Halloween Fun!

As promised, here are some pictures from all the Halloween craziness going on in Boston in the last few days. I don't have many pictures from the Institute Dance last Friday night because I was busy running around, since I was partially in charge, but it was a success I think I can say. I was in charge of the decorations, so I was busy from 5-8 setting up. It was a crazy night. But I had a lot of fun! I won the "Best Female Costume" contest, which was really cool, I've never won a costume contest before. I put a lot more effort into my costume this year, so maybe that's why. Anyway, then on Tuesday night my roommates and I threw a party at our house, which was such a blast! Tons of people came, as you can see from the pictures which was just awesome. We had Dance Dance Revolution going on in one room and tons of food in the others. It was fun to see everyone's costumes, so here they are, check 'em out!

From the dance:

Lora, Liz and I at the dance. Lora was a cute spider (thanks to my old roomie Sue for that idea...), Liz was a MasterCard Comercial and I was Cleopatra (this is the costume that won the prize, it was fun to be this dressed up for the night, but it got hot).
Mike and Kristy. Mike dressed up as Micahel from the Office, which I thought was hillarious!!

From the party:
For our party I dressed in part of my Celopatra costume but turned it into a Grecian Goddess costume, it was a lot less hot. Jared dressed as Lloyd Dobler from "Say Anything" complete with boom box, Diana was Superman and Steven was Aragon!

Riva the pirate, Julie the punk, Tim "Ice Man" and Kylie, who is adorable as Dorothy!

Carime, Tim, Dave, Lee, Diana, Ceasar, Joe and Claine.

Brooke and her husband, Jake, had great ideas to be inventors who "think outside the box"!

With my roomies at the party, the Grecian Goddess, Gypsy and MC Comercial.

Here we have two pirates and a gypsy, Marie, Boyd and Lora!

It's the DDR Champion, William the Angel, with Steven, seriously rocking the PS2!

Well, there you have it folks. I didn't want to overkill the pictures, my last post had enough to last a while! Anyway, thanks to everyone who came for making my Halloween such a blast! And to those of you in Utah, friends and family, know that I'm thinking of you and looking back on all the fun times from last year, I went through my pictures from last year earlier and had a lot of laughs. I miss you guys! Anyway, I'm going to try to be better about posting regularly, so don't go away!

Wicked Weekend!

Life has been really crazy lately, so I apologize for not posting regularly and for taking so long with this posting. But I had to share the amazing weekend I had in NYC. It was really such a blast. The only thing that could have made it better was having my Mom there, as planned, but I called and bugged her enough, it was almost as good. So I ended up going with my friend Blair, who was so great. We just had fun doing whatever we felt like. Seeing "Wicked" was probably the highlight of my weekend, I'd been wanting to see this for forever!! It *almost* lived up to all my hopes and dreams, and it was great to finally see the whole thing come together. I really enjoyed it. So sit back, here are some pictures from that awesome weekend:

Mom and me checking out the beautiful Fall Foliage before heading to the airport.

Look what I got to drive around for a day!! A Mini Cooper! I want one!!!!

Ok, so now the NYC pics begin. We went first to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Egyptian rooms were my favorite. This is a temple they brought here and reassembled. The architecture around it was amazing too. There was a great view out that window there.

Another beautiful setting for some beautiful art. The museum was a lot of fun, there was no way we were going to see all of it, but we saw the "important" stuff.

Before going to the theater on Friday night, we at at this awesome place called V*ynl. It was such a great little find! The food was awesome and cheap and the ambiance was unbeatable. It had a music, record theme, which they'd used in the decorations, and even the menus, which were in record sleeves.


And the best part, other than my heavenly French Toast with sauteed apples and caramel sauce, were the bathrooms! When I first walked in the thing that hit me, apart from the huge wall mural of Cher, was the fact that they were even playing her music, just in that room!

And they had four of them! All decorated differently including Elvis, Dolly and Nelly. It was so funny!

Then it was onto the Theater for "WICKED"!!! Ahhh, it was awesome, I had it stuck in my head the entire weekend. The only complaints I had were about Elphaba, who was a little awkward, more than I would have liked, and Fyiero, who was not quite right for the part. But the costume, the music, everything else was "wicked sweet" as they say in Boston.


Anyway, it was great and the theater was just a couple blocks from the hotel, so we walked back to see all the night life in Times Square, which of course is always crazy!


So that was all Friday. On Sat. we first went down to "Ground Zero", where the Twin Towers used to be. It was really interesting to see the area first hand. We went into the World Financial Center right next to it and read about the plans they have for the spot, which was really cool. It was also interesting to me because one of my favorite movies was filmed there, that I didn't even know until I walked in! "Mad Hot Ballroom" was filmed on the stage here, during the finals, so that was kind of fun!

After that we decided that we would try to find the little restaurant "Serendipity" for lunch, which ended up turning into a late lunch/early dinner thing since there was a 2-3 HOUR WAIT! We put our name on the list, then headed off to see more of the city.

On the end of the block was this "sweet" candy store, called Dylan's Candy Bar. It was seriously HEAVEN! I felt like a kid in a candy store... oh wait, maybe that's because I was in a candy store, that seemed like it was geared towards adults almost as much toward kids! Anyway, it was awesome. They had the hugest cupcakes I've ever seen, stairs with candy in them, huge suckers everywhere, clothes made out of candy wrappers and autographed candy dishes with celebrity's favorite candies in them! It was seriously the coolest candy store I've ever been in, and let me tell you, I know my candy stores! Heck, this is the girl who worked in a chocolate factory for 3 summers, that had a 20 foot chocolate waterfall!



We then walked on down to Bloomingdale's and Central Park, I bought a bag from the "Strand" and we saw some seals in the Central Park Zoo. This view, is from right across the street from what once was the Plaza Hotel, but is now being made into luxury apartments. I was so bummed I wouldn't be able to see where "Eloise" once lived!!

Finally, after about an hour and a half of wandering, we headed back to Serendipity, where it was almost our turn to be seated. It's another restaurant with a lot of charm and ambiance.

They are famous for their Frrrozen Hot Chocolate, which was really yummy!

After Serendipity, we headed back to midtown and checked out Rockefeller Center. We saw Radio City Music Hall, the skating rink and had fun in the American Girl Store (I'm glad Blair is a little kid at heart like me, we had fun watching all the cute little girls just going crazy!).


It was then time to say goodbye to the Big Apple, we picked up our bags from the hotel and headed for the bus, which wasn't as bad as I expected. So, that was a ton to pack into two days, I had a blast, and I can't wait to get back to see more! I feel like I barely scratched the surface!

More updates coming soon of my fun Halloween weekend!

More Travels!

Ok, I know I haven't posted about DC yet, but unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera with me, and so I have no pictures to share. The trip was a lot of fun, and once I convince all my friends to give me their pictures, I promise I will do a follow up post. I got to see some really awesome things.
But I've been off again since my trip to DC. This last weekend, my ward went camping in Sharon, Vermont, the birthplace of Joseph Smith. The Church owns a campground next to the monument and visitors center and so we got to spend some time in the beautiful outdoors. **Warning: Lots of photos ahead!**

Vermont was gorgeous! I really think New England is one of the prettiest places in the world (I know I can't really say that, since I've seen only a small part of the world). But anyway, here are some of the beautiful things I got to see and do this weekend. And despite, the rain and the cold, it was a really great weekend!

We went up Friday and on Sat. we explored the area. Sunday was sacrament meting in he mroning then packing up and heading back. So a short trip, but we squeezed a lot in.
We went to the Quechee Gorge in the morning with a huge group of people, it was really beautiful and people had fun climbing on the rocks and getting in the river.

Here is part of the huge group of people who went down to the gorge early Sat. morning. Lots of people got their feet wet.

Marie and Julie, decided to take a little dip in the river at the gorge. Crazy Cold!


There were a lot of insects on this trip, here are three I was able to snap. The other was a daddy-long-legs spider, which was crawling up my leg. Eeek!
A Monarch butterfuly, it took off right as I tried to snap this picture:

A crazy catipillar, also at the gorge:


After lunch, we headed into town and checked out an awesome antique store.
We saw some Moose (or is it Meese?) and had to stop for a picture of the group:
Me, Brian, Bryce and Diana


After the antique store, we drove to find some covered bridges. I don' know how old these ones were, but they were really pretty and had a great view!


This is one of the awesome wooden beams inside the covered bridge.


A beautiful VT view from the covered bridge:


Diana holding the spiky catapillar found at the bridge:


Later that night we had a little varaiety show and then they had a later showing of the Joseph Smith movie that my friends and I went to see. Then of course, it's not camping without bonfires and S'mores!

Sunday, after church, Richard and I dedided to go see the Monument, since we didn't the day before. I saw the Joseph Smith movie in the VC next to here, but it was dark and I couldn't see the monument.





All together it was a really great trip. I made some great new friends and I'm so glad I got to see this beautiful part of the country.

MCW

This post is for my "little" brother Michael, who is leaving next week to serve a mission for our Church in Nashville, TN! I'm so sad I don't get to see him before he goes, but I've been thinking about him a lot, so I thought I'd share my thoughts and some pictures in honor of the occasion.
(*Besides I have lots of photos of him because Mikie *loves* the camera - he's a cutie isn' he?)
We have had so many fun times together in Utah and Alaska and it's amazing to see the kind of person he's become. Mikie was only 10 or 11 when I left for college, which is crazy to think about! In the last 8 years, he's grown into an amazing young man.
There were times when we didn't get along (our personalities are very similar and let's just say, Mikie knew how to push my buttons), but in the last 4 years, as we've both matured, he's become one of my best friends. He's always laughing, ready to have a good time, and he's such a good sport about everything. Mikie's deffinately the goofy one in the family (I think he gets it from my Dad...) as you can see from some of these pictures. And guess what? He's become one of my shopping buddies! He's almost got more style than me, if you can believe that! (I know it's hard...)
Michael is going to be a great missionary and I'm so excited for him. The people in TN are going to love him and I can't wait to hear about all the lives he will touch. He's got an awesome testimony and I know he's excited to share it with others.
I'm going to miss him, but I'm so excited for all the amazing experiences he's going to have. Missions are life changing and I know he's going to come back even more awesome than before! Mikie I love you and will write you lots! Have fun, be safe and Return With Honor!