Stay Classy, San Diego

We started off our October with a much needed vacation to the opposite side of the country! We spent 2 days in Phoenix, AZ and then Sunday to Sunday in San Diego, CA. We had an amazing time! We flew out west because Matt was a groomsmen in John and Ali's wedding. John was one of his groomsmen and is one of Matt's best friends from St. Louis. We stopped in Phoenix the weekend before the wedding to spend time with the almost newlywedded couple. We had a great time! We mostly just hung out and saw a bit of the beautiful landscape! On Saturday we went to an Arizona State football game and afterwards tried to go to an Oktoberfest celebration in Tempe but it was too crowded so we left. On Sunday we hit the road for La Jolla (just north of San Diego) where the wedding was going to be the following Friday. I really enjoyed this ride through the desert. I had never seen this type of landscape in my life and I thought it was beautiful, and very dry! Matt and I did lots of fun stuff before wedding festivities began. We walked along the ocean and watched surfers. We toured Olde Town San Diego and ate delicious Mexican food, and then walked along the beach at Hotel del Coronado. We had a sunset dinner at George's on the Cove, and ate fabulous chili at our friend Jeff and Sarah's house. We went to the zoo (again with our friend Sarah and their two precious daughters), and we went on a mountain bike/sea kayak tour. San Diego was absolutely gorgeous!!! The end of the week was fun filled with wedding festivities. We really enjoyed getting to know John and Ali's families and friends throughout the weekend. The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, it truly could have been featured in a magazine! Ali and her family worked so hard and put together a beautiful event and a really fun party! Hope you enjoy all of the pictures of our vacation!!

View of the Phoenix Skyline from a park in Tempe

The sunset on our drive west

Windansea Beach down the street from our condo

Matt in Olde Towne

Us and the Pacific Ocean at Hotel del Coronado

Hotel del Coronado

A little out of order but this is us just after the sunset at George's on the Cove

This was the view at dinner, Beautiful!!!

A sweet Panda at the San Diego Zoo

More Zoo!

The Sea Lions at La Jolla Cove

Matt and I overlooking the Cove after our bike riding tour

John and Ali's big day!

Matt and the groom

Us after the wedding

These flowers grow everywhere in La Jolla! They are the traditional wedding flower Stefanotis. They were in my wedding bouquet and I was so excited to see them growing!

Visitors!

We have had lots of visitors in the last month. Matt's brother, Michael, came for a few days in mid August while on a road trip. We had a great time showing him some of the city and just hanging out with him. Then at the end of August, my friend from Atlanta, Ashley, came to visit! She is our first Atlanta friend to make the trek up north and we are so thankful she did! We toured her around Boston, and I took a day off of work to drive with her up to the beautiful coastal town of Rockport, MA. I love it when friends come visit and you can be completely relaxed and enjoy them! Then, Labor Day weekend we had our first St. Louis visitors (besides family)! One of Matt's best friend's and his wife (Josh and Jenny) came for the weekend. I think we squeezed just about as much of Boston as possible into this weekend trip! We ate at Legal Sea Food and an amazing restaurant in the North End. They toured Fenway Park (I was at work), and we did the Sam Adams Brewery Tour as well. On Saturday, we drove down to Newport, RI and had a great time walking around this picturesque village. There are also a whole bunch of mansions located in the town. We drove by them, and I truly was amazed at these homes!!! Most of them are historic mansions that rival in size to a few of the castles I saw in Ireland. On Sunday we did this really cool tour called Urban Interactive. It is an adventure that is basically like a scavenger hunt. You get an iphone and you run around the city finding clues and solving a mystery. It is a very fun and different way to tour an area of town. We showed them Harvard, Cambridge, and even made it over to the USS Constitution before they flew back to St. Louis on Monday. It was a great time, and we sure do appreciate them making the effort to come visit!

Enjoy all the pictures!

July

I think that I have decided that I am MUCH better at doing monthly blog posts, even if 3 months get posted on the same night, than doing little posts here and there about all of the little details that I know my 2 readers would love to know. Maybe one day, when i have more time, all of those little facts will be unearthed. But for now, it's the monthly update, inevitably a few months late.

July was a very busy month for us! We started off the month with a visit from Matt's family. His mom and dad stayed with us for 5 days, and to top it off, the Pratt clan came as well!! Ron, Lauri, and the kids stayed at a hotel in downtown. We had a great time while they were here and did lots of new fun things! We had everyone over for dinner one night and even had a little ice cream cake as a belated birthday surprise for our nephew Taylor. We went on a whale watching trip, that was truly amazing. We walked the Freedom Trail in the pouring rain, and ate yummy food! On the Fourth of July, we hung out by the Charles River in the afternoon and then watched the Fireworks late into the night. It was an awesome fireworks show!!! It was great to be able to show even more family what our life is like here in Boston and take people we care about to places that we have come to love over the past few months!

Happy Birthday Taylor!

Andrew in the Old North Church

On the boat heading to see the whales

This is a humpback whale feeding,
you are seeing's mouth right now

Happy 4th of July!

The 2nd weekend of July, we flew to Atlanta for Chris Bowen's wedding. Chris was one of Matt's roommates in Atlanta, and was a groomsmen in our wedding. Jen is a great girl and we couldn't be more excited for the two of them and their life together! We had a great time at the rehearsal dinner, and wedding. It was beautiful and the couple was so happy! On Saturday while Matt was doing the groomsman duties of pictures, etc, I got to hang out with my mom and just spend time with her as I haven't been able to do since moving to boston. It was so fun! We also had lunch with my old roommate Julie Melendez and her 1 year old Avery. It was a blast!

Matt and I at the Rehearsal Dinner

Chris and Jen's first dance

Sarah and Peyton, the beautiful flower girls

The weekend of July 24th, we drove down to Philadelphia, PA to visit our dear friends Chris and Bonnie Currie and Brian and Gail Frey. On Friday night, Matt and I went to the Cardinals vs Phillies game and that was a ton of fun! Mostly because the Cardinals won and we got to sit on the 3rd row from the field for last couple of innings. It was great to watch Matt so happy to see his team play. Then on Saturday we walked all around Philadelphia to see the sites. We ate a Philly Cheesesteak for lunch, walked along the River, saw Independence Hall, and I sat on Ben Franklin's lap for a picture. It was a very quick trip, but so good to spend quality time with good friends who know us really well. We miss them so much!!

The skyline from the top of the the steps that are famous from the movie Rocky

Up close an personal at the game....the Cardinals were winning, so most of the Phillies fan's left, so we took their seats!

Go Cardinals!!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures from all of our July adventures!!!

June

June was a very busy month!!! My parents came up for a visit the second week of June. We went on a Boston Harbor Cruise and introduced my parents to Mike's Pastries' lobster tails. We also took a day to drive up the New England Coast all the way to Portland, ME. It was a beautiful cool day and the coast is absolutely gorgeous! We made several stops at light houses and little villages and ended our day with an amazing dinner at Bull Feeney's in Portland. We also drove down to Cape Cod one day. We stopped in Sandwich, MA to walk over this boardwalk to the beach, and then also ate a fun little place in Hanover, MA. We saw some beatiful homes and water views!

On the 28th, Matt and I celebrated our first anniversary!!! It is hard to believe that it has really been a year. We have so many awesome memories of our wedding and honeymoon, and it really just seems like it all happened yesterday. Matt suprised me with a one night trip up to Maine to stay at a little in. We were in Old Orchard Beach and had an ocean view room. It was very overcast, but it was all still very beautiful! On our way up we stopped for lunch in Portsmouth, NH and really enjoyed walking around the quaint town. When we arrived at the inn in Maine, the sweet ladies who ran the inn had made us a little sign in our room saying Happy Anniversary. We went for a walk on the beach, and I got caught unspectedly by a crashing wave when I went close to feel how cold the water was! We had a great dinner at Joseph's by the Sea. It was raining the next day, so we drove up to Freeport, ME and visited the LL Bean village. It is LL Bean headquarters and also a little outlet mall that has the look and feel of a quaint old village. We stopped on our way home for lunch at Bull Feeneys (again!) in Portland. It was a great weekend!

We also started our church softball season in June. We have currently won 2 and lost 1. It has been very fun!

Overall, June was a very rainy and cold month, not quite the summer month that we are used to experiencing back home!!!

The bay at Scituate Harbor

Matt and my dad at the tip of Bearskin Neck in Rockport, MA

My parents and I at Nubble Lighthouse in York Beach, ME

This was a banner in Kennebunkport, celebrating President H.W. Bush's birthday the day before. We were there the day after his birthday skydiving adventure!

The Portland Head Light in Portland, ME

This is where Matt and I stayed on our anniversary! We were at the left side of the building with an ocean view.

They do have waves in New England! The water was very cold though!

The beautiful overcast shoreline of Maine

May

The month of May was fairly lowkey for us until the very end of the month. Over Memorial Day weekend, we flew to Georgia! It was a very busy weekend full of fun, friends, and family. Friday afternoon we ate yummy southern cooking at Mary Mac's Tea Room in Atlanta. Friday night through Sunday morning we were in Augusta for one of my best friend's wedding. Beth and Sy Allen got married and it was a beautiful ceremony and fun reception. I had the honor of reading scripture during the ceremony. We were so glad to be able to celebrate with the happy couple! This was also the first wedding Matt and I had attended since our own wedding, so that was fun as well! On Sunday we drove straight to Alpharetta, GA for our nephew, Timothy's high school graduation and party. Most of the Seiter's were there, we were only missing Matt's younger brother, Michael, who stayed in St. Louis. It was so much fun to celebrate with Timothy and the Pratts' and get to spend time with Matt's siblings, parents, and neices and nephews! Then Monday, we spent the day with my family. My sister and nieces drove down from Asheville, NC to spend time with us and I was so grateful that they made the effort to come down to see us!! We took them on a train ride around Stone Mountain and it was so fun! We miss all of our family so much so being able to spend time with so many people from both of our families was a huge blessing!! Then the last weekend of May, we went to the George Strait concert! It was so much fun and we got to see many talented artists, including Blake Shelton, Randy Houser, Julianne Hough, and Chuck Wicks. We had a great time, and even learned that there are in fact rednecks up here in MA!!!

Mr. And Mrs. Sy Allen

Congrat's Timothy!

Abby and Caroline on the train, and then Caroline and I by the pond.

Yes, it's true, mullet's in Massachusetts. Are you as shocked as I was?

Just enjoying some good music!! George is a great performer!

Spring is here!

We had an unseasonably warm weekend in April. Matt and I really enjoyed being outside and even getting a little bit of sun! It was in the upper 80s, and we brought a picnic to the waterfront in downtown, and just enjoyed the weather! It was fun to see the city busy with people everywhere! There were sailboats all around as well. After living through a winter in New England, I can honestly say that I never before enjoyed a warm spring day as much as I did that weekend! I have realized how much I have taken the warm weather for granted down in Georgia. It really seemed like the whole city blossomed over night. There are tulips everywhere and the grass has gotten very green. We are still having a blast, but are especially glad that we don't have to worry about snow anymore!