intercepted

this is part of a painting in the MOMA in nyc and it depicts where i was last week.
i was so happy to hear that mia was coming out for a big city visit so of course i had to intercept that. and then i was so happy to learn that bianca was coming out for a stopover on the way to the rest of the world so of course i had to intercept that. and above all, they would be here at the same time, so only one drive for me into crazy nyc! triple!
the blurry man is not, in fact, about to steal maria's camera. he happens to be her "travel companion" on this trip.*pic stolen from mia, but i'm not the only one
we just played in nyc for the day and then left that night when maria went back to utah :(. and me and bianc continued tooooo BOSTON.
bianca is a boston native and an expert tour guide. i think in the beautiful warm fall we were both ready to unpack our bags and live there forever. what a great city! we went to the aquarium and museum and mapparium, to harvard square and general walk abouts.


thank you so much for visiting the east side mia and b! anyone else who comes to this general area i will come to you and i will hang out with you! unless it's during the week because now i have a job.

holgayear

i bought a holga camera a year or so ago and i never remember to take pictures with it. also i forget how nerve wracking it is to take pictures with film, and have no idea how they will turn out. but it was really exciting to develop the film and not know what the pictures are of! here are a few of my favorites:
san diego, aug 08
bald eagle state park in penn, aug 09
lavender days in mona, ut june 08
windmill fields in nebraska, aug 09
taco bell parking lot in illinois, aug 09
san francisco, march 09

not ready

last week we got dumped on, snow wise. i was not aware that is even something that happened here. especially so early. and they did not cancel anyone's school. a girl can hope.
we also happened upon tickets to the penn state game on saturday. we are not technically psu fans but i was excited to see what all the fuss was about, and feel what it was like to be in the biggest football stadium in the country. well. it was cold. that's all i'm sure of. and "we" won the game. which we looked up later since if we stayed the whole time we'd've needed our fingers, toes, and noses amputated from frostbite disease.

puzzle clouds visitors

we had our first visitors last week! mom and dad made a stop on their east coast tour to come inland for a bit and pay a visit. it was great to see familiar faces and to catch up and be taken out to eat :). It also helped us realize how boring central PA is. and on the off chance that anyone else visits us, we really need to figure out what exactly you can show people/do here.
me and ryan made this puzzle during watching conference. it was the cheapest and hardest puzzle we could find. there was a lot of "can we work on this puzzle now?" "yes we can!" "do you think we'll be able to finish this puzzle?" "yes we can!" going on. you'd be surprised how long it takes for that phrase to get old. or would you...

the colors are barely starting to turn here. be prepared for many more pictures of the colors turning because i think it's going to happen around here in a major way and i'm really excited. also, there's something about the clouds here, maybe that there is weather. but the clouds are spectacular really frequently.

washington's town

we decided kind of last minute to go to d.c. for the weekend. it was a great idea! we left after ryan's friday noon class. we went to the temple first, the d.c. temple is so big. it is actually our temple, i had no idea you could even live in this country and be 4 hours from a temple! guess it's good i got out of the west coast.
so. in d.c. the next day. we started at the capitol and made our way down to the lincoln memorial. it really is the perfect place to travel. and so nice that all the museums are free dollars. and public transportation. and international food. yes.

maybe you can't see it in this picture of the capitol but there's a dude looking around with binoculars with a huge gun around his neck. cool!

you might recognize this rotunda from "the lost symbol"
you might recognize this aerospace museum from "night at the museum 2"
you might recognize this constitution from "national treasure"

you might recognize this spider from your nightmares. just kidding

unicorn monument

ryan reenacting his 1986 fall into the reflecting pool.

honest and giant
justin and lindsey and annabelle live in d.c. now, and they were so nice to let us stay at their cute apartment. they moved to d.c. like 2 weeks before we moved to pennsylvania -- it's nice to have some family that is in the vicinity!

showing off the new crawl:

hanging out in the national archives for a bit

for stace

today is sister stacey's bday. she is having a party tonight and everyone was asked to bring a song or poem that they love and share it with her. if i was there i would like to sing this neil young song to her. but maybe it is better that i am not there because his voice is like 1 mil x awesome. (he is the singer from tv on the radio)

also, i don't recommend this movie (rachel getting married) but i really liked this part and i cry most of the times i watch it.

happy bday dudu you are the unknown legend.

penn's cave cavern

on saturday, ryan and i took a boat tour of penn's cave. which is actually the only way to see penn's cave, being that it is all watered up. it is america's only all water cavern. i'm not sure how cool that is, if that is cool or not.

but, the cave was cool, as caves are. the whole time, the boat driver/guide would point to stuff with his lamp and say there's an elephant coming from the ceiling! there's a white turtle on that rock! there's santa! because that is what the shapes of the stalactites look like. one he pointed to he said was the statue of liberty and on the way back he said it was the leaning tower of pisa. there is only so much you can do with those shapes. we're stretching ourselves kinda thin trying to find stuff to do here on the weekends. next week i might show you pictures of the interior of sam's club. you don't want to miss that.

bellefonte walk

bellefonte is the town ryan and i live in, it is about 10 miles from campus. it's nice because we're close to school but don't have to feel like we live in a college town. again. bellefonte is a little strange though. it was a pretty happening place in the late 1800's, and since then, half of the city has deteriorated and not been kept up or was rebuilt in the 70's, and the other half has remained in really good condition and still looks really cool and victorian.

this is the house we live in. it was built in the 30's, and was not one of the houses that was kept up well. but so far no major problems. considering it was built during the great depression when they didn't think anyone would ever want to move in box springs or couches again.
it is very hilly in our neighborhood, and the houses are close together. it looks like an eric dowdle painting.

this is the courthouse which we live near. there is a farmers market here twice a week. besides that, people going to court use up the parking spaces in the whole town.
the main streets (2) have a lot of this type of building going on. this particular building houses the two most popular restaurants in town. dairy queen and the bellefonte wok.
there are a lot of churches around the town. like a 1:1 people church ratio. this one is my favorite because of its red doors. there is not an lds church in town or that would be my favorite, obviously.
some of the victorian mansions have been turned into bed and breakfasts. this one my parents are staying in in a few weeks.
and a lot of the old mansions have been split off into smaller apartments like this one.
so that is the basics of our town. other information is that people here are really really nice, and you should not run errands here unless your errands are going to the barber, going to kitschy antique stores, or going to dairy queen. you would be out of luck. tune in next time for pictures of the interior of our house!

some reception pictures

one of my favorite things about looking through our wedding pictures is seeing the pictures of our friends and family that our photographer took. i wished i could have talked to every person, constantly, the whole time but that was not so easy to do. so i'm glad to have these pictures of people looking like they are enjoying themselves. it makes me really happy to look at these, we are so lucky to have such awesome friends and supportive and loving family.

wedding pictures...

i'll post more of the reception when i get a faster internet connection, but here are a few of my favorite wedding pictures for now. if you simply can't wait, you can see all of them here: http://leopatrone.instaproofs.com/enterEvent.php?id=107928&returnURL=/category.php?event=107928@id=13122 go crazy!