Anniversary and Other Fantastic Times

So, though Megan and I celebrated our second anniversary of our marriage last month on the 18th, we're just getting around to posting about it right now. I think a month later is making progress though…we used to take at least four months to blog about something after it happened.

For our anniversary, since we're dirt poor and were, at the time, jobless, we decided to keep things on the DL. We spent the day doing exactly what we wanted, which was to say, not much of anything in particular! We enjoyed a picnic in Central Park, a free performance of Much Ado About Nothing at Battery Park, and then took the (free) ferry to Staten Island because we heard there were some great views. All in all, a great day. Super relaxing and slow-paced. Just the way we like it.

My sisters, Sarai and Riley, came to visit us shortly after for a couple of weeks. It was so much fun! They are a blast and we all had some good times: munched on some corn, had some pizza, and ate lots of cereal. We miss you guys already! Come back to us!

Also, since our last post, a major development: we both got jobs! But since it's a little embarrassing to mention where exactly we are working, we'll just drop a hint now and work our way up to it. Here's a hint: brown sugar cinnamon.

Until next post!

Rhode Island

My Aunt Rosemary called me a couple weeks ago and invited me out to Newport, RI. She, Uncle Doug and Aunt Marti were spending a week there touring all the Mansions. These mansions (or summer cottages as the were referred to by their former owners) were incredible! Here are some pictures of them. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take any pictures of the interiors, so these will have to do.



First, Chatteau-sur-Mer (Chatteau by the sea). This French villa was built in 1852 for William Shepard Wetmore, one of the few who used his mansion in Newport year-round.




This amazing tree is in the front yard. It is a Weeping Beech, my favorite. Houston proposed to me under one of these. How romantic.




In this picture you can see where one of the branches forms a circle. These trees do all kinds of crazy things. Check one out if you ever get the chance, they are incredible.




Next, Marble House. "Summer Cottage" of William and Alva Vanderbilt. The couple only spent 3 short summers here! This place cost $11 million to build, $7 million of that was spent on 500,000 cubic feet of marble!

Alva Vanderbuilt just happens to be the woman who started the Women's Suffrage movement. Any of you that can remember the scene from Mary Poppins where Mrs. Banks is marching around the house singing "Votes for Women!", you have this woman to thank for it. We were fortunate enough to have Uncle Doug grace us with a daily performance of this song. It was wonderful waking up to him singing, "Though we adore men individually, we believe that as a group they're rather stupid..."




Finally, The Breakers. This Mansion was by far my favorite. The grandest and most beautiful of them all. This was a summer home to Cornelius Vanderbuilt II. This place is 65,000 sq. feet, has 70 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms and if someone were to build this sucker today, it would set them back approximately $150 million!




This is the children's "play house", it is adorable and complete with a full kitchen. I wouldn't mind living here myself.




We also did a beautiful sunset cruise.




Here is all of us steering the yacht.




And the sunset.




I couldn't leave this out of my post. This lovely shower curtain was definitely the highlight of our suite. Rosemary and I were lucky enough to get the room with this bathroom. Needless to say, Doug and Marti were very jealous.

I had such a great weekend with Rosemary, Doug and Marti. Thank you so much for inviting me out there! It was magical and I loved every minute! And thank you to my wonderful husband who let me go have a vacation, while he spent a lonely weekend in the city. You guys are the best!

Hark, a Post!

What's this? An actual blog post from Megan and Houston? Could it be true?

It is true! We are posting once again! And for how long, who can say? Once or twice before we fall off the grid again? Maybe! But for now, you may relish in the fact that we are actually adding some real, substantial content.

NYC! We're actually here and we actually have an apartment. And what's more, it's not completely infested with cockroaches! It's actually a very nice place, and a bit more spacious than we were anticipating—but to put that into context, we were anticipating a 200 sq. ft. studio apartment with no windows and a shared bathroom. Well, not quite that bad, but we were anticipating less than what we got.

So here are some pictures to commemorate the occasion. Not the best photography in the world, but we kind of forgot to take pictures during the day, so the light wasn't great. Anyway, you get the picture. This is what our place is like.

We spend most of our days looking for jobs online, getting to know the neighborhood, looking for jobs, finding great deals for furniture on craigslist, looking for jobs, various errands, and looking for jobs. Oh, and we catch the occasional world cup game online, too (go USA!).

We're living very far north on Manhattan Island, in a place called Fort Washington, but since most don't know the place, we tell them we live in Inwood…or Washington Heights. See, we live right in between both, so we can tell people either. If we want to sound a little "financially secure", we say Inwood. If people are talking about the new smash-hit musical, The Heights, we tell them we live in Washington Heights—the neighborhood the musical is based on—so we can sound really hip.

For everyone else who doesn't live in New York, we just tell them we live in The Big Apple, and we think we sound pretty awesome.

Though we're having a great time here, we miss you all a whole lot and want all of you to come out to visit us sometime soon. Not all at once, because we wouldn't be able to fit you, but one or two at a time would be awesome. And if you do all decide to come together, I'm sure you'll fit in great on the curb outside our apartment building, along with the ferrel cats and the blaring Dominican pop music from the pimped-out cars screaming down our narrow street.

Sou da Bahia Paintings

Hey everyone,

A lot of you have been asking us to put up our paintings from our recent exhibit. Well here they are! Just click on this link to see Megan's and my paintings. Hurray!

BFA Final Project

A lot of people have been asking us when we're going to finish our final project for school. Well friends and family, the time has come! We've posted a link here on our blog to our project blog called Sou da Bahia. The project will start on Sept 17th and will stay up until September 29th. We hope you can all go see it! The opening reception is on Friday, September 18th from 7:30–9:30 pm. If you don't really care about the exhibit, at least come for the snacks.

One Year

Can you believe it? It's already been one year since we've been married! It's been so wonderful and we've had tons of adventures. But right now, it's breakfast time and Nibs is scratching at the computer screen as I type, trying to catch the letters.

More later...

¡España!

Megan and I just got back from a week in Spain and New York City. It was incredible! We traveled in the southern region of Spain, called Andalusia, to cities like Granada, Cordoba, and Seville. They were absolutely amazing! The weather was great, the food was splendid, and the sights were out of this world. We also got to see our friend, Brad Holland, in NYC, eat at our favorite restaurants, and visit some fantastic museums. It was an unforgettable experience that we were so happy to share together.

We learned a few things on our travels:

1. Always schedule more time than you think you need! We thought we had everything planned out nicely, but in the end, we ran from one awesome thing to the next, just trying to cram it all in. We saw tons of amazing things, but wish we could have stayed longer!

2. Do your research! We made a few purchases and plans based on rumors and faulty intuition. It ended up costing us time and money, both of which were in short supply. Luckily, we were able to avert some potential disasters by doing some last minute internet searches and talking with locals or experienced travelers. Don't skip out on the tourist books and maps: they may seem tacky or whatever, but they really are invaluable!

3. Wear comfy shoes. This sounds obvious, but when we say comfy, we mean really comfy. What we thought was suitable footwear turned out to be insufficient for the surprising distances we ended up walking. In the end, despite Megan's fastidious standards in fashion, even she contemplated the infamously ugly—but equally comfortable—Crocs for her next traveling shoe.

Now we're back in Provo and settled in (hopefully) for the spring and summer months. We have a lot of work to do to get our BFA final project ready by September, so we'll have plenty to do here! Boredom is never an issue for the Truebloods! Except maybe on airplanes....