Pioneer Day Celebration

Jake and I have been teaching in the Primary while we are out here in Boston so we got to go to the Primary activity day celebrating the pioneers! Actually, Jake had too much homework, so I went as the representative for the family! :) They had asked each kid to dress up as a pioneer and to decorate their bikes/wagons/scooters for a parade. Well, I learned pretty quickly that this isn't like Utah, where most families have stashes of pioneer clothing on hand and can outfit a whole handcart family in just a couple of hours. Here, they had to be a bit more creative, and I liked it almost more!

Yup! She was definitely using a fertilizer spreader as her handcart!

This is the primary president introducing "Brigham Young" who was going to lead everyone in their trek (aka a parade around the parking lot). Everyone was having a blast:

Then we did such fun things as having a watermelon eating contest, candle dipping, penny throwing, story telling, hopscotch, and stick pulling (which usually turned into stick fighting):

All in all, it was a day of silliness and fun! And I got to hang out with my two best friends here, Abi and Jordan! Aren't they the cutest!?!

My Magic Wand

Harry Potter ain't got nothing on me!

My face is really sensitive. Any time I put anything on it (face wash, masks, sunscreen, makeup, lotion) I always break out. So this is my new secret weapon! I found it in the medicine cabinet after my sister moved out (thanks Hana!) and decided to use it. You just dab it on your zits - one side for day and one side for night - and it is supposed to take care of them. Well, guess what. It works! I decided to have a spa night and do a face mask. Fun, but I also started to break out a few minutes after it was off. So I decided to dab on some of the night goop, and when I woke up in the morning, there was nothing there! My zits were completely gone! This is an amazing product!

*Boots has a partnership with Target and CVS so you can look there to see if they cary this product*

The Good And The Bad

The Bad: Jake sprained his ankle. He can still get around okay, but it looks really bad!

The Good: I went for a long swim in the ocean today! It was 85 degrees outside and sunny and just about perfect!

Zipping!!

So we decided to have some fun this past weekend and really do something that would challenge ourselves. What better to accomplish that then to go on a 3-hour zip line tour of western Massachusetts!?! We had so much fun and Jake was totally fearless! I, on the other hand, almost chickened out on the first zip. We were really high up and I was not sure about trusting my life to some ropes and pulleys. But after I took the first plunge, each additional one got easier. I also perfected the art of braking just enough so that I sailed onto the next platform with grace and ease. We had a really great time and I learned to give up just enough control to allow myself to dangle on a rope 100ft in the air! Here are some pics of us zipping. Not the most flattering, but I wasn't out to impress anyone!

This was our group (we are on the right side on the end). They were a lot of fun, and I did find it amusing that Jake was the only male member of it! Except for our guide of course... I felt a lot better about the whole zipping situation after I found out that all of the ladies in our group were nurses! That way they might be able to revive me after I had fallen to my near death!

Pure Bliss

The tour is here and I couldn't be happier!!

(p.s. I googled Tour de France 2009 images and this pictures came up. It's a lie. This is not from 2009 for a couple of reasons: Lance Armstrong (pictured in yellow) has yet to wear yellow this tour (he missed it by 22 hundreths of a second yesterday), and the postal team hasn't been in operation for 6 years - it became the discovery team the last year that Lance won the tour in 2005. Yes, that is how much of a tour geek I am!)

Happy Independence Day!

We spent the holiday in downtown Boston! We figured that if we were going to celebrate it, we were going to go all out. After all, we are living in Boston, which has a HUGE 4th celebration. So we went downtown early to stand in a LONG line (they were expecting 500,00 people to show up) before we finally got into the shell. Once we had scored the all important wrist band (free, but they are given out on a first come basis)

we settled in for the long wait. 10 hours to be correct. If you don't get there early, you don't get in and you don't get to see the Boston Pops with Neil Diamond. So we did what we could to pass the time.

We were super prepared, but one thing we didn't quite account on was the sun. The sun has pretty much been a stranger as of late, so we had forgotten the damage it could do.Whoops! We were so glad that it was sunny for the 4th. We have had rain 30 of the last 33 days, so it was so nice to have a day of just sun!

We were super bored by about 7pm so we started having fun with the camera. Jake was trying to flip his hat onto his head.

He finally succeeded.

I also had a bit of fun.

We were really bored by this time, but not to worry because not too long afterward it all started and I got to see what I never really had a desire to see: Neil Diamond in concert. It was obvious he doesn't have to vocal chops he used to because he talked most of his lyrics rather than sang them. Oh well. Here was our view of Neil:

And then my favorite part was at the end of Stars and Stripes Forever: Overall, it was pretty cool. It was madness getting home on the T (the subway) and we almost were caught in the middle of a drunken fist fight, but we finally crawled into bed around 1:30am. But it was all worth it! Happy Independence Day!P.S. The Boston Pops are amazing! I never expected to be so impressed by them, but I really was! I mean, I guess they should be the best, but I still thought they were so good!