Mini-Excursion

Boston won't stop raining. Don't tell any of the sun-craving people, but I'm totally loving it. Heat and humidity is just an evil combination. So our Saturday night plans were a little limited to indoor ideas. Ali and I have been waiting for ANY excuse to get back down to Franklin (a 45-minute drive that gets you to the BEST homemade ice cream place in the world), so an indoor mini-golf course in that area sounded like a great plan.

"The Greatest Course on Earth!" That's what the door said, anyway, so we had pretty high expectations. Then we stepped inside and found a blacklight, circus-themed room that was hilariously creepy. So strange...

Creepy, right? The place was complete with clowns, one-eyed gorillas, wizards, a scantily clad indian chief, just a wide variety of...stuff.

But then we just kind of embraced it. No one more than Doug or Allen.

I loved all 18 holes of that course; each one has some random statue (like everything in the one-eyed gorilla list, or the random orange cones above) that isn't even between your ball and the hole. They're just kind of...there. It's great.

I don't know how a circus involves wizards, but when you're as cool as this place you just don't need to worry about things like that.

I know this doesn't look like a promising putt, but we're gonna give Ali the benefit of the doubt and assume this is during the round we all played left-handed. I could not figure out the difference between left-handed and right-handed putts for the life of me, I don't know why that was so confusing.

Luke was pretty excited to sneak into the Lion cage for this picture, but not as excited as Ali and I were when it was time to say goodbye to the circus and get our highly anticipated ice cream. We pulled into that wonderful little ice cream shop at 10:08, I was so happy to be back...but I'll admit a little of the happiness was lost when we saw that it closed at 10:00. Sigh. Looks like we'll just have to go back again! And we'll be sure to fit in another round at the greatest course on earth! Maybe...

To Dad

I know I'm a little late, but I couldn't pass up the chance to give a shout out to my wonderful dad! He's one of my favorite people to talk to in the world and he's great at making me laugh. I sure miss him!


My dad is one of the smartest people I know, I love how I learn something every time I talk to him on the phone. And his fatherly advice is always amusing to hear :)


My favorite thing about my dad is how much he loves my mom. Their marriage makes me so happy. He's just such a good guy :) Definitely the best dad I've ever had.


I also love how much he humors his daughters, like when I told him to be more excited about plants for this picture :)

A few favorite dad memories:

• Late night Oreo talks
• Struggling to learn how to drive a stick (which involved a lot of frustrated moments, a few tears, anger when he would laugh at my tears, and some misleading directions that ended up with me on the freeway being chased by a diesel that could totally take me and almost did.)
• Talking about politics and pretending Massachusetts is changing me just to freak him out a little
• Walking the cute streets of Cedar City on the nights I'm in town
• His beard :( (You better grow it back when your calling changes, dad.)
• Watching him be a grandpa
• Beating him at ping pong! Ok... and sometimes losing to him ;)
• His radio voice

Happy Father's Day dad! I love you!

Why did the deer cross the road?

I just gotta say, Bambi was never my favorite disney movie.

This is the sad result of a deer who decided to take a risk (and died) on Saturday night. Poor little thing. At least that was how I felt until I saw Ali's car, now I just think it was an annoying little thing. But I'm not going to judge.

On our way home from a drive-in movie on Friday I asked Ali if there were any deer in Massachusetts (just so you know, that's the only state I could never spell, but now that I live here I think I finally got it down), and she said there were but she had never seen any. Well, we saw one!

We were super lucky and didn't feel a thing. The car, not so much...it's totaled. I kinda figured it was when we decided to get out of the car and look at the damage and I couldn't open my door hehe. I didn't want Ali to freak out so I tried to discreetly crawl to the back seat and get out...but she noticed, dang it. I would say the most traumatizing part of the whole ordeal was when Ali made me take pictures of the deer for "insurance reasons." Proof? Haha I did not think that was necessary or healthy for me but I wasn't going to question a sad girl with a ruined car. It was really gross though, and don't worry, I'm not going to post any of those.

We've been mourning the poor thing all week (the car, not the deer -- is that bad?), but I already had a good relationship with the bus system and Ali is having too much fun borrowing our roommate's scooter for a little while. I just don't feel good about leaving you with those sad pictures of the car, so here it is in some happier moments.

Weekend road trips! This one gives you a good view of Glinda, our trusty GPS. (Well, sort of trusty...it broke right before we hit the deer. Bad night all around.)

Aw, look how cute it is, just chilling at a lookout point while Ali and dad have a GPS-Atlas battle.

It was a good car.
R.I.P.

Opa!

Boston always has crazy things going on, so we drove out to Arlington to check out the local Greek Festival. It was a party! It looked like a stake activity, Greek-style. That probably gives you a better image of it all.

I discovered that I do not like Greek food. Like at all. But it was fun to try it! Quite a lot of it actually...

Opa! Greek dancing was pretty exciting, you do the same four steps in a circle over and over and over. And over. It was a live band so I think they just secretly enjoyed watching us get slightly annoyed.

Here's Ali in her element.

Public Apology

It has come to my attention (a.k.a. Ali made fun of me) that a recently posted picture may have given a false impression about my Boston habits:


The above picture was meant to be an innocent portrayal of my directionless (but fun) days here in Boston. My dad made me take this picture with good old Samuel the day we walked the Freedom Trail, and I promise we were going for the Founding Father side of him rather than famous beer company. Confession: Did not even know Samuel Adams had any association with beer.

So no, I have not turned to alcohol to fix my unemployment frustrations. I've got other things for that:

The blanket. Ok, confession #2: The above picture is a little bit of a lie -- I was laughing 2 seconds before, and laughing 2 seconds after, so don't go thinking I've really reached that level of sadness. But seriously, I love my blanket.

Here's a few Memorial Day pictures I feel like I should put up since I came down a little hard on May last time. Beaches and barbecues, always good things! The month redeemed itself. A little :)

Don't be fooled by the sunny appearance of this picture -- the water is FREEZing. Come on Atlantic, help us out a little.

Ward barbecue! I discovered some sweet croquet skills that might possibly be a one-time deal, so I'm not going to play for a while so I can enjoy the feeling as long as possible. Note that Ali is about to be nailed by a water balloon because people like to make little kids do things. Also be aware that little William cried after because he didn't realize throwing the balloon meant the balloon would pop, making it a lot less fun to play with. Poor kid.

But looks like he got over it :)

P.S. Happy June!

That Time of the Year

May and I have never had the best relationship. I mean, I know it's Ali's birthday month, and I did just get a new little niece in it (shout out to my girl Lydia! who has no appreciation for shout outs yet...), but it's just not my favorite time of year.

May 2007: Almost died in the ocean in Mexico. Ask Kindal or Larissa, or the Mexican fishermen that saved us.


May 2008: Homeless in Alaska. Good times...


And finally, May 2009: Unemployed in Boston. It was a long month, not gonna lie! But I think there are a lot of things I was supposed to learn and I guess I shouldn't judge May for teaching them to me.

But still...

Bring on June :)

Unforgettable Sunday

This is the church I've been going to here in Boston, the oldest Latter-day Saint chapel in New England. There are 3 single's wards that keep this building busy, and all of us were combined together on Sunday for Stake conference. While we were watching the broadcast from Salt Lake the fire alarms went off, and everyone casually went outside. Alison told me she was going to run to the bathroom first (she would...love her!) but I could already smell smoke and told her I thought there really was a fire.


We all gathered outside and I noticed a really small flame on the front corner of the building. Church leaders came out and told us we needed to move across the street, and then I noticed smoke coming out of the opposite corner. The fire had been burning throughout the entire attic by that time, and everyone was realizing it as we backed away and looked at the smoking church.

I took this picture (above) from my phone when the roof started to give; the flames became huge and spread quickly once they got air. Everyone just watched in disbelief and listened to the firemen come. It all felt unreal.

We watched the firemen break through the roof and shatter windows to be able to fight the fire; they sent a constant stream of water through the steeple to keep it from catching fire and falling. Members started helping the church's neighbors take belongings out of their house in case the fire spread. The reality of it all finally hit me when I realized the firemen's first priority was containing the fire rather than putting it out -- they knew the building was gone.

We watched for hours. Neighbors were so sweet to come around with cups of water and juice, carrot sticks, and words of sympathy. Many offered their homes for anyone who needed them.

The Quaker church across the street was incredibly sweet through the whole thing. They offered any help they could give and let us move any books and paintings we could save into their building. They also let our priesthood leaders hold a meeting in their building that afternoon to figure out where to go from here.

We made an assembly line from the church to the Quaker building to save whatever books we could from the institute. I loved everything about this--everyone was so grateful to just be able to do something, and everyone started clapping when a fireman came outside with a large painting of Christ that hadn't been burned. Kristina and I are near the end, waiting for the books to reach us. A couple girls out here are studying book conservation, and I loved watching them offer their talents and immediately start salvaging the damaged books. You never know when your talents will be needed :)

We drove back over to the church that evening and saw the lonely steeple and brick walls. The building was completely gutted, I've never seen anything like it before.

There were still a lot of firemen and church members around, saving anything they could and clearing things out. I was so sad for the half-burned piano. The whole experience was so unreal, but I learned a lot from it. When we all stood together and helplessly watched the fire come through the roof I thought about members in the early days of the church, and tried to imagine how they endured the horrible persecution they were faced with. They constantly gave all they had to the church; I cannot imagine having to leave everything behind and walk away from a burning home like so many did. I read an article published just today that said they have confirmed the fire was accidental; I have a strengthened respect for those early church members who saw what I saw yesterday from a victim's point of view.

Alison and I talked about how seeing our church burn gave us a feeling we'd never felt before -- it was a loss of something extremely close to us, but it's a type of mourning that's very different. It's not like mourning the loss of a person, but it's still losing something irreplaceable and something real. There were a lot of memories for many people in that building, and those can't be rebuilt.


Here's local coverage of the day:

http://multimedia.boston.com/m/video/22310177/fire-breaks-out-at-cambridge-church.htm

Random: Mitt Romney and his wife came by the church that day, and so did Jennifer Garner. She has a house down the block from the chapel. Crazy!



Thanks to the Boston Globe and this Picasa Album for the first few pictures.