A Virginia Getaway

Living on the East Coast is so fun because you are never too far away from anything. For Example:

Washington DC 2 hours 

New York City 2 hours 

Boston 6 hours

Duck Beach North Carolina 6 hours 

Palmyra New York 6 hours 

Southern Virginia University 6 hours

I guess what Im saying is the furthest Im willing to road trip is 6 hours! I wonder how that will work out when I drive across the country this Christmas... 

Anyway, Porsche went to SVU for her freshman and sophomore years of college and is planning on going back in the beginning of 2012. So we went to see her friends that live there now and I basically just wanted to see how pretty it was there. Which it was, so beautiful!! 

 We left SVU at 5:30 planning to get home around 11:30. Well the highway had a different plan for us! We were outside of the town of SVU about 30 miles and the highway came to a hault. I literally had my car in park for 45 minutes. So what do you do with your best friend in a parked car on a highway? BLAST disney music and dance like weirdos and take this picture! 

Virginia was so Beautiful! We had a blast! 

Nerf Birthday!

So Jack turned 8 a couple of weeks ago and recently he has been obsessed with Nerf Guns! Personally I hate them, but how can you tell an 8 year old he cant have a Nerf War for his birthday. So thats exactly what we did. It was a ton of fun for Ryan and all the other Dads that helped organize it.Just imagine 20 8 year olds, 10 Dads, 40 Nerf guns and UNLIMITED bullets! Let the fun begin! 

First Day of School!

Finally summer ended and school started back up! This was the longest summer I have ever experienced. The kids got out of school in June and didn't go back until the middle of September! Also the humidity probably made it seem longer too. Even though it was a fun summer and we spent most everyday at the pool and did tons of fun stuff I was more than ready for school to start back up! Here are the first day of school pictures!

A Temple For Philadelphia

A temple was announced to be build in Philadelphia long before I even moved here, but it is still exciting nonetheless. After a long wait for the faithful members of the church here in Philly ground was finally broken on September 17th 2011 which is actually the 224th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of the United States at Philadelphia's Independence Hall. So it was a pretty exciting day here. 


I have to say that growing up only 25 minutes from a temple was such a blessing that I didnt even recognize until I moved here. Our closest temple is Manhattan New York or Washington DC. I love both of these temples, but the travel time is a minimum of 2 hours. I remember hearing stories of people who live in other countries and have to first save money for a long period of time to afford to go to the temple and then travel for days to get there and I always thought that it was amazing the sacrifice that they would make. Lets not say that a 2 hour drive is a sacrifice in the least, but it was still something I had to get used to when I moved here. 


I decided a long time ago that I would make going to the temple a priority in my life and while attending the YSA activities in Moreno Valley I was blessed to go to the temple every month with out fail. I wanted to carry that tradition over while living here. The only problem was that since the temple was so far away the trip is always on a saturday and usually the caravan left around 8am. This probably sounds like no big deal, but for me it was a sacrifice because I work 55+ hours each week with Saturday being my only day to keep up with sleep, grocery shopping, laundry, and other activities I could not do during the week. 


I decided about 5 months ago that all that stuff held a lower value level than the blessings I could receive by making the trip to the temple. I know that many other faithful members make that sacrifice each month also. So Yes! It is exciting news that the temple will be here in Philadelphia in the coming years. 


This is a picture of what it will look like, which will fit perfectly with the city. I cant wait to come back when it is finished to see the open house and one day attend it. 

Flyers Game

Out here on the east coast we are serious about our sports! Right now we are in pre season for the Flyers, the Hockey team. When my friend invited me to go to a game with him and a couple of friends I was more than excited! I sad YES and we all met at the stadium last Monday night. I had never been to a hockey game or ever even watched hockey before. But I have to say that I really enjoyed myself. It was a really fun experience and I would go again if asked!

The RM!!

Tanner is HOME!! I cant believe that one of my best friends is finally home from his mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Brazil. I am so proud of him and cant wait to get a recent picture with him! I have known Tanner and his family from the baseball park my whole life!

One of the last pictures I took with Tanner: 

The last time I saw Tanner:

 The FIRST Transformers movie was coming out.

I lived in California 

I was still in High School 

I was a half Dodger Fan 

While you were serving:

I sent you a couple of letters and a couple of packages..

But mostly I am just happy that you dedicated two years of your life to the Lord and changed so many lives! I cant wait to see you and all the rest of the missionaries from our home ward RETURN WITH HONNOR! 

Conference Weekend!

This was my 6th consecutive time attending General Conference! I am a little obsessed.. But its okay because I am not ashamed of it at all! The added bonus of getting to see my best friends also helps with not being ashamed to fly all the way to Utah from Philadelphia! It really was a blast, from cuddling together like old times to eating huge cupcakes, making dinner, attending the BYU football game and baking yummy cookies. I can honestly say that I am ready for the next step in my life and that means that I am ready to move to Utah and be much closer to the girls! I will be in Salt Lake which is a good drive to see them but its okay because it is much closer than a 4 hour plane ride.

I have to say that I was overly excited to see Kaitlin.. The last time I saw her was at christmas last year, because she was in Jerusalem for April's Conference! I have learned so much living out here this year and one of those things is the value of a real friendship. I know that I jeopardized our 15 year friendship in high school and for dumb reasons we had a little falling out. But now I think we are both stronger for it. I love Kaitlin and was so happy to get to bond with her again! There are some things about growing up that arent as bad as the rest of it may seem.

That whole saying, "You dont know what you got, till you dont have it anymore." that is the real deal.

And everyone knows I love Aimee so I was of course excited when I saw her pretty face in the car picking me up from the airport. It was just like old times when she would pick me up at the same exact spot for the last two years. We both discussed the fact that we dont have to send out a weekly email or call each other everyday to stay BFF. We are the kind of friends that just picks up where ever we left off the last time we saw each other. Not to say that we dont call each other often, its just nice to know that we will always be connected even when we arent.

Then of course General Conference! Which was so awesome. I just love knowing that Thomas S. Monson is a true Prophet of God and the words that we hear during those conferences twice a year are not the words of man but of God. I have a strong testimony that if we pray before listening to these conferences for answers to questions that we can not answer on our own, that we will receive guidance in the coming months to help us through those questions. I have a testimony of such because I have tested this theory. My advice to anyone reading this very long blog post would be to go and listen, watch or read those words that were spoken and really ponder them. I know that already I have been blessed with guidance from General Conference!

Turns out that all of the Moreno Valley YSA drove up to Utah for conference also, which of course was exciting for me because it really felt like being home!

The sad part about going on vacation is that at some point it has to end. On Monday night I flew back to Philly and was surprised again at how nice people really are in the world. Every time I am flying into Philly the people on the plane are always warm and friendly and there is always a good conversation to be had with the people around me. The fact of the matter is that people really do love Philadelphia and so do I. It really is a great place to live and although my job is frustrating at times and it seems like Christmas will never come, I really do like it here. I will be sad to leave the east coast. And I will be sad to leave behind these children that have blessed me with many life skills.

This post is probably one of my longest, but this weekend is my half favorite of the year! So it kinda deserves a long post.

Phillies Game/ Sadness

I CAN NOT believe that it has taken me this long to post about this! So Ryan (my boss) got me some tickets to the Phillies in the middle of the summer. Let me just tell you that it was the high light of my summer. The tickets were for the seats right behind the dugout of the visiting team. To say the least, they were the best seats ever! The only problem was that we were experiencing a heat wave the week of the game. As you can see the first picture shows that the temperature outside was 104, and there was about 100% humidity level that day. Don't worry too much about that since I brought 100 ice pops in my purse that got eaten in less than 10 mins. People who were around us were asking if they could buy them off of me because it was THAT hot! 

 This is how we sat for most of the game, not because it was the most comfortable position, but mostly because we could!! In case you cant see, thats my feet on the dugout! There was not a single row in front of us! 

 This is the girl that was sitting behind us and became friends with us, after we saw a Dad lean over the dugout and ask a player for a ball, the main focus for the rest of the game was to do the same thing. Minus the Dad part.. 

 Well lets just say that I was the luckiest girl in the park that day because when our friend asked for a ball she got no response, but the next inning when I leaned over and asked for the ball... Well I think you can see below that I got it! 

 They won of course and it was the best even of the summer! But here comes the sadness part. Last friday the Phillies had to win in order to move forward to the playoffs. Everyone in the whole greater Philadelphia area was in their Phillies wear. We were ready for this game and sure that our team would win considering the line up and all of our hearts depending this game. What a disappointment when the score the whole game was Them 1, Us 0. The game ended that way and that was the end of the season for us. A sadness was felt everywhere for the next few days. SAD. 

Anyway, the season is over and now its time to focus on Football, our Eagles aren't starting out so hot so we are kinda disapointed about that too. Hopefully when the season starts we can kick it up a notch!