Eleven Years (and one day)!

Happy Birthday to my eldest niece Rachel! This is my favorite picture of Rachel and me. She has always been such joy in my life! I was on my mission when Rachel was born so I first met her when she had just turned 1. My mom and I went to the airport to pick up Becky and Rachel and after everyone had gotten off the plane I saw this adorable little redhead walking down the ramp with a little backpack on. We've been great friends ever since!

Rachel is an amazing sister, niece, daughter and friend and a wonderful example to everyone she meets. We love you Rachel and wish you a fabulous year!!

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

Happy Valentimes Day!

Has anyone else heard anyone say this? And I don't mean from children. I mean from a full grown adult? I have, on several occasions, and it makes me giggle every time. Bill says it now to be funny and it's starting to sound pretty normal.

Tonight we went to Asian Star for dinner. We went early to beat the crowd and it turned out to be a good idea. It was delicious. And very appreciated considering the day I had. Here's a fun story:

We got a ton of snow yesterday evening, so this morning I spent about 5 minutes brushing and scraping off snow and ice on the car. By the time I was done, I was covered in snow and my shoes were all wet. The roads hadn't been plowed yet and I was certain that I would miss my usual train. When I pulled in to the parking lot, however, I saw lots of people still standing on the platform, so I grabbed my bag and started running. I got to the platform and, it turns out, I had plenty of time because the train was about 5 minutes late. I thought I was in the clear until the driver came over the loudspeaker and said that he was having some technical difficulties. I could see he was telling the truth when on the next 4 stops, he'd have to leave his little booth, hop out of the train and run down to another car to fix a broken door. Then run back to head to the next stop. By the time we got to 13th South station, he made the announcement that the train was going no further and that we would have to get off that train and wait for the one just behind it to come on the other side of the track. Easier said than done. I waited, with about 200 other people in the freezing snow for about 15 minutes while two men tried to get the track switched so the train could come along the other side. My poor feet, already wet from sweeping the car, were ice cold. The rescue train finally came and I got on. It too, however, had some problems of it's own and it took another half hour for us to go 4 more stops. It finally arrived and I raced to my building. I was an hour and 15 minutes late.

From there, the day went along fine, except I never really warmed up...even with my little space heater under my desk. The kicker was when, during a meeting this afternoon, I was calmly chewing a piece of gum when it suddenly felt hard and crunchy. I felt around my mouth with my tongue for a second and discovered that part of my back molar had broken off! I took the little piece of tooth out and kept waiting for some excruciating pain to set it. It never did. The bright spot of the day! After my meeting I called my dentist, and wouldn't you know, he's out until Tuesday for the Utah Dentists Convention. I hope he's learning some new techniques about how to fix my tooth!

Happy Valentime's Day!