Thursday, August 12, 2010

NYC Birthmonth Celebration

To celebrate my roommate's birthday, we went on a weekend trip to New York. We have all been before, so we decided to treat ourselves a little and do some things we hadn't before. It was a great weekend, but it was BLAZING hot!

Friday we started off with a 4 1/2 hour bus ride, which went a lot faster than I thought it would. Once we got to the city, we dropped off our bags at our hotel and walked over to the United Nations Plaza.




Then we got all dolled up and headed to a fancy-schmancy restaurant for dinner. We weren't planning on it, but it turned out that we were in NYC during their Restaurant Week, so we got quite a deal!






After dinner we walked over to time square and caught a show! It was AMAZING!!







Saturday we decided to take it slow and just enjoy the city. We visited parts of Central Park that we hadn't yet been to, got birthday cupcakes, relaxed in our hotel a bit (to recover from the heat), and then went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant and enjoyed the city at night.











Sunday we went to church in the city and then caught the bus back home. Let's just say we were totally beat by the time we got home!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Last Few Months of Freedom

Starting at the end of August, I will essentially have no life out side of the University. I work there, I will be going to school there, maybe I will just set up a cot under my desk and sleep there too. With this fact looming at the back of my mind, I have been trying to enjoy my summer and my last few months of freedom. Having amazing and amazingly fun roommates and friends has made this task a lot easier!

We started off with a birthday bash for one of my roommates, where we packed our house full of friends and ate pazookies: not-quite-all-the-way-baked chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, topped with vanilla ice cream. YUM!




There have been a lot of really crazy rain storms this summer, so we went for a walk in the rain and took advantage of our complex's badly functioning drainage system and played in the huge puddle that formed in the courtyard.


For my other roommate's birthday, we took a trip to NYC (this one gets its own post), had party, and generally took every chance to celebrate. She had a birthmonth rather than a birthday. I gave her the Wii Fit Plus game for her birthday and we have enjoyed making fools of ourselves. Here is the birthday girl trying out her new toy:




In late July my good friend/pseudo-sister from college came to visit me with her 3 adorable kids!! It was fun to get to show them around DC and to see what a complete Supermom she is! The only downside to the trip was that that weekend was the National Boy Scout Jamboree in DC, so the city was overrun by a swarm of tan and olive green. We took the kids to the FDR memorial and my friend was explaining to the boys that they needed to be quiet and not run around. She told them "we need to be reverent here because this is a place where we are remembering President Roosevelt who was a good man." Her son replied, "oh, you mean like Jesus?" "Well, not quite THAT good..." she said.


A trip to the beach is a MUST for a summer of fun, so at the end of July we headed out on a day trip to Bethany Beach, Delaware. It took me over an hour to find parking, but the warm sun and cool ocean water were totally worth it. I am still pasty white, but not quite as pasty as I was before. On our way home we stopped by the Delaware State Fair. Fried foods and adorable baby animals rounded out the trip nicely.



Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Deutschland Wird Weltmeister!

These past few weeks I have been learning a lot about faith... by means of the world cup. You know the drill, you hope for something, you act in faith upon that hope, and then you eventually receive a witness that the thing you had faith in was true. Tonight I took a BIG leap of faith.

In case it is not readily apparent, I heart all things Deutsch and am rooting for the German team. My roommate served her mission in Spain and hearts all things Es(th)pania (Disclaimer: I do not apologize for butchering the Spanish language). The tournament has now progressed to the point where Germany and Spain will be facing off in an epic battle of speed, agility, skill, and hopefully shirtlessness, thus placing my roommate and me at odds and irreparably damaging our relationship. I hope that Germany will win. I trust in their ability to do so. So I took the leap of faith, acting on that hope, and placed the following posters on my roommate's bedroom door.


For those of you who don't speak German, the posters say: "I Love Germany!", "Goal!", and "Germany will win the World Cup!!" For those of you who do speak German, I translate "Deutschland wird Weltmeister!" as "Germany will win the World Cup" and not "Germany will be the World Masters!" for obvious reasons.

When we take a leap of faith such as this one, we know there will be trials and opposition. In my case, upon discovering my posters, my roommate chased me down into my room, shot at me repeatedly with a spray bottle, and shoved me brutally, pushing me down the stair(s). I have pictures as evidence for the pending trial. She has gone to bed and the persecution has subsided for the moment. Now I must patiently wait for a witness of my faith, namely, to see Germany trounce Spain in the match tomorrow!!!

The face of someone who has been told the truth and finds it to be hard... and we know why that is.

Neener!!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Ghetto Garden - Week 4

Kids, they grow up so fast!! I was just looking at my last post and I can't believe how much my garden has grown in the last month! It has been really hot here, so I have had to water every morning, which I kind of like, because it makes me even more invested. I am also investing myself monetarily - I have since purchased 2 Topsy-turvey planters for my tomatoes and made a rope trellis for my cucumber. Here are some pictures:

Green Beans


The basil smells so good! You just have to bend
down a little and the air smells like it!


Tomatoes in a Topsy-turvey planter


Serrano Peppers


On the left are two summer squash plants and on the right is
zucchini and cucumber, which is growing up the trellis that I made!



So I planted my little garden on our back balcony, but then I had left over seedlings, so I made some space for them in the planter in front of our town house where the landlord maintains decorative plants. Some of them are really thriving and some are taking a little longer because they don't get as much sun, but they are coming along too. All together we have 3 summer squash, 4 cucumber, 2 zucchini, 2 tomatoes, 4 green beans, 3 basil, and 3 Serrano peppers. :)



My roomie planted this one... we actually were planting sunflowers,
but somehow ended up with a cucumber!




Totally ghetto - cucumbers next to the air conditioner...
I hope it won't hurt them... :)

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Mother Earth

I know I haven't blogged in a very long time. I apologize to those of you who I know sit by your computers each night constantly checking to see if I have written anything, only to be deeply disappointed. I am truly sorry and will try to blog more often so that you can hang off every word that I type.

While you all are obsessively checking my blog, I have been obsessively checking up on my garden. That's right - garden. "But, Jenny," you say, "you have no yard. How can you have a garden?" Well, I have a GHETTO garden. We had a Relief Society activity in March where we planted seeds in any type of container you could find in the recycling or trash bin. These have been sitting on my balcony growing, and now I am transplanting them into large Rubbermaid storage bins with holes drilled into the bottom for drainage. (Yes, I went to Lowe's and bought myself a power drill - I have been causing mischief ever since.) I am also going to purchase two of those Topsy -Turvey planters for my tomatoes and hang them on my balcony.

I am seriously so amazed at how fast these things grow! My poor roommates are forced to go out on to the balcony with me at least once a day to ooh and ahh over my plants. I myself am out there every few hours looking to see how much they have grown and if they need any water or more sunlight or anything. I think as they get bigger, I will stop worrying about them so much. It's kinda like kids - when they are babies you have to be caring for them constantly, then they go to school and you don't see them all day, then they are teenagers and you see them even less, and then they go off to college and do their own thing and you just get phone calls and a visit at Christmas. As far as my garden is concerned, most of the seeds are in toddler stage, my zucchini and cucumbers are starting elementary school, and my summer squash is about to enter junior high - seriously, it is really awkward looking and has zits.

The seeds that have sprouted but that I didn't plant in my bins have been planted in the flower bed in front of our house, which doesn't get very much sunlight, but I figured that it would be better to try to plant them than to just throw the seedlings away. If they grow and I have extra produce, I can just give it away to people.

So here are some pictures and I will post more as the summer goes along, because I am sure you will all want to keep a close eye on the progress of my garden!



This is a green bean sprout after 1 week, planted in a paper cup.
Sorry the picture is so blurry, they don't hold still for very long.



These are tomatoes, planted in a juice container with the top cut off.


These are a variety of flowers planted in an ice cream bucket. I actually don't remember which kind I planted, so we will have to wait until they bloom to find out.



This is my herb garden in the bottom of a strawberry container.
I have chives (which are looking pretty scraggly right now), basil, and oregano.


These have already gotten big enough to be transplanted. On the left is zucchini and on
the right is cucumber. The website I read said that zucchini tends to cross breed
with other plants, so maybe I will end up with a zucchumber!



These are my summer squash. They are my eldest,
and, I'm not gonna lie, my favorite "child".

Thursday, February 11, 2010

White House Tour

I have lived in DC now for 2 1/2 years and have given several early morning rides into the district so that friends and family could go on tours of the White House. I, however, had never been. So when my friend Melissa decided to arrange a group tour I jumped all over the opportunity. Just as we arrived at the White House, it started to snow, which added to the awesomeness of the tour in general. You can't take a camera with you or take pictures inside, so all I have are some outdoor shots I took with my Blackberry, but they are still pretty good!!






Thursday, January 28, 2010

Shout Out

So, my good friend Karrie wrote a very flattering blog post about me and I thought it would provide those of you who haven't known me quite as long with a nice bit of background. Or maybe I am just a narcissist. Either way, you should check it out.

http://andynkarrie.blogspot.com/2010/01/jenny-marie.html


Karrie and her family "adopted" me while I was at college and have always been so wonderful to me. Janna cut my hair, Brenda set me up on hot dates, Shellie inspired me to go on a mission, Jake fixed my car all the time, and Bethany, Katie, Malea, and Andrea adored me. I always knew I was always welcome in their home and spent many wonderful weekends eating real food (as opposed to college food), shooting guns, and generally getting my farm girl on. I am sure that nearly all of my wonderful Utah memories involve them. I had to thank them somehow, so I got Karrie and Andy together. (They are still deciding whether to thank me or kick me out of the family for that one)

Since I don't get to see them very much any more, they are so good to keep me updated on their lives and send me pictures of their adorable kids, which I enshrine over my desk.


THANK YOU Kenison family for all you have done for me! I love you all!!