Our First Experience as Parents...

Tim and I had been wanting to go to the National Zoo since we moved here, but Zoo's are so much more fun with kids (we thought) and we don't have any. His home teaching companion needed a babysitter one Saturday, so we offered to take their two cute children to the Zoo. It all started out well until our Zoo time cut into nap time. We knew it. It was our own fault. Little Joe-Joe stopped having fun and threw a couple of tantrums in the middle of everyone on about the hottest day of the year. Luckily, we made it to see the main attraction, the elephants, and Sadie was an angel the entire time. All I can say now is that I'm glad parents get the chance to build up to the toddler tantrums. ...I have a lot of building to do.

Tim's Blueberry Picking Trip to Georgia

Tim and his parents took the 10 hour trip down to their land in Georgia to pick blueberries a few weeks ago. They ended up with 28 GALLONS of blueberries! I've loved making blueberry scones, muffins, cookies, etc, and I've been very popular at work :)

Other than that, not much is going on. I went to my very first ever big fitness conference and, of course, got sick. We've both been working a lot and looking forward to the next few weeks and months when we actually have some trips planned!

Janeen and a Luau

My good friend and college roommate Janeen finally came out for a visit! I took a day off work and rode to DC for some museums and fun! We started out at the Natural History Museum where I saw the diamond Tim gave to me before I donated it to the museum for display...because it was so big and rare.
Later we went to the Holocaust Museum. I didn't want go to through the entire exhibit, so I looked at an exhibit on Hitler's Propaganda (2 pictures below). One picture shows a game board for children in which the entire point is to drive Jews out of the country. It was really interesting...and crazy.
When I got done with the other exhibits, Janeen and her other friends were not finished, so I decided to go to the Smithsonian Castle. It had the most random things inside such as the original 3 seated American Idol desk, and a pile of "Smithsonian treasures" from the new Night at the Museum movie! After seeing all of the other Smithsonians, the castle is sure a letdown.In the evening, we all ate dinner in Old Town Alexandria and took a Ghost Tour. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for coming Janeen!
Saturday was our sister-in-law DeAnne's birthday. Scott (Tim's brother and DeAnne's husband) wanted to go all out with a luau, so we celebrated hard core.
Tim even hollowed out 15 pineapples and saved the tops so we could put smoothies in and drink from the cool straws (look closely below-it's actually a smoothie cup!)
We all ate delicious Hawaiian-themed food before we got rained out.
The awesome decorations of the "Party House" aka Aubrey's party house.

Happy Birthday DeAnne! Hope you had a great one!

Shenandoah and Old Rag

Ever since we moved to Virginia, I've wanted to go to Shenandoah National Park. We finally found a hike and chose a day to go and hike Old Rag, the name of the mountain we climbed. And when I say climbed, I mean climbed!

It was about a full mile of rock climbing that looked like this...

And this...
It was over 9 miles round trip, and as we were climbing the rocks at about mile 4 it started to rain. The rocks were slick and we thought we had reached the summit about four times before we actually did, but once we really reached the summit it stopped raining and we had a great view.
This is why they call them the Blue Ridge Mountains...

The back way down the mountain was much easier than the way up (though the ranger didn't tell us this before hand). I was surprised at how different the scenery was. Tim even found some water...

And I did too!

Hooray for hiking! It took much more effort to find a place to go here than in Utah, but we're glad we did!

My Cute Funny Husband

Tim is such a good husband. It was a really hard past year with him looking for a job for so long, but he never let it affect our time together. He kept busy by taking online classes and even earning money from small projects, and for the past two months he has been working for the University of Chicago Dept. of Population Economics. The office is a satellite office about 6 miles away from our apartment and he often rides my old bike to get there so I can use the car to get to work. I really appreciate all he does, but he does have some funny quirks...The other day he was planning to take out the trash after he made me a delicious dinner (because he's so sweet...and lost a deal :). As he was taking all of the trash bags out, he mentioned how he never remembers to but the liners back in. I told him it was fine and I was glad to refill the cans if he took the trash out, but he insisted he would get in the habit of re-lining the trash cans. A little while later, I went into the bathroom and found this...
No liner. I thought it was funny, so I went to check our bedroom and found this...
Hmm. Next I checked the kitchen. Tim had run out for an errand, and I found this...
Oh well. He had good intentions. Actually, he did refill the liner to the kitchen garbage. We're making progress!

I just thought this picture was cute because I'm usually the first one up in the morning, and I like to have my yellow blankie by me in bed, but when I'm up, I sometimes throw it over to his side. This is usually what happens...
He'll probably be very embarrassed about this post, but he is such a good husband! I love you, Tim!

The Summer

I have been terrible at blogging lately, mostly because I have been terrible at taking pictures of things going on. Summer here has been pretty nice. It started slow with so much rain, but yesterday for the 4th of July, the day was perfect! Tim and I started our holiday by trying to go run on a trail by the Potomac River that I had been wanting to run on since we moved here. We ended up getting lost, and it seems all obscure roads here lead across the river into the District with no way to escape, so we got to see all preparations being made for the celebration later that day by 7:00 am. We finally found a place we could stop and run, ran, then rushed home to get to our ward breakfast by 8:30. Later, we went to a cookout with some friends and made a last minute decision to go to DC for the fireworks. I, of course, forgot my camera, but we found a spot on the Mall between the Washington Monument and the WWII Memorial (close to where they shot the fireworks,) so we were right up front. The fireworks were amazing! The entire sky in front of us was full of color and sparkle. People said you have to go at least once, and we will agree.

Also, my old roommate Megan from BYU came out for vacation, and we met for a picnic dinner at the Jefferson Memorial. It was fun seeing her!

And below are some actual pictures that Tim's mom, Diane, took while we were in Texas. The first is of Me, DeAnne, and Aubrey at Wicked!

Most of our time was spent out in the pool. This is when I was teaching Tim and Aubrey how to get an ab workout in the pool!

And we celebrated Father's Day while we were there. Rod got a grill/smoker and we had delicious steaks for dinner! This is the boys getting it set up.

Don't Mess with Texas

The Larsen family held a mini reunion in Texas last weekend. It originally started out as a Girl's Weekend to see the muscial Wicked!, but it ended up being the Girl's Weekend + Boys and a mini reunion. I was upset to find that my camera battery was completely dead, so all of my pictures are generic. Except above. That picture is from last summer.
The area Tim's parents live in has a lot of deer running around. They cause problems during certain times of the year, but I always find them enchanting! Apparently, deadwooddigital.com took this picture, but we saw a momma and two babies just like this!

For the GNO (Girls Night Out), we went to "The Majestic" Theater to see Wicked! The theater was pretty cool with the Spanish Mission look going on.

And, of course, the play was even better the second time! The music is so up-beat and the story line is so clever and funny. I would recommend it to anyone!

The rest of the trip was spend by the pool and eating delicious food!
Thanks Rod and Diane for the fun weekend!