Good as new

A few weeks ago I walked out of the grocery store to my car and noticed this attractive dent. What kind of a jerk smashes a car and doesn't leave a note? I'm still fuming about it.

$600 later...

I just hope we can avoid any other car problems until we sell them both before we move!

New York State of Mind

NYU it is! We got the best surprise when we got home from our trip and looked in our mail! This school was Bill's first choice since it offers the top Tax LLM program. I'm so proud of his hard work! He also got in to The U of Florida, but we will decline. We'll be packing up and heading to New York in mid-August. We're so excited for this fun adventure!

First Anniversary Trip

One year of heaven! We can't believe how fast this year has passed. It has been great! We celebrated by going down to Zion National Park and Mesquite.

Canyon Rim Hike (above)

Emerald Pools (below)

We arrived in Springdale, UT Saturday afternoon. It was really mild weather, so we checked into our B&B and went for a couple of hikes. Then we had dinner at a fun pizza place. Sunday morning, however, was a different story. We woke up to a delicious breakfast...a yogurt parfait and a ham & cheese omelet with pesto & diced tomatoes. As we were eating, we noticed that it was lightly snowing. No problem. Until it turned to heavy snowing. We went to sacrament meeting at the local church and hoped that it would taper off by the time it was over. Nope. We went back to our room and dressed warm and headed out for a couple more hikes. My favorite in Zion is the Hidden Canyon trail. This time was a little scary because there was at least 2 inches of snow which made the rock pretty slick. Fortunately there are chains in the more precarious sections and we made it. It was beautiful!

Our B&B was wonderful. It is a huge house and they rent 4 rooms. Ours had a heavenly jetted tub and a beautiful view. The only odd part was the toilet that they conveniently put in the closet. I'm not sure anyone over the age of five could use the toilet facing forward with the sliding door closed. We had to use the side-saddle approach.

We woke Monday morning (our anniversary day) and enjoyed another delicious breakfast of baked grapefruit sprinkled with brown sugar and french toast stuffed with cream cheese and marmalade. I wanted to stick around for another couple of mornings just to see what they served for breakfast! We packed up and headed for Mesquite. On our way, we stopped at Grafton, an old ghost town where the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed. Once we got to Mesquite, we decided it wasn't quite warm enough to go to the pool, so we kept driving to Las Vegas. Big mistake!

Now, I'm sure if we were drinking people, we'd love the idea of St. Patrick's Day in Vegas. Since we are not, however, it kind of left us with a bad taste in our mouths. We first drove to the Zappos outlet store. Out of the thousands of pairs of shoes they have there, I didn't find one that I was even slightly interested in. Bill found a couple of dress shoes, but the fit wasn't quite right. We left empty handed.

The Strip was crawling with green clad people carrying large plastic cups of their beverage of choice. We parked at one of the hotels and walked around a bit, stopped at the Bellagio fountains, had some dinner and then headed back to Mesquite. Tuesday morning, I went to get a massage and laid by the pool while Bill played a round of golf. It was perfect weather, but I can't say that I got much color. That evening we ate at the Casino's Buffet.

Finally, Wednesday morning we packed up the car and headed for home. We stopped at the St. George Temple for a session. Neither of us had been inside this temple. It is beautiful and was a great way to end our First Anniversary trip and begin our second year together! May it be as wonderful as the first!

Couldn't wait!

I'm amazed I made it this long! Bill and I kept the top tier of our wedding cake in my parents freezer and planned on honoring the tradition of eating it on our first anniversary. Well, we almost made it! We'll be out of town on our anniversary, so rather than try to cart it around with us, we dug in early. Dark chocolate cake, with a dark chocolate ganache on either side of the chocolate filling. This thing is pure heaven! We've been chipping away at it for 4 days now. This is the remaining 1/4.

Marching On...

Time sure is flying! I have got a serious case of Spring Fever now that March is here. I'm putting my faith in Punxsutawny Phil and expect Spring to arrive in two weeks.

For President's Day weekend, we went up to the Whitaker cabin for a semi-family reunion. Bill's youngest sister, Tina, came home from Albany, NY for a visit. So Bill's other sisters, Melinda and Carrie and their families, Bill's parents and Bill and I all met up at the cabin. It was great, but we missed Jacque, Angie, Cindy & James and their families! And Andrew too!

The sun was out, the sky was blue and there was tons of snow for sledding and snowmobiling. We had a blast!

Bill & Isabelle and Jared & Leah

Carrie, Isabelle & Troy

Tina in Jared's fancy snow pants

Jared, Tina, Gabby, Lauren & Spencer

Bill...bucked off the snowmobile

Me