Wednesday, December 8, 2010

A Fashionable Equation

Daniel LoVeD collecting Goodwill ties for his mission.
+
Valerie LoVeS getting rid of things. 
 =
The missionaries LoVe their new ties!


Daniel decided to give some of his old goodwill mission ties to the Missionaries one month. The next time they came over, they were all wearing them! Here they are! Daniel looks so proud :) 

side note on the post title - i can hate thinking up titles and can never think of anything other than a one word summery of the post! this post title is a little extra silly though. maybe one day i'll get it right and strike a good balance :) just bare with me till then!

Monday, December 6, 2010

Visitors!

We love having visitors come up and see us! It makes us feel more connected to our friends and family who are so far away. Later this week we'll have a new arrival of visitors...Mike and Sarah, Daniel's cousins from Florida :)

We can't wait! Here's a trip down memory lane of our wonderful visitors from the past year.

 My parents were our first visitors! We take everyone up to the top of East Rock park to get a good view of New Haven and the sound.
Heather and David! What's a trip to New England without seeing a Lighthouse?! We bring our visitors to the light house for a quick look and walk along the jedi. 

Susan and Raquel! We give most of our visitors a little tour around Yale. This is inside one of the Medical school libraries.

Tina! When the weather is nice, we love to take people up to Sleeping Giant State Park. Here we walked up to the lookout tower to watch the sunset. 

Hoang, Amy & Lydia! We love taking guests into New York, and one of our favorite destinations is Central Park. We love exploring the park, and are always finding new beautiful places in there. 

 My parents came to visit in the fall this year. We took them to a new destination, the Gillette castle. It was beautiful! Definitely somewhere to bring future friends and family!
 
Don't you want to come too!?!??? 
:)

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Halloween Rewind!

Halloween has come and gone and I haven't blogged about it yet! Personal apologizes go out to Makayla and Becca for making them wait so long :)

We dressed up as Floridians and sported the most wonderful tropical outfits and just had fun being silly. I've realized I just like dressing up in strange clothes from goodwill for Halloween - and this year the abundant  tropical clothes were screaming 'pick me' from the racks of salvation army.


We also got together with a bunch of friends and carved pumpkins. We wen't non-traditional, and made a sailboat themed pumpkin :) Pretty random, but we had fun making it. 
 To finish the October rewind post, I'll just put up a few random photos of: leaf photo shoots, my favorite little guy Orion, and a shot of my B-day get together :)
 The end!


Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Luckiest Day!

Man oh man do we love going into the city! It's such a neat place, with never ending sights and experiences! We got to go there two times very recently, and are hoping to go back once more before the Christmas holiday season picks up.

We recently went to the Brooklyn Bridge, the crown of the Statue of Liberty, and saw the show Wicked! I highly recommend doing all of these things :)

Brooklyn Bridge! We walked across it with my parents and Aunt Shauna in late October. It was really neat and so awesome to see Manhattan from that point of view. The architecture of the bridge was also really beautiful.

Our 'luckiest day' was back on the first week in November when Josh and Mattie and Daniel and I headed into the city for a fun day centered around a trip to the crown of the Statue of Liberty. We reserved the tickets all the back in July! - and had to wait until fall before any were available! We were so relieved the weather was perfect! We were bracing for the worst!  On the ferry over to Liberty Island and inside the museum. The torch is the original torch that was replaced after eventually becoming too damaged to repair.
Climbing inside Lady Liberty up the 300 gamillion stairs to check out the view from the crown. Can you tell that the stairs were itsy-bitsy? I'd even go so far as to say they are teeny-weeny!
 Success! We made it to the top and enjoyed the indescribable views in the smaller than expected crown. 
Our great day turned into the luckiest day ever when we won front row 'lottery' tickets to the show Wicked. It was beyond amazing. The second it was over I wanted to see it again! Here's how it all happened...
We all entered our names into the lottery - each name drawn recieves 2 tickets to that nights show. Out of 5 of us, Daniel's name was drawn, and he opted to let Mattie and I see it while him and Josh went to watch their undergrad college football teams play each other at a sports bar. We had about 2 hours before the show and football games began, so we went to dinner at a Thai place right nextdoor to the theater. The food was awesome, and so inexpensive - we were thrilled at the find. Our dinner conversation revolved around our uncontainable excitement about Daniel's lottery win and the chance to see the show. Our excitment was overheard by the table behind us, and as they walked past us to leave they came over and asked "Did you guys win tickets to the Wicked lottery?!!" It was two nice girls, and one was in the chorus of the show! She told us she'd find us on the front row and sing to us during the show! Wow! How fun right?! Well, it doesn't end there! 

She came back in shortly, and offered to give all of us a backstage tour after the show!!!! It was so generous and thoughtful and kind! We couldn't believe it! So sure enough, she'd look at us during the show, and we'd try to spot her in every scene and costume change. I'm pretty sure we were smiling from ear to ear the entire time. And, I should mention that not only were we in the front row, but we were dead center!!!! It was so lucky! Literally the center of the entire theater was the arm rest that Mattie and I shared. One foot in front of us was the orchestra director, who we chatted with before the show began :) 

So we watched the wonderful/amazing/most-awesomest show, enjoyed everyone's amazing talent (especially Elphaba's - don't even get me started!), got to peak down at the orchestra at watch them play live....it was just awesome! We ran out of the theater a few seconds before the cast was done taking bow's and headed over to the cast entrance door. Tiffany came out and took us all on a backstage tour - even the boys came! We met the people who played the Wizard of Oz, Boc, and the head mistress of the University of Shiz. We went up on stage and saw the trap doors, smoke vents, props, ect. We also went under the stage to see all the intense mechanical devises, and the orchestra pit. We roamed the halls where the dressing rooms were, but didn't go inside any. We couldn't really take pictures inside the theater, but snapped a few, one of the Wizard of Oz face, one of a backstage bulletin, and a couple of us with Tiffany our lovely tour guide and new best friend. We also met her husband, who plays in the orchestra of the show.

It was an experience I'll never forget! My adrenaline is pumping just thinking about it all! It was officially the luckiest day ever!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Parents Trip!

We've been having too much fun lately :) It started when my parents came up to visit in October. They came at the most perfect leaf peeping time! It was awesome timing! We went on lots of drives, saw a 'castle', went into NYC, visited Newport RI,  and saw the show Hair!











The uploader put the photos in a random order, but you can kind of tell what is what :) The Brooklyn Bridge was really neat to walk across! Katz Deli was delicious as always (props to MEEEE, Daniel and my MOMMA for eating our whole ginormous sandwich!!!) Aunt Shauna was a great city tour guide, and helped my mom and I locate places in central park we'd seen on TV - but didn't know what they were called or where it was at.

Fabulous Trip! While they were here we talked about how they must come back in the spring to see all the flowers, the summer so we can take them sailing, and fall again so that we can go back to Cape Cod and go whale watching :)

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Halloween Past and Present!

Halloween's coming up, and I have costume writers block! Hopefully something funny will come to me soon! I'm trying to go for something funny and original, but not having much luck! Any suggestions?!

Here are our last two costumes :) Nana and Pappy Ramos will never be topped...but we gotta keep our first family tradition alive right?! 



I think the funniest thing about these costumes is that Daniel hates them until Oct. 31st...when he finally gets festive, puts his outfit on, and loves it! I can't even count how many times Daniel has wanted to wear his pink jeans out in public :) haha He's a good sport for putting up with such a silly girl like me!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Weekend Outings
















Just a random sampling of photos from our past 2 weekends...a Celtic Festival, a Maple Farm, and a Fall Fun spot with hay rides and a corn maze!