Central Park

Dan and I went to Stake Conference on Sunday down at the Lincoln Center. After we walked around gorgeous Central Park with our child Julie. We got some cute pictures by the lake area where they race boats.
tender times


my sweet j-meezy

Dan and Julie giving me some top model action.

Sorry lots of random pictures of us, because this blog is all about me and I'm really self centered like that.

I'm hopefully making another movie thing of all the pictures I took of the pretty blooming CP... we shall see how successful I am... I may just post the pictures : )

Wasting time...

I recently discovered imovie. I generally think imovie is ridiculous because there are absolutely no instructions and it's all just moving things around to try and figure it out. And apparently last Thursday night I was ready for a challenge and kinda sorta figured it out.

A long time ago (4 years!) I traveled through France and Italy with some girlfriends after living in Spain for two months. Here are my favorite pictures from that trip.

music: Coeur de pirate, Comme des enfants (I have no clue what it's about, but I adore it : )

I still can't figure out how to keep the sound level in the transition from movie clip to photos, and the ending is a bit choppy, but it was fun to make. I never consider myself a very creative person, but I love creating things. I always feel such a sense of accomplishment even though they're not all that amazing.

Europe feels like a dream. Someday Dapper Dan and I will go back... fingers crossed it's next year : )

Garlic anyone?

What happens when you send your husband to pick up a couple of groceries with one being the very ambiguous "garlic"?

You get about 5 bulbs.
Just to make sure it's enough!

Isn't he a helper? : )

Easter 2010

You know what's pathetic? This is my only Easter related photo. I took absolutely no photos at our family Easter celebration in CT, and have no evidence to prove that I have the cutest nephew on earth. It's really quite sad. But I do have this:
An empty peanut butter eggs bag. Let's not talk about how many peanut butter eggs were in there, let's not talk about how they were gone within about a 24-36 hour period, let's not talk about how my sister in law bought me a bag and then Dan and I proceeded to purchase...4 more bags, let's not talk about my slight addiction to the perfect ratio of peanut butter to chocolate which only exists once a year.

Good thing I'm training for a half marathon huh?

Final days...

On the last day and slight morning we had in Annapolis we decided to try and get the most out of the local goods. Dan went golfing for the morning while I did my run and then had a massage and manicure. I think that's a tradition we should definitely continue in our vacations! We then went and had lunch at the same place we went for dinner the first night we got there. We went back because of these bad boys...
See that little ball of goodness? That's the best dang crab cake you've ever tasted! It's known the town over for the amazing crab cakes and we had to go back for some more after getting a little appetizer taste that first night. They were dang good!
Then we walked around the Naval Academy. I sure do loooooooove me some navy uniforms! They're my favorite and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them with frequency. It was also mildly entertaining how many people were running and exercising everywhere. We went on campus (after showing ID's of course) and every single person was in gym clothes running around. We wanted to go inside the chapel, but when we got there they were having Holy Thursday mass so we popped in for a sec before it started. Lots of gorgeous blue stained glass (I love stained glass!).

No pic but that night for dinner we went to the "fancy" restaurant in town. Dan and I tend to compete with who orders the best food for dinner. He had the best starter, a delicious cream of crab soup while I had a pretty good sauteed lettuce with apple/strawberry/gorgonzola mousse with a balsamic reduction. But I trumped all with my amazing filet mignon with a red wine reduction, and grilled onions with cut up potatoes (think country potatoes). They say everything all fancy on the menu but basically it was meat and potatoes, and oooooooh soooooo good! The amusing thing about this establishment which tried very hard to be extremely fancy is that a random politician had decided to have a party that night in the bar above the restaurant and had music absolutely blaring. The maitre'di kept rolling his eyes and making snotty faces at the ceiling. It was good times. (if you haven't noticed, the focus of our vacations is good food. As much as we can get in our bellies. yum!)
The last morning we got a quick bite to eat at an open air market and ate looking out over the pier.
Last vacay photo! Can't wait until the next one!

Annapolis to DC

On Wednesday of our trip, we'd basically exhausted the shopping options of Annapolis and surrounding areas (we were very excited to have a car and drive around and go to places like malls where there were many stores conveniently placed together. oh the joy!). So we went to DC for the late afternoon/evening. We met up with my elementary/high school friends Evan and Dana who live there and are hilarious people. We had pizza and it was good. Sadly I have no pictures of us, but I did go a little crazy with the DC temple and the blossoms we checked out before dinner!
I heart sun flares!
I didn't know the DC temple is a large temple. It's actually been since Utah that I've seen a large temple so it was kind of neat to be overwhelmed with the size and grandeur.
Yay for temples!
Then I became distracted by blossoms...
They were everywhere!
And I finally got to fulfill my east coast dream of seeing the cherry blossoms given to the US as a gift by Japan that line the tidal basin where the Jefferson Monument is located and FDR's monument is right around there too I think...
I like blossoms, especially now that I live in dreary winter NYC. NYC's winter sucks my soul away and the blossoms and green that explodes in the spring is absolutely amazing.
And I really like my Dapper Dan.
Tender times!
And the Jefferson Memorial. DC is a little ridic with all the American pride every where you look. I kinda love it.

I wish I had some pictures of the evening with Dana and Evan. We had fun even though we waited almost 2 hours for a dang table on a Wednesday night! We each got a different mini pizza and then traded slices. It was pizza deluxe! I really like DC a lot, it's so clean and such a young city which is fun and I love the mix of urban and suburban being so close together. I heart DC!

Annapolis

Last week, Dan and I went to the quaint city of Annapolis. It's the capitol of Maryland but and ity bity cutesy wootsey kind of town (that may be a slight exaggeration). We stayed at the Historic Inns of Annapolis in the building right across from the capitol building. When we got there Monday evening it was raining, it rained on Tuesday, Wednesday was windy but pretty, Thursday was gorgeous and Friday was beautiful! So things just got better as the week progressed. The rain earlier in the week actually wasn't all that bad because we had a car so we didn't have to necessarily walk around in it like one does in the city. Then by the end on the week we got this!
Love that bloomin tree (capitol building in the background).
Wish the macro worked on my camera...
Pic of the main street on rainy Tuesday. Lots of cute little buildings with expensive shops or indulgent treats inside.

We had a lot of fun relaxing and doing absolutely nothing. No real tours, no site seeing (there's nothing really to see there), we went on a short day trip to DC (more pictures from that later), and we watched as much free cable as we wanted!

I don't want to go back to work (but given a choice of being on vacation and going to work, I'm the type who would almost always choose vacay... or school, I wouldn't mind going back to school again), but I'm not feeling as stressy as I have before when coming back from a break. This type of vacay was just what I/we needed right now.

More pics to come!