us (to help lighten Emily's load) and took off running after Rozlyn. It took a little bit of strategy to figure out which way we should run so we could just "happen to run into her" and we finally tracked her down sitting on a bench waiting for her son on a ride. So even though we were SOOO embarrassed (for good reason I know) we walked up to her again and asked for a picture and then chatted with her awhile longer (this time I actually even talked), and found out that her ex-husband went to the same school that our husband's go to for dental school and she used to hang out at our apartment complex with couples that her and her husband knew from school!!! CRAZY!!! If you saw her on the bachelor I'm sure you didn't like her but she was really super nice when we talked to her so I am now I am a Rozlyn fan, and I am standing behind her!! Cause that what you do for your friends which is exactly what we are now, best friends! jk