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!