It is FINALLY starting to warm up around here!! but don't worry because before our nice weather came we had a HUGE rain storm!! It basically didn't stop raining for about 4 days straight and everything was flooding. It was pretty crazy!
This is a house across the street from Lauren's. There multiple houses
along her street that had trees uprooted and on top of them.
They were without power for about 5 days!
Not a whole lot going on around here just working and playing as much as possible. As usual I'm obsessed with pictures so just be ready for a lot of them :) Besides we all know you only look at this for the pictures anyway...
Last weekend we had some friends come down from Rochester to visit and see the city. On Friday night we went to see our friend Chelsea's little brother star in his high school musical called "Curtains" he did a fantastic job! I was very impressed! They all went to Newark that night to stay in a hotel to go to the city the next morning, but I was running a 5K with a awesome friend in my stake named Lydia Sat morning so I just went home. Saturday (it's still pouring rain) I of course get up to run, weather doesn't stop me...."day or night, rain or snow :)" ...anyway I got to the race about a half hour early and couldn't find parking so I missed the start of the race, but ran it anyway and actually did pretty well. Unfortunately my friend Lydia missed the start as well so she met me close to the end and we finished together. After the race I got ready and went into the city, fully prepared with my umbrella, boots, and the only hooded sweatshirt I own :) It was a DISASTER! It was raining too hard to my umbrella kept flipping inside out...I tried to ride the subway as much as possible, but had to meet my friends in Chinatown and I was on the wrong line so I ended up walking quite a few blocks over to meet them, meanwhile getting drenched by the rain and cars driving past me splashing water all over me. hahah pretty comical if you think about it. By the time I got to the restaurant I was pretty drenched, but they all were too so I guess it worked out. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city drenched. Our friends had never been to the city before and we felt bad just leaving when they had things they wanted to see.
Yeah we look SUPER hot, this is us at Battery Park drenched at the end of the day.
We got to Penn Station around 8:00 that night so we could get back to our hotel in Newark and a hot tub only to find out that all the trains had been canceled since 4:00 due to the flooding of the tracks and the electrical lines being down. So we ask around and they told us to try PATH so we walk over and they are also shut down so they tell us to go to the bus station. The next bus is leaving in 30 min and it's going to be $15 a person so we ended up paying $100 for a taxi van to drive us back to our car :) We finally got to the hotel around 10:45 and thankfully the hotel crew didn't kick us out of the hot tub until 12:30, even though it was supposed to close at 11:00 :) The next morning we went to a friends "farewell" talk and I got to see my old boss Richard Zollinger and his family at church. So fun!
This week my friend Lauren and I went to the Carrie Underwood concert!! AHHH it was amazing! She is so incredibly talented! Getting there and back was little bit of a fiasco, but it all worked out.
she rode in this truck around the entire arena! So great!
check out the size of that ring!
This week since it has been warm out we have gone to the park basically everyday, we went to the zoo, and played in the backyard! So fun! We also of course ate green food for dinner on St. Patricks Day.
Then last night our stake was in charge of the multi-stake event, and we had a Marine Corp "mess night" it was really cool, but took a lot of preparation. Basically Olivia was running the show and I was there to help with whatever she needed. It was kind of a crazy day! I of course had to take advantage of the nice weather so I went on a 12.5 mile bike ride in the morning, quickly got ready and ran to Costco to pick up last minute things and then went to the church around 3:00 to start cooking and setting up. Apparently in the Marines and with the whole mess night there are a lot of things that have to be very particular so Ted (another friend from the stake who is a Captain in the Marines) had very kindly printed off a list of ALL the things we had to do :) haha it wasn't too big of a deal and I love anything and everything about putting an event together so it was fun. Traditionally at a mess night they have dinner and then a speaker and there are a list of 39 rules of things you CAN'T do during the meal. As the night goes on if anybody disobeys a rule the Vice-President calls out to the President and makes the person stand who made the offense and they have to come up and apologize to the head table, walk around the head table, and pay money, which at the end of the night is donated to the foundation who put on the mess night. We had candy hearts to pay for our offenses. It was pretty funny. We unfortunately didn't have the best turnout, but everybody who did come had a good time. We had a retired Colonel come and speak to us, he did a great job, but all in all his overall message was to be a Marine and was right there to recruit us if we were interested. haha anyway not a whole lot going on. On another note...only 4 more weeks until I get to party in Utah!!
Chad thought it would be funny to take the picture without any of us being ready and I apparently think attempting to smile with my mouth open is really hot or
something cause for some reason I find myself doing it a lot....