A BIG Thanksgiving

This year we had quite an amazing Thanksgiving with my family.
My parents and brother flew into Ithaca on Tuesday night and we drove to NYC Wednesday morning.

Thanks to my brother-in-law we were able to stay at a hotel right off Times Square.
One of our first stops was the M&M store right across from our hotel.

Our first view of Times Square on Wednesday

Rachel, Tyler, and cute Jackson made it to NYC and we checked out the city that night.
Central Park was one of our stops.

We were told to check out the Macy's Day Parade balloons the night before... they were pretty cool to see up close.

Rockefeller Center with the famous Christmas tree...pre-lit.

We didn't camp out or anything, but we were able to score an awesome spot to watch the parade on 55th St. and 7th Ave.... with a few randoms around us.

It was so amazing to be there for the Parade.

I couldn't stop taking pictures...

I think that was Kanye West..

And Santa ended the Parade with a big HO HO HO!

The boys thought they were pretty cool cruising Broadway, since all the streets were blocked off for the Parade.

We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner at the Film Center Cafe... with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry, and pumpkin pie!

The next day was my mom's 50th birthday, and it was Black Friday. Perfect, right?

We did some crazy shopping and started at Macys. I loved Holiday Lane :)

There was a lot of good shopping done. I even had a lady get mad at me for taking the sweater she had her "eye on." Haha

Later that night we went to West Side Story... thanks to Nana!

The play was great and we had the songs stuck in our head the next few days, especially Steven with "MARIA!"

My parents and Steven drove back to Ithaca with Ben and I and spent a few days with us there.

We were able to visit Cornell, Peter Whitmer's Farm, waterfalls, Corning Glass Museum, and other fun stuff!

We had so much fun being with my family for Thanksgiving and can't wait to see them and Ben's family for Christmas!!

Happenings As Of Late

SO.... THIS POST WAS MEANT TO BE PUBLISHED WEEKS AGO, BUT MY PICTURES WOULDN'T WORK... BETTER LATE THEN NEVER?




I haven't done a specific update of what's been going on as of late, but here they are...


We had a fun Halloween with our friends and Branch...


We carved our pumpkin with friends


Ben loved his costume, especially his mustache (only pictured at the bowling alley)


We went to the Cornell women's hockey game,


then were inspired to see an infamous Cornell men's hockey game.
It was a ton of fun!


We sure are staying busy here in Ithaca.

Our Own Fall Break

Cornell had their fall break the second week in October. Seeing as Ben is not taking any more classes, we were able to create "fall break" when we wanted to. My friend Brittany was flying out to see our friend Katie in D.C. the third week in October... so that's when we had OUR fall break.

We drove to D.C. on Sunday and were excited to see our friends again. Monday morning we hit the metro and headed to Arlington Cemetery.. Tomb of Unknown Soldier, JFK, and Iwo Jima.

Hit the Air and Space Museum on the Mall and headed to Georgetown. Delicious lunch and cupcakes of course, at Baked and Wired, shopping. National Harbor, some real Mexican food, custard, and that was just the start of our evening.

Katie wanted to take us on a nighttime tour of the monuments, so we hit up all the big sites: FDR, Jefferson, Washington, White House, WW2, Lincoln. We ended up walking 5 miles but it was so amazing to see everything at night and without the crowd (not that many people were there on a Monday in October).



On Tuesday we were a little less excited about walking all around the city but managed to have a great day. Started off with the Capital Building tour, Library of Congress...

Supreme Court Building, Nat'l Archives, and decided to see Social Network.

After the movie we found this pub with a London style telephone out front... obviously Katie and I had to have a picture in front of it.

Overall it was a great trip and it made me love living in the east coast even more. Can't wait to see what else it's got to offer over here!

A Beautiful Sunday

Ben and I went to the Cornell Plantations this afternoon for some beautiful scenery and a nice walk. Here are some pictures from the sunny day!


So this was Ben's "special" profile picture which was taken at the Plantations 2 years ago about this time..

This was my impression of it... I forgot the hands on the knees, etc.

Falling for Ithaca

It's definitely feeling like fall here in Ithaca. We went from the highs of low 80's upper 70's... to highs of mid 50's in a week! The leaves here are changing and are a beautiful sight to see. I thought Provo was pretty in the fall, (coming from Arizona where fall wasn't much of a season) but I've decided that Ithaca is even that much prettier with the abundance of trees all around.

We've been pretty busy lately... and as a result I haven't put up our pictures/ talked about our recent outings. So a quick run through...

-We went camping about a month ago with some of our friends in the Ward. We went about 20 minutes away from our house and were totally in the woods on our own (another beauty of living in Ithaca). They have 3 little girls, so I was a bit worried about how well we would sleep. They ended up being troopers and were amazing campers! Not to mention they had all the right equipment, food, etc.... I on the other hand brought Panera to our camp-out. I definitely learned a few things about camping and am excited to go again sometime here.





-Here is a beautiful Ithaca sky one night after our intramural co-ed soccer game. Ben and I are on a team with some of our friends from the Branch. We don't have the best record... but we do have fun!

-I often work on Saturdays so we went to Grisamore Farms on a Monday to pick some apples! It was sprinkling a bit at the beginning but ended up being a nice day. It is a huge farm where they grow all sorts of fruits/veggies in different months...

Ben didn't let me pick a pumpkin because he said we would "come back closer to Halloween" for one.

Ben was doing a lot of apple eating as well as picking

Just out in the countryside

Ben wanted a picture of himself "in the tree"

Macoun and Crispin apples ready for pies and eating!

-Last weekend we enjoyed General Conference and the "Apple Festival" in downtown Ithaca with some of our new friends. We walked among the large crowd enjoying kettle corn, roasted almonds, and other goodies.

Life in Ithaca has been a lot of fun lately.... along with staying busy with work at Panera, as a soccer coach, and trying to substitute teach as well. It's becoming more and more like home!

A new identity.

Ever since I got my blue Jetta it has been named "PAIJETTA." The inspiration for my personalized license plate came from my best friend Kristen. I was trying to come up with something clever because my sister, Rachel, had a red VW beetle named "LADYBUG." It was a bit trickier with a blue Jetta... but Kristen had some inspiration that PAIGE and JETTA fit together like PAIGEJETTA... but squished together it was PAIJETA. Throughout high school and college some of my friends called me Paijetta and it even transformed into Fajita somehow to my friend Katie. But now, things have changed since moving to New York. No longer do I have an Arizona license plate, nor does it say PAIJETA...



Here it is... the new PAIJETA. To me it will always be "The Paijetta" but now FAX 5345 is its' license plate.