Jon and I were writing our family history for a family reunion and noticed that our blog is extremely out of date. Sorry for the lack of updates once again! We’ve been busy busy busy working away, but do have some updates for what’s been happening in the past few months.
Church
After our move into our new home J0n and I moved into a new ward and received new callings. The transition has been hard since we really loved our old ward, but we’re still having a good time meeting new people. Jon and I are both serving in the Primary now, but are teaching different classes. I teach the 5-7 combined class and Jon is teaching the 7-8 year-olds. It has been especially fun seeing Jon’s students prepare and be baptized. My kids are energetic and I’m learning a lot about targeting lessons for smaller ears and preparing activities that are both fun and pertinent to the principle being taught. I am also serving as the ward’s Girl’s Camp Director which has involved organizing fundraising events and getting everyone all set to go. I’m heading up to camp next week, I’ll definitely report back on how it goes.
Work
Jon recently made a job transition to work on a new startup in Seattle. He now commutes by bus, which has had its own perils. I’m still at Microsoft in the same position, but have been working later hours since our team now works with a team in India. We’re both getting used to the long work days and are ready for a break!
Fun
Now the exciting part! Even though we’ve been busy busy busy we’re making time for fun. Over the holidays we took a trip to the East Coast to visit my sister’s family in their house for the first time. We got to see a lot of neat stuff. The highlight for me was getting to post the colors at Fort McHenry as they were taking down their large flag for the evening and switching it out for a little flag that would hold up against the wind overnight. I’m pretty sure that I was only selected because the park ranger thought I was a little girl or teenager, but I didn’t mind since the event was so exciting.
We took a drive up to New York City and on the way we made a pit stop in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I’m sure you can guess what goes on there 🙂 We enjoyed a lot of sweet treats as well as an automated ride involving singing cows. The main event was New Years Eve in New York City! During the day we walked around the city and enjoyed the holiday decorations and other sights. It was unseasonably warm which was great! Many of our family members headed back to New Jersey, but Jon and I decided to stick it out with my Mom and Dad to see the ball drop. It was super crowded, probably the most crowded situation we’ve ever been in (even worse than Black Friday!) and people were in a really rowdy mood. Sadly, Jon and I didn’t make it all the way to midnight because of a mixture of maybe bad Chipotle, lack of air due to the crowds and a bad cold that I had. We had to leave part way through and watched the ball drop from the train station on Jon’s phone. Mom and Dad stuck it through though and got to see the ball go down. Luckily our brother-in-law saved us from a New Jersey train stop and we were able to go home. Even though we didn’t see the ball come down I think we got the gist of it and we’ve crossed the event off our bucket list without regrets.
We’re also trying to enjoy some summer events in Seattle. A few weeks ago we went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. To prepare for the event we watched pretty much every documentary about ancient Egypt on Netflix. Man, those Egyptians liked their bling! It was exciting seeing all of the artifacts in the flesh. We also took one more step in reaching my life long goal of collecting a stamp from every National Park by going to the Gold Rush museum in Seattle and learning more about the first settlers in the area.
In the past few weeks we’ve also picked up a new tradition of trying out a new restaurant every Saturday for lunch. Half because the price is a lot lower than dinner and also half because we’re trying to expand our food horizons. We’ve been on a Mediterranean kick for the past few weeks, but we’ve also tried out a few Sichuanese places, and Korean BBQ.
The next two weeks will be eventful. I’m heading out to camp and we’re also visiting Utah for my little sister’s wedding! Exciting, exciting! We’ll be sure to let you know how it goes!
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Glad to see this update! You two are so fun. I’m glad to see you’re doing well. We totally need to go on a trip sometime to take a huge break together!