4th of July in Washington D.C.

We had a fabulous 4th of July here in D.C.  Mike's cousin Russ and his wife Kaela were in the parade on Constitution Avenue, so we took the metro down and saw them in the parade.  It was so much fun to experience the atmosphere in the nations capital on the the 4th of July.  

After the parade we went back to Russ & Kaela's house for lunch and to dehumidify ourselves.  We crammed into Kaela's little convertible for the ride there and back.  It was an adventure. :)

After lunch, we went back into D.C. to watch the fireworks.  We parked at the Pentagon and walked over to the Jefferson Memorial (about 2 miles) and found a great shady spot to set up camp.  We hung out and waited for about 5 hours.  The fireworks show was great and worth the wait.  We were exhausted once it was over though!  We still had to walk back to the Pentagon and catch a metro to get back to our car.  I believe we got home just a little before one.  

Our First D.C. Experience

For those of you who don't know, we are living in Maryland this summer while Mike does an internship with the government.  He's been here since the beginning of June, but I just got here last Thursday so this weekend was our first opportunity to explore.  Somebody told Mike that the best way to get to D.C. was to get to the nearest metro station and take that into the city.  With me not being a city girl I had never been on a city train, so I decided to document the auspicious occasion:

 The Washington Monument is under construction from the earthquake from a few years ago, but it was still awesome to see.  

 The WWII Memorial was beautiful.  Both war memorial's we went to were very sobering.

 Sorry for the poor quality of pictures, but we aren't the best at "selfies"  and I'm kind of nervous handing my phone to a stranger.  

The Lincoln Memorial was by far the thing I was most excited to see and it was magnificent!  I can't wait to go back and see it lit up at night.

At this point, we had been walking for about 3 straight hours during the middle of the day and were exhausted.  We forced ourselves to go to one museum before we headed home.  We stopped in at the National American History Museum and saw the Start Spangled Banner, President's, and First Lady (my favorite!!) Exhibits.  It was incredible and we can't wait to go back and spend more time in museums.  We have a huge list of things we want to see and have to remind ourselves that we are going to be here every summer for the next few summers and then live here for 4+ years.  Stand by for more adventures.

5th Anniversary Trip

We made a last minute decision to head over to Los Angeles for our 5th Anniversary weekend.  We had so much fun! It was a quick weekend, but we made it to Knottsberry Farm and the California Science Center to see the space shuttle Endeavor.  We also caught a 3D showing of Iron Man 3. Here's a few pics from our trip.

Mike fitting really well in the shower in our hotel room. :)

This was us so excited to go on the first roller coaster.

This was us after our first roller coaster.  We seriously felt how we looked.  My stomach didn't stop doing circles for at least an hour.

Ferris Wheel

Mike driving little toy cars around a race track.

This crazy man won a gigantic stuffed animal playing one of the carnival games.  It was HILARIOUS to watch him walk around with it!  EVERYONE wanted to talk to him about it.  It is now my classroom pet.  My students named her Agnes. :)

California Science Center:

Mission Control

The Endeavor!

There is a huge beautiful rose garden behind the science center that we visited.  

The L.A. Olympic Park is also at the same place as the science center.

As you can see it was a great time.  Now if we can just make it to Maryland life will be good. :)

Maryland, here we come!

This is an update Mike put on the Mabey family blog, but I thought I'd copy it onto here so everyone can read it!

As many of you know, I've been waiting since the end of January to hear how the sequestration would affect my internship this summer.  As a reminder, I got a scholarship from the DoD that gives me a job after I graduate and requires me to spend my summers doing an internship.  There was a chance that due to budget cuts there would be no funding for interns, but all I ever heard was speculation and a promise that more information would be sent out when there were more definite circumstances.

I finally spoke to someone at the NSA this week about all this, and was reassured that funding for staffing wouldn't be negatively affected enough for interns to not have to report.  Sorry, that was a complicated way of saying that we will for sure be going to Maryland for the summer.  It sounds like they want me there for as long as possible to give me as much experience there as I can get, but I'm done with school at the end of April and Heidi's school doesn't get out until the end of May so I'll be there by myself for a month. :(

As things are right now, I don't have specific dates of going and returning, but we're still trying to figure out living details such as where we can live, viable options for transportation, etc.  We've got a lot to do between now and then, but it should be a fun experience.

Wish us luck!

San Diego!!!

I feel bad that we don't ever post, but our life is 99% school, teaching, church callings, and sleeping and nobody really wants to read about that. :)  But Labor day weekend we did something pretty fun, so I thought I would share!  We went to San Diego with some friends.  It was a blast!

We went to Sea World:

 We ate AMAZING pizza at Little Italy.

 We saw a very interesting topiary garden.

 We ate more food than either of us have ever consumed in a 3 day period.  Look at the size of that pancake!  It was blackberry granola flavored and was quite yummy.

 And of course visited the beach. 

 We also went to the new Mormon Batallion museum.  It was very cool!  Too bad this picture makes me look so small next to Mike.

 And we toured the U.S.S. Midway.  Mike was definitely not meant to be a sailor.  

 The boat behind us in this picture is the boat that "dealt" with the Bin Laden situation.  Very interesting...

 And another funny Mike picture, just for good measure!  

Let us know if any of you go to San Diego and we will definitely meet you there!!!

4 years!

Well it's been 4 years (and 3 days) since we were married.  I can't even believe how fast time flies!  I also can't believe how much happiness and fun can be had in just 4 short years.

 As I was driving to work on our anniversary I began reflecting on all that has taken place in our lives in the last four years and I was pretty impressed with us!  :) Ha-Ha!  So I thought I'd document the list, so we can remember how great these first 4 years have been.

• Mike getting his bachelors degree. (2009)
• Mike getting accepted into ASU's grad program. (2009)
• Moving to AZ! (2009)
• Me getting my bachelors degree. (2010)
• Me getting my first job teaching 5th grade. (2010)
• Mike getting an internship with Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, NM and living there for a summer. (2011)
• Mike graduating with his master's degree from ASU. (2011)
• Mike getting into the PhD program at ASU. (2011)
• Mike getting an INCREDIBLE scholarship from the Department of Defense. (more on this in a later post) (2012)

And those are just the major milestones.  That's not including all of the fun trips and fun experiences we have had.  It's been a great four years and I can definitely say with confidence that I love him more and more each day.  We both feel very blessed in our life and know that we owe it all to our Heavenly Father. 

 

Here's an updated family picture that was taken by a very dear friend a few weeks ago.

 And here's this one, just because I like it a lot. :)

An exciting thing happened this past week with my family:

  My brother came home from Chile! We decided to drive up to Utah so that we could see him and be there for his "Homecoming" meeting.  We drove all day on Friday and then we were there on Saturday and Sunday and drive back all day Monday.  The drive was not exactly a party, but we had such a great time with family that it was worth it! We mostly just spent every second hanging out with family.  We had so much to talk about and catch up on that we didn't even have much time for our usual game playing.  We were able to see a lot of people and have some really great talks with Justin. 

We were able to take a new family picture:

 And we were able to spend some great time with my bestest friend Leah and her fiance (my cousin) Cade.  It is going to be a pretty great thing to have your best friend become a part of your family. I'm so excited!

We were also able to spend a few hours with Mike's family.  It just so happened that they were having a small family get together on Sunday night so we were able to see a lot of his siblings!  We wish we could have spent more time with them, but we enjoyed the time we got to spend with them.

It was an AWESOME weekend!

Our life

Don't anybody have a heart attack from the shock of having an update from us two week sin a row!  It's Heidi this time and I am really hoping to be better about blogging.  My excuse is always that our life is boring and I have nothing to write about, but really I think I have things to write about - I just never have time to write about them.  But my (new - haha) goal is to make time.

I have been reflecting on our life lately and how blessed we are.  We have so many of our needs and wants met.  We are so happy together and are enjoying this time of life.  We are both progressing in our professional, spiritual, and personal lives.  It is a great time of growth for us.  Like Mike said I am the Young Women President and can I just tell you how much I love it?  I truly feel like Heavenly Father has instilled in me a greater love for these girls than I thought possible.  I do wish I had more time to do everything I want for them, but isn't that how everything goes?

I'll just leave you with two pictures that I want to have documented.

This is our "Music Corner."  I was inspired to find a picture of each instrument that we play and hang above our piano and somehow found these awesome photos that match very well together!  I love my little corner and can't wait until one day when it is a whole room. :) (P.S. I also LOVE our digital piano that we got for Christmas 2010!  It is perfect for the stage of life we are in.)

And last, but definitely not least is a picture of the beautiful flowers Mike gave to me for Valentine's Day.  He had them delivered yesterday morning because he wanted me to be able to enjoy them this weekend while I am actually home and because they take a few days to bloom fully after they are delivered so they should be in full bloom on Valentine's day!  What a sweetheart!

Okay, so Heidi and I haven't been very good at adding things to the blog if you hadn't noticed... sorry about that.  I'm sure you all don't want to hear all the details of our lives in one go, but here are some of the highlights.

Two weeks ago I was released from being the elders quorum president after about a year and a half.  It was a bit of a relief to have one less big source of stress gone from my life.  Last week they put me back in the Young Men presidency so that I'm working with the deacons (12-13 year-old boys).  The bishopric understands that it isn't reasonable for me to be involved with weekday activities on a regular basis, so my calling is specifically to teach on Sunday, which is pretty easy for me to do and is something I really enjoy.  So that's a good change.

Heidi is still the Young Women president and has plenty of things to juggle between that plus teaching school, teaching a couple of piano students, and ... it feels like I'm forgetting something else, but it's probably just because she never gets any down time.  Her class this year is twice the size as it was last year, but the kids are much better behaved, so overall it's easier and a better experience.  She really enjoys working with the young women in our ward, but wishes she didn't have to be working full-time while having that calling so she had more time and energy to do things the way she would like them done.

My work on my PhD is going pretty well.  My recent calculations of when I might graduate are December of 2014.  Of course, that's all dependent on how my research goes over the next couple of years and how the writing of my dissertation goes as well, but I'm hopeful that I might be done before I turn 31 in the spring of 2015.  Yikes!

We recently hung out with some friends of ours and decorated cupcakes, which I know sounds lame, but it was a lot of fun.  Here are some of the pictures from that.  If you don't know what some of them are supposed to be, don't worry.

 

What do you think?

I made this for Mike for our anniversary next week. I think I like it - I'm still worried it's too cheesy, but I was thinking about it and I would love it if my parents had something like this. I hope he likes it.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Major Update!!!

Ok, ok I know I stink at this. I think that my problem is that I put off blogging so much that it gets to be REALLY overwhelming when I think of catching up! So I'm thinking maybe a bulleted list will make the task feel a little less overwhelming. So here's an update, in no particular order:

• Life is good! We are super busy with everything, but overall happy.
• Biggest news: We are moving to Albuquerque for the summer! Mike got an awesome internship with Sandia National Labs! We'll be there from mid-May to July. Figuring out housing for just 10 weeks is not very fun... Plus our lease is up in our current apt in March so we need to decide how many times we want to move in the next 6 months. Ugh!
• Second biggest news: Mike got into the PhD program at ASU! Woohoo! He was a little stressed about this... He is really excited! This means we will definitely be in Arizona for approx. another 4 years from right now. Yay for blazing hot summers! At least we get a little bit of a break this summer, right? The usual high in ABQ is 92!!! Woot! Woot!
• Christmas was great! We spent tons of time being bounced around from family to family. We got to see almost every single family member that lives in Utah! Almost...we would have if it wouldn't have been for the stupid snow! A few of the highlights: meeting our new nephew Porter, going to Caleb's (Mike's oldest nephew) "farewell,"Anderson family reunion, talking to Justin (my brother on a mission in Chile) over Skype for over an hour, relaxing and not thinking about work for two weeks, and lots of yummy yummy mom-made dinners!
• We got a piano! This is so exciting for me, I don't even know how to convey the happiness! Piano is my thing, my outlet. So I was pretty thrilled when we found a good deal. We decided on a digital piano because of how not-permanent our life is right now. We actually bought it in Utah and crammed it into our car to bring it home. It was an adventure, but I have been so happy! I've played it every day since we got it! I love it!
• Teaching is going great. It's exhausting and I feel like never have the energy to do anything else with my life. But I'm working on finding a balance. I really enjoy having my own class and being able to find cool things to do with them. I get frustrated a lot, but I think that comes with the territory.
• School is good for Mike. He is super busy! His goal is to get his thesis done by mid-April. Yikes! To top it off he was called as the Elder's Quorum President back in October. We've seen a lot of blessings come from this and he's been doing awesome at balancing all that he has going on in his life.

That's all of the updates I can think of. I think another reason why I never update this blog is because our life isn't that exciting. But I'll try and get better. (I always say that.) Here's to hoping I update my blog before another 5 months passes by!