GREG AND LARA: July 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

New York, New York!

Greg and I were able to spend a 3-day weekend in New York. I don't really recommend going in July unless you like baking at 96 degrees in the city. Still, we got some City Passes (which were totally worth the money) and had a great time.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

I met Johnny Depp...the wax figure. It was still pretty cool.

And I got to conduct with Leonard Bernstein.

And I can almost touch the elbow of this very famous basketball player whose name I do not know.

Top of Rockefeller Plaza - New York at midnight

Pondering the night life in Times Square from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum

We didn't even have to pay to see this show on the street!

The Statue of Liberty, of course.

We rented bikes and rode them along the Hudson River, and then over into Central Park. I won't mention how we were so tired by the time we got to Central Park that we only biked for about 5 minutes before leaving.

My Guided Tour backstage pass for the Lincoln Center Tour. And yes, my hair does look terrible, but what do you expect when you're sweating like a pig all day?

The Avery Fisher Hall where the NY Philharmonic plays.

In the far distance you can see the marquis for "Chicago", the musical we saw on Saturday night. A little raunchy, a little scandalous, and definitely immoral, but I loved it! Greg's official opinion was a "shrug".

My great aunt Lorrie lives in Brooklyn, and luckily she let us stay with her. Thank you for being a wonderful host, Aunt Lorrie!

I love how creative the New Yorkers are. A playground on top of my house...why didn't I think of that?

The Brooklyn Bridge, just a short walk from my aunt's condo.

What do you do in the summertime?

Greg and I weren't able to go on a cruise this summer. So quite conveniently for us, my student/friend got married in St. Simon's Island two weeks ago, and we were able to spend the weekend on the GA Coast. It was a little shorter than a cruise, but just as fun!

We spent the afternoon on Jekyll Island at the beach. There was an incredible amount of mud on the surface of the ocean floor, which Greg loved.

Kissy, kissy! A few kids were scared of Greg and called him the creature from the Black Lagoon. I wasn't too scared. :)

Greg hiding under the umbrella NOT getting a tan.

Our wonderful hosts in Brunswick, GA. I have known Amelia and Joel since high school as they were in the neighboring town in KS and in our stake. Rock band rules, and so do you guys!

Amanda's wedding

The beautiful bride and her husband

She got married at St Simons Lighthouse. It was incredibly hot, but very beautiful!

The day we got home from St. Simons we had the Rennicks come visit us! We were pleased to discover they have a perfect daughter, Aloysia. She made parenting seem like a breeze.

Of course we had to do some grocery shopping in the golfcart.

And make reeds with power tools. Greg has tried to revolutionize my reedmaking since we began dating, but I'm old-fashioned. Elizabeth, however, is a lot more experimental and couldn't have been happier when Greg pulled out his dremel tool.

Elizabeth "revolutionizing" her reed.

This is truly revolutionary with all these notches in the back. Surprisingly, it played well. Maybe Greg and Elizabeth have a future in reed tools afterall?

Babies and power tools...always a good idea.

While they were here, a deer ran into our backyard. We have many things living in our backyard, but this was my first time seeing a deer. Do you see it next to the blue angel statue in the center?

Playing Harry Potter Clue.

Greg and Jacob boxing it out on the Wii.

Elizabeth was here on her birthday, so we had a big celebration.

And I tried a new Brownie Supreme recipe. This has a brownie layer on the bottom, an entire layer of Symphony bars (3 1/2 giant bars to be exact) in the middle, another layer of brownies on the top, and last of all chocolate chip cookie dough to top it all off (about to spread on in this picture).

The end result? Heaven, my friends.

Friday, July 9, 2010

4th of July and other Celebrations

This 4th of July we stayed in Peachtree City and invited Greg's sister Beth, her husband Jay, and their two girls Kaitlyn and Natalie to join us. We'd heard great things about PTC's patriotic celebration, and we were not disappointed.

Here's the group on "Obama". You can see we joined the rest of the city in decorating our golf cart with American flags. While Natalie thoroughly enjoyed the ride, poor Kaitlyn had a stomach bug and threw up all the way to the parade.

Here is PTC in their pimped-out golfcarts lined up for the parade.

This "float" won a prize for best decorated golfcart.

And this one did as well.

Sitting on the sidelines watching the parade. Poor Kaitlyn!

Golfcarts lined up for the fireworks in the evening

To celebrate my music geekiness, I went to the International Double Reed Society Conference in Norman, OK the week before the 4th. Imagine a Star Trek convention, and replace the trekkies with oboists and bassoonists and you get the idea. This is my great friend Rebecca who I went to ASU with years ago.

To celebrate Father's Day, Greg and I hiked Blood Mountain, GA's highest mountain and the beginning of the Appalachian Trail. This is on the ascent up.

Beautiful view, but not quite at the top yet...

Eating our picnic lunch at the summit.

To celebrate Greg's 4th of July VACATION DAY, we went south to Warm Springs, GA, home of FDR's Little White House. FDR was attracted to this town because he found great relief from his polio in the warm springs, and he built a second presidential home here. It was in this Little White House that he suffered the stroke that killed him.

And we went hiking through FDR National Park. Check out the size of this tree!

Cascade Falls

So happy together!