The Sweeney's Have Left the Building

About two years ago Mitch and I found ourselves with new neighbors below us who happened to be in our ward. We didn't know it until they told us with a note on Mitch's Jeep. It read something like this "Hey are you LDS? We saw your Utah State license plate and figured you might be. We live in apt... come and stop by!" Now, I am prefacing here because it WAS two years ago so I obviously don't remember it word for word. Their note was followed by months of Mitch urging me to go downstairs when I had time to make us some new friends, because he was crazy busy and I was still having a hard time making friends in our new home. I am not sure exactly when or what started our friendship off, but I know once we finally hung out it was an easy friendship! Mitch and Ryan hit it off pretty quickly with their common love for sports and Caitlin and I had an easy time talking about pretty much anything from the start. After our friendship was established we had many nights together full of our favorite games(Ticket to Ride and Dominion pretty much dominated our game-time), afternoons by the pool, and nights at baseball games. Eventually we started carpooling to church together and then when they got their cute puppy Ryno we would puppy-sit for them.

Then when we got our Lucy dog, the two pups were fast friends and they would have her over to play for hours at a time. We really have been so blessed to have them move in right next to us. I think we both provided each other a much needed close relationship after moving across the country away from family and friends. Alright so I have obviously touched on the fact that we are close friends, now to tie in the sad title. Last week our lovelies, Ryan and Caitlin, moved away :(. Ryan is finishing his PT degree at Duke with his clinicals in Arizona, Nebraska and then their last 3 months will be back here in NC. We helped them move and it was a sad day for our little family. We went to our favorite bbq place for dinner and then helped them finish up their packing until late that night.

Lucy still runs to their door every time we go downstairs and today when the cleaners were repainting their old apartment with the door open, Lucy of course ran right in looking for Ryno. We are obviously still recovering from the break-up. Luckily, our other Bff's, Logan and Christine Christensen, moved in across the parking lot just before the Sweeney's left. We really are so lucky to have not one but three other families in our ward in our apartment complex. With the Bonds right below us and the Christensens across the parking lot I have running and pool buddies all the time! Not to mention a date every Monday to watch The Bachelorette with me (Thanks Christine!). It will be a sad day when we find out where all of our friends are headed for residency in a year. The ideal would be if we all went to the same place :) A girl can dream right?

Summer Thus Far

Alright, I am going to do a combo of the rest of my catch up for the summer. We seriously have had a very busy summer and I have loved every minute. I can't believe it is already July... it is going by way too fast. The day after we went to Chicago, we picked up the newest addition to our family. Meet Lucy everyone! She is a Mini Schnauzer and is absolutely adorable. She was the first dog I made Mitch finally meet in person and she fooled us by acting all calm and mellow... little did we know she has the biggest personality I have ever seen in such a small body. We love her to death and potty training this pup has been an experience.

Two days after we took Lucy home (who was 9 weeks old at the time), we went on a beach trip with some friends of ours. We spent the night at a dog friendly hotel right on the beach, boogie boarded all day, fished, introduced Lucy to the ocean, and played with the little babies of our friends. It was a great trip overall.

About four days after the beach trip Mitch headed back to Chicago for another conference. About 5 hours after he got home, at 11:30pm, we went to the Greyhound station in Raleigh and boarded a bus headed to Richmond, Virginia, where we switched buses and eventually arrived in DC at 6:30am. Now, Mitch had to do some serious convincing for me to do this, but I will say it was worth it. Maybe :). Mitch's uncle was there with his cute family and we got to spend the day with them, literally running from one monument/museum, to the other. We saw the Capitol, Arlington Cemetery, Museum of Natural History, Aerospace Museum, The House of Archives, the Lincoln Monument and the White House. It really was so great seeing Mitch's family and it being my first real experience of DC, I was pretty pleased. The ride home on the bus I was not so pleased with. It was 12:30am when our bus left DC, we had another layover in Richmond and then got back to Raleigh at 6:30, getting us back to our house at 7:00. Then of course I worked from 8:30-6:30 or so... let's just say I was pretty grumpy. But hey, worth it. Right?

A week or so after our DC trip I went to Utah for my good friend, Simone's, wedding. I met Simone on our high school dance team and I absolutely love her to death. Simone is one of the sweetest, most honest, and genuine people I know and I am so blessed to have her in my life. We danced up at Utah State together and were roommates while there. She was baptized into the Mormon church during her year at Utah State and I feel so lucky to have seen her conversion. She is the only member in her family so she showed her strength when she was married in the LDS Temple with only a handful of friends to see it. Her family has been so amazingly accepting of her joining the LDS Church, they are truly an incredible family. The day before the wedding I was able to go to the Temple with my parents and do some temple work for my Great Grandmother who passed away about 3 years ago. It was a very special experience. It was a great weekend with friends and family.(I'll post photos later... only downloaded them on my parent's laptop. Oops.). About a week after my first trip to Utah for the year, Mitch and I went on our second beach trip with another group of friends for Independence Day. Mitch spent quite a bit of time looking for a beach that was not crazy crowded for the Fourth, and he seriously found us the perfect spot. We went to Cape Lookout, NC which is a small, secluded island off of the East Coast. This tiny strip of island is a national beach and it's only inhabitants were a few cabin stayers, and some rangers. It was perfect. We took a ferry to the island so we didn't have our car, and stayed in a cabin right on the beach. After spending our first day boogie boarding and fishing, we spent the night playing card games with our friends. Mitch and I woke up early the next day and tried shore fishing again, then had our last round of boogie boarding and hopped on the ferry to take us back to the mainland. It really was a blast, and with our good friends the Sweeney's moving so soon, it was our last big hoorah with them.

Our summer has been amazing and we have not wasted any time! In a few weeks I will be headed to see another beautiful friends' wedding in Utah and then will take one final trip out west with Mitch to get him set up for his away rotation at The University of Utah. I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer as well!

Summer Update #1: Chicago

Alright, this summer is flying by way too fast. Things have been fun and crazy busy, leaving me no time for pretty much everything important, such as cooking, or cleaning... or showering? No but really we have already had many adventures this summer! I will start with Chicago. Mitch had two conferences there this summer and we decided I should come to one of them so we could enjoy ourselves a bit there! We got there around 10am and it took us, oh... 3 hours to make it to our hotel!? We tromped around the city on buses, subways and streets with our backpacks, and suitcases. It was quite the start to our trip! By the time we made it to our hotel overlooking the lake, we were beat and took a small nap.

Our first night was spent at Navy Pier. I finally got to ride that beautiful Ferris wheel to view the skyline, and we went to an amazing cirque show.

The next day, Mitch went to the conference to present his research while I slept in, ate delicious waffles by myself and layed out by the pool. When he got back we made our way into the city and walked around Millennium Park and ate delicious Giordano's pizza. It was still early after all of this so we decided to check out Chinatown. There I found a surprise box for $1 and we felt a little out of place. Once is enough for that...

Our last day we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo. This may have been my favorite part, I was absolutely amazed at how nice this free zoo was! We visited the gorillas and polar bears, who both put on quite a show. My favorite animal was the wild African dogs. I had never seen them before and they are pretty amazing looking! Sadly I didn't get a picture of those, so I stole one from the web. Now you can all agree they are pretty much the coolest. After the zoo I talked Mitch into going to H&M with me, where we spent way too much time and saw a whole bunch of interesting people :). We then headed to the airport, which again had us going across the city on subways and buses with our suitcases and attempting to stay out of people's way. By the time we made it to the airport, we were barely on time to make our flight, and then... we find out we were at the wrong airport. Yes. We flew into O'hare, and apparently were supposed to fly out of Midway. Oops! Luckily the nice people at O'hare put us on a flight of theirs for a small sum. We then made it safely home from there!