Christmas 2010

We had a wonderful Christmas. It was so nice to spend time with both families. It was also fun to spoil Spencer and see him experience his first Christmas. We sure love him!

Reading with Uncle Joel

Thanks Mom for such a cute outfit

Christmas Eve

Christmas morning

Christmas morning

Playing 'Bond' on the Wii

Christmas Day with Grandma Bingham

Oooh look at all my presents!

Day after Christmas... eating lunch with Dad. I love this face: "Dad, I want some..."

If you get near his mouth with food, he opens like a baby bird.

I'm sorry, but I think he's the most adorable baby ever.

Reading "Brown Bear" with Grandma Tina.

Herb garden update

Our little garden is thriving. We weren't sure if they were even going to survive, but I'm happy to say that we only killed one plant (cilantro) -- and he had a rough day on the wine tour, so I think he might have been dead previous to us even planting him.

The herb garden started out like this:

And now it looks like this:

It was hard to get a good angled picture, since some of them are growing like crazy, and they overshadow everything else. The one in the left forefront is a dill plant, and it's gotten quite tall. The ones in the back are tomato plants - and we really need to get a couple of cages for them since they're out of control. The one in the middle is a walla-walla onion plant, and then some herbs that you can kind of see (basil, oregano, sage). I'm amazed they're growing, and I'm excited to eat what we've grown. Now we just need to figure out how to harvest some of the plants, and we'll be good!

Spring... finally

While it's been spring-like temperatures for a couple of weeks now, it's only been in the last week that the vegetation has finally begun to spring to life. Seriously, through the end of April, most of the trees were still bare. Now pretty much everything has come to life and it's beautiful. I love the haze of green I see everywhere I drive.

Everyone always says they love the fall colors... and I include myself in that category... but I also love the spring colors! Green, obviously, but purples and pinks, too.

Our yard - in the forefront is some kind of white lilac type tree (I think) and it smells divine - and in the back are trees that flower with gorgeous white blossoms, before they eventually turn into just leaves.

NYCC campus - no idea what kind of tree it is, but it's beautiful and colorful.

Another tree on campus - again, no idea what it is - but I like it!

A view from my co-worker's office, overlooking our beautiful campus.

And we finally got around to planting the herbs we got from the wine tour. We planted them on the side of our house - in limited space. We're not sure how they're going to do, but hey - at least we tried!

I LOVE SPRING!!! And I'm so happy it's finally here!

Deluged

Well, it seems as if I got my wish... sort of. Our temps are at least out of the single digits, which is a definite improvement. We got a few days of temps in the 50's, but we got almost 2 inches of rain. Consequently, this is what our yard looks like:

Alas, we're in for more snow. Spring is not quite here yet... but at least it's not 5 degrees. At this point, I'll take what I can get.

Having nothing to do with the weather... I read a great book over the weekend. It's called The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester. Really, it's quite excellent. I would recommend you go out and get your hands on a copy. The storyline is great, very imaginative, and keeps you reading 'til the very end.

School work is ever on-going for Cory. There are 4 national tests that you have to pass in order to be licensed as a chiropractor. Cory has part 3 this weekend, so everyone keep your fingers crossed for him :)

Brrrrr

You know it's cold when the INSIDE of your door is frozen!

Believe me, I am sooo ready for spring!! Or at least temperatures out of the single digits...

SuperBowl "party"

A couple weeks ago, I (jokingly) asked Cory if he wanted to host a SuperBowl party. He said yes, so I asked him who he was planning to invite. His response? "You"

So here's a picture of our SuperBowl party - it was (as usual) just the 2 of us. We're always joking that we have no friends... which is only partly true. We have friends, they just don't live in New York. And our friends in New York don't share our views when it comes to alcohol ... so it's most often, just the 2 of us together. Not that I mind ... Cory is my favorite person to spend time with!


And what SuperBowl party is complete without some yummy food?


Right after the end of the first half, NBC showed some commercials that were 3D. Cory and I just so happen to own 3D glasses, so this is us, watching the commercials. We're hot, I know.


We were rooting for the Cardinals to win, so it was kind of a disappointing end. Oh well... at least the food was good :)

Some improvement...

Good news - we're still alive! We didn't crash driving home yesterday :) It got to be pretty scary looking outside, so the President dismissed everyone early and we all got to go home at 1:00! Half a snow day - I'll take it. Cory and I both left and got home safely, for which we were grateful. It's a good thing they closed school early, because by the afternoon, it looked like this:


You can see the snow coming down pretty heavy in the picture, if you look closely.

It was improved this morning. The roads were semi-clear (well, as clear as they ever get for out here). It's hard to tell, since the wind was blowing pretty strong last night, but we figure we got about 8-10 inches of new snow. We also got a little bit of freezing rain, right at the end of the storm. Lots of snow + freezing rain = super ice! It made clearing off my car this morning a nightmare. That aside, there is something very beautiful about freshly fallen snow, especially in the morning, with the sun rising. Everything feels beautiful and fresh. And it's oh-so-pretty.


Of course, they're saying we might be in for a Nor'easter next week, so my opinion about freshly fallen snow may change ... but for now, I'm just grateful we got mostly snow and not that much ice.

The weather outside is frightful...

As predicted, our winter storm has arrived. The weather guy said we would be getting anywhere from 8-12 inches ... and it's snowing pretty heavily currently. This is what we woke up to:

Nice, huh? The picture is taken from the same window as this picture from last week's post:


I know what you're thinking ... "um, is that the road? I can barely distinguish it from the surrounding fields..." Yes, I was thinking the same thing, too, as I drove into work this morning. Given that the bulk of our 8-12 inches are supposed to occur between the hours of 9am - 3pm (and it's now 9:30am), I'm going predict that the drive home is going to be even more fun than the drive to work was this morning ...

Stay posted ... I'll probably be adding more pics later today ...

Just the two of us

For 12 of the past 14 weeks, we have either:
(a) been out of town,
(b) had company in town,
(c) Cory's had weekend class or weekend seminars,
(d) a combination of b & c.

Yep, it's been an insane past few months. Our summer was crazy, with school and travel taking over ... and I naively thought that once summer was over, things could calm down a bit. It now seems that I was mistaken :) I'm not complaining though, since we promised ourselves (when we moved out east) that we would take full advantage of all the cool things to do and see out here. And boy, have we ever! We've also had some of our favorite people in town for a visit, which was really nice. We've got more stuff planned for this weekend, next weekend is Twilight (AAAAHH!) and then it's Thanksgiving. Sometimes it amazes me how quickly the time is going!

Anyways, this was our first weekend in more than 3 months where we could stay home and it be just the 2 of us. Cory had lots of homework to catch up on, tests to study for ... and I had to clean our house and watch college football (rough, I know :) Still, it was a nice weekend.

This was us, practically the whole weekend:

Yep, we pretty much spent the whole weekend on the couch. Cory got lots done and I watched some great ball games. Go Gators! And at the risk of offending all my BYU fans ... Go Utes! What an amazing finish over TCU! Now, I consider myself impartial when it comes to the whole BYU/U of U thing ... I went to Utah State, and loved my time there, since it was a perfect fit for me (though their football team leaves a lot to be desired). But I'm now cheering on the Utes, since I think they've got the best chance to bust the BCS (again) and show the rest of the the college football world that some of the non-BCS conferences (aka the Mountain West) can really play football!

When it rains, it pours

The sayings "when it rains, it pours" and "trouble comes in threes" seem both to be true - at least for us. First, our heater is on the fritz. Our landlords are working to get this fixed, and luckily, we've been having a week of Indian Summer, with temps in the 70's. It's been gorgeous - so no need for heat!

Second, our oven broke. We are fortunate to have awesome landlords, so they ordered us a new one and the installation guys took care of everything. It's a flattop one, so no more cleaning those yucky burner pans!
Third, our fridge/freezer decided to die. So we spent our Saturday night cleaning out all our food ...


Then moving the old one down the stairs, and the new one up the stairs ... yep, we have a spiral staircase, so this was no small feat ...


(This picture is for you, Mom)

You can't see it very well, but I have a deep cut right across the bridge of my nose. The perpetrator of this wound?


That's right, it's our cooler. As I was unloading the frozen goods out of the cooler and into our new freezer, the lid fell down and the edge of the lid caught me on the bridge of my nose. Yeah, I bled all down my face for a while (ewww!) It looks a lot better today (when the picture was taken) than it did Saturday night. I'm starting to get a little black and blue under my eyes, so I think I'm going to tell everyone that I was in a fist fight ...

Sigh ... I lost to a plastic cooler. Plastic! That's totally my luck ...

At least my Gators won! Go Gators!!

Home sweet home

A couple of people have asked me to put up some pictures of where we live. People (and this included me before we moved out here) don’t think of “New York” and “rural” in the same sentence. When I thought of corn and soy bean fields, New York was not the state that came to mind. Now my thinking has changed … we do live in the middle of corn fields and it is very rural. We live in the township of Seneca Falls - population 6,861 and in Seneca County – population 34,724. For comparison’s sake, the population of Farmington, Utah is 15,540 and the population of all of Davis County is 276,259. So … compared to what I am accustomed to, Seneca Country is quite small.

The area is known as the “Finger Lakes” region due to the abundance of lakes. We live next to Cayuga Lake, near the north end of the lake. Cayuga Lake is the longest of the finger lakes – just under 40 miles from tip to tip. You can drive down the entire length of the lake and end up in Ithaca – and it’s a gorgeous drive. We also enjoy being close to Seneca Lake, another big lake with gorgeous drives. It never ceases to amaze me how very BLUE the lakes are. Photos don’t really do them justice – they are a beautiful deep blue color that’s just amazing to look at.

Left to right: Seneca Lake, Cayuga Lake at night, and near Ithaca in the fall.

Our house was built sometime in the mid-1800’s and was used in the Underground Railroad. We are surrounded by corn fields – seriously. We have one neighbor and the then no one for a while. We don’t live in a subdivision, as it is out west. Our landlords own about 100 acres, and they rent the land out to Mennonite farmers, who work the land. It sounds so Pioneer times, huh? Many Mennonite and Amish people live around here (Mennonites are a branch of Amish people – they use electricity and drive cars but they still dress with the women in bonnets and dresses, and the men in trousers). It’s not uncommon to see Amish people plowing their fields by hand (no tractors for them!) or to see them in their horse-drawn buggies “driving” down the road. In many ways it feels like a simpler time out here.

Left to right: Downtown Seneca Falls, seen from the canal system that runs through town, Amish farmer working in the fields and Seneca Falls in the spring (see what I mean about rural?)

So yeah … that’s us. Sometimes I wish we lived somewhere that wasn’t so rural. For example, since we live in the middle of farmland, we are not close enough to any restaurants to have food delivered to us. The closest pizza place is Pizza Hut … but not close enough, because we live out of their delivery boundaries. We’re not close to a Chinese or Mexican place, either. This can be a good thing - we hardly spend any money on eating out – simply because there are no restaurants (fast food or otherwise) anywhere near us. I also wish that we lived closer to stores like Target and Wegmans (an awesome grocery store out here). There is truly nothing by us. BUT … it is quite simply a beautiful place to live in. The lakes are gorgeous and very calming. It’s quite green in the spring and summer, and the fall colors are fantastic. There’s so many hikes, waterfalls and spectacular scenery around for exploration. I like not having to fight with traffic (it takes me less than 10 minutes to get to work – from walking out my front door to being at my desk). I don’t miss the congestion and the inversion/smog of Utah – though occasionally it can be lonely on the country roads out here. All in all, it’s a great place to live. We don’t plan on staying here forever – we’ll be moving on when Cory finishes with school – but for now we are rather content with where we are. It’s beautiful out here!

Left to right: Overlooking Canandaigua Lake, overlooking Keuka Lake in the fall, and the campus of New York Chiropractic College (where Cory goes to school and I work). You can see Cayuga Lake in the background of the picture. The school sits on 286 acres, including a 9-hole golf course and the large pond you can see in the picture.

Now for some pictures of our house. Keep in mind that right now is not the prettiest season - it's still winter so everything is dead and spring has not yet come ... I promise to post some more pictures of the surrounding area as spring comes around.

From left to right: our place (we live on the 2nd floor of the home and someone else rents the bottom level), looking south of our house (we live right on the highway that runs the entire length of Cayuga Lake), looking east (towards the lake and the field that is normally all cornstalks), north of us (you can see our one neighbor), west of us (again normally all cornstalks), and the view from our bathroom window (you can see the lake in the distance).

And last but not least ... we attend church at the Peter Whitmer farm. It's where the Mormon Church was officially re-organized on April 6, 1830. These pictures are taken at the church.

From left to right: cornstalks (corn is everywhere! Really!), the cabin where the re-organization took place (hiding in the trees), and the church building.

A few more random pictures: rainstorm out here (I know it rains in Utah but out here it just pours! It's crazy!) and the campus of Cornell University down in Ithaca. It's a really old and beautiful campus - overlooking Cayuga Lake.

I can't believe that I am saying this ... but we really will miss it when we move! I'm glad we've got a bit longer to enjoy it all!