Last summer my family planned a big trip up to South Lake Tahoe for the fourth of July. My dad was actually down in the bay area for a couple days and I was lucky enough to hitch a ride with him back up to my parents house a couple days early. My brother and his family decided to come out early and make the most of their trip. So I got a little extra time in with the niece and nephew. I watched a lot of word world with my nephew that week...

Since Jon still had to finish up his week at work he stayed behind and picked my brother and Aunt up at the airport on his way up to Tahoe. Jon's a real sport and kinda gets the short end of the stick sometimes but he said he really enjoyed the car ride once Cody got their. Rumor has it that they just talked techy stuff the whole time... I'm sure my aunt just loved it. Personally I would have slept.

My cousin and his family were able to make it up for a couple of days. So the house was definitely packed. While they were there we went and did the hike down to emerald bay. It was pretty crowded but it was still worth it. Tahoe is just so pretty! Random side note. While we were there we saw this chick husk a piece of corn and then just eat it raw. So random...

One of the highlights of the trip for me was hitting up the Adidas outlet. We got three pairs of shoes for $75! That's the price for one pair normally. No, but really probably the most exciting part of the trip was the fireworks. Tahoe is known for their fireworks show and it's for good reason. They launch the fireworks right over the water and you can take your boat out on the lake and watch the fireworks. Since my parents had brought their boat up we decided to be brave and go out. It was crazy!!! We were right underneath the fireworks so one firework would fill up your entire field of view. It was a great show and totally worth it. Although, the drive back is another story. My parents boat is on the smaller side and doesn't have great lights. Lets just say the drive back to the house got a little scary. Since there were so many boats out on the lake it was really choppy and the waves were huge. Jon and I sat in the front so we got pretty wet and I feared for my life a couple times but we made it back alive. It was a really great trip and something we'll talk about for years to come.

After the trip up to Tahoe my brother Dave and his wife Jenni left their kids with Grandma and Grandpa and they came down to visit Jon and I in Mountain View. Dave is also a computer guy so him and Jon get a long pretty well and have a lot to talk about. While they were here we took them around Google, went to the mall, and had dinner (and they went to Great America). I really appreciated them taking the time out to come visit us. Since we live in two different states we don't get to see each other a lot. I really look up to my brother Dave so it always means a lot when I get to spend a little extra time with him.

Last Summer we also were lucky enough to have a visit from our two good friends Joe Shurtleff and Ryan Novak. They stopped by on their way to southern California for a concert. It was a lot of fun and we were really happy to spend a little time with them. While they were here we made a trip to Google so they could see what Google's all about. During our visit to Google Ryan coined the phrase "Google is like Willy Wonka for engineers." After spending the last two summers here I've learn that there is so much truth to that statement. Google really does try and go out of their way to make sure their employees are happy.

Google offers a lot of really great benefits for their employees so it was pretty fun to show them off to Ryan and Joe. Something that I thought was absolutely silly was they have bikes painted with the Google colors for the employees to ride when they need to go to a different building. Just kinda a silly thing to see and sounds a little ridiculous I'm sure but Google in Mountain View is a huge facility and covers a lot of land so they definitely some in handy.

After we were done at Google we went back to the hotel while Jon finished up his work day. When Jon got home we went out to dinner and continued the catching up. Joe is probably Jon and I's best friend and he's always been someone that we spend a lot of time with when we're back in Utah. So you can imagine we had a lot to catch up after not seeing him for 2 months. We stayed up until the wee hours of the night just having a good time and sharing stories.

A couple weeks after Jon started his internship Jon's older brother Devan got married in the Nauvoo Temple. I felt extremely grateful when Devan's wife Nicole offered to let me go through the temple with her the week before the wedding. I was thrilled but as I began to think of the logistics of it all I was worried that I wouldn't be able to make it. As usual, I called my mom to just try and talk it out since I'd have to go alone. After I explained my situation my mom who was in the middle of teaching church history in seminary offered to go out with me and make a mini church history tour of it. I'll be honest I was pretty excited.

So I'll just give a quick run down of the events of the week. The closest airport is the St. Louis airport so we flew into St. Louis on Friday night and then drive to Nauvoo Saturday morning. The drive was absolutely beautiful. It was just so lush and green at that time like my mom said after seeing it you understand why they settled there and named it Nauvoo (Hebrew for "to be beautiful"). We were scheduled for the last session in the temple that night so after the drive we only had a couple minutes to sight see before we had to get to the temple. The Nauvoo temple is BEAUTIFUL!!! I was so taken back by the pure beauty of it all. If there's one temple I'd suggest traveling to that would definitely be one of them. It was a really great experience to be able to be with Nicole as we took her endowments out. Several people commented to me that she has a very special spirit and I can atest to that. She is a great girl and we're happy to have her as part of the family.

Since everything closes fairly early in Nauvoo we had to get started on the sight seeing the next day (Sunday). The church has done a really great job of maintaining and restoring Nauvoo. You're able to walk around the town and go into various buildings and get a little tour of the home or store from the missionaries that are there. I really enjoyed when the missionaries would go "off script" and just talk to us. I was really impressed by the testimony of one sister missionary in Brigham Young's house. It really just helped to build up the spirit that exists in Nauvoo and testifies of the truthfulness of the gospel.

While in Nauvoo we made the short trek up to Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith was killed. For me it was one of those experiences that you don't fully get where you are or whats going on until it's almost over. At the end of the tour you're taken into the room that Joseph was held in. While in the room they pay an audio recording which includes a man signing Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief (which Joseph asked to be sung to him just prior to his death). At that point you can't really help but be overcome by the spirit. For me probably one of the best parts of this little church history tour was to just hear my mother's knowledge of and testimony of the gospel. I'd never really talked about the gospel with her much. It was just so awesome to see her as the spiritual powerhouse she's become through teaching seminary.

On Monday after finishing up at Nauvoo we drove to Independence, Missouri. Along the way we made a stop for the night in a town next to an Amish Community. There were some cute stores and they had an auction that was fun to see. It was really fun to see the really little kids riding around in wagons and dressed in the typical Amish get up. Tuesday we continued toward independence but also made a pit stop in Adam-ondi-ahman. At some point we made a stop in at a book store that had a replica of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith's death mask. It was really interesting to see.

In Independence we were able to go to Liberty Jail and go to the Community of Christ Temple. Liberty Jail was interesting to see and since I know nothing about church history it really helped me out. The Community of Christ Temple was really interesting. It's really amusing to see how much their beliefs and teachings have deviated from that of the LDS church. It's quite the building that's for sure... We also made a drive by of the Missouri temple on our way out of town. It wasn't open yet but the exterior was almost entirely finished so it was still worth seeing.

On Wednesday after we finished up in Missouri we made our way back to St. Louis to spend the night before my mom left. On Thursday morning we had a couple hours to kill so we went and saw the St. Louis arch. My mom and I are both pretty afraid of heights but somehow my mom was courage and talked me into going up into the arch. Lets just say I have a little bit of an anxiety problem and I chickened out at the last minute... It was embarrassing I know but hey I was freaking out. My mom said it was cool though and worth it so if you have the opportunity you should do it... Just not me. Haha.

For some unknown reason we decided to get to the airport early for my mom... It was a total blessing that we did because without her knowledge she had been bumped to an earlier flight and made it just in time. After waiting at the airport for a couple hours Jon and his family made it into St Louis. After getting the rental car we drove up to Nauvoo. Since the wedding was on Saturday we had all day Friday to just relax and sight see. We were able to make it up to Carthage together but that was about it. The weather wasn't really in our favor that day. We were able to attend a play performed by the missionaries working in Nauvoo that night which helped to round off the day. The wedding was Saturday morning. It was really great. After the wedding they had a luncheon with immediate family and friends at a local Chinese restaurant. It was a lot of fun and I feel sorry for the guy that had to clean the cake out of the carpet... All in all it was a great trip and definitely worth going to. We're happy we could make. My and my mom are pretty bad a taking pictures so this is what Jon took while we were in Nauvoo...

Probably one of the most exciting and interesting things that has happened to us over the last two years was Jon's opportunity to participate in an internship at Google. It all started when Jon made a joke to our good friend Andrew who has completed two Google internships himself. Jon jokingly said "Hey you need to graduate and get a job at Google so when I graduate you can help me get a job there." Andrew's response was "...why don't you just do an internship?" I'm not sure if Jon had really considered an internship at this point with the whole newly married thing going on but I could definitely see the wheels turning once it was mentioned. So Andrew was kind enough to refer Jon to an employee at Google and after a very stressful technical interview process Jon was selected.

His acceptance into the internship program was completed in March I think so we knew it was coming. We made plans that I would finish my finals early and we'd leave a couple days before the internship began. Our car was packed!!! And I mean packed we were lucky to have enough room in the passenger seat... The sad thing is we thought we packed light too. We headed out to California and since we didn't have a place to stay we planned to spend the first couple of days at my Parents house (which is a couple hours from Google Headquarters).

Jon's internship started May 2nd and we still didn't have a place to live so we just opted to spend the first week of so in a hotel while we looked for a place. So I'd say a lot of the myths about the bay area being really expensive are true. We were lucky to find an apartment with a month to month lease that was less than $1700 a month and if you're used to paying $600 that's a pretty big deal. Jon and I are both extremely frugal so after crunching the numbers and a lot of talking we decided to spend the summer in a hotel and trek up to my parents for the weekends. Google provides breakfast, lunch and dinner so it wasn't that big of a deal for Jon... I probably didn't eat as well as I should have but hey it helped keep my weight in check right? Plus, it was worth it to me to be able to see my parents every weekend and spend some extra time with them...

All in all it was a great opportunity and we were willing to do whatever we had to to make it possible. We lived through it all and we'll always be able to use the "When your Dad and I were broke and living in a hotel..." line. I'm extremely grateful and proud of Jon's hard work while working at Google. It was well worth all the extra stress and hassle of having to move.

So after months of telling myself that we haven't done anything worth mentioning I realized that a lot of stuff has happened in the last 2 years. Jon and I just celebrated our 2 year anniversary a couple of weeks ago which is an accomplishment in and of itself. I'm going to have to spend the next couple of posts back tracking and getting this thing caught up.

Well a while back Jon's parents gave us a cd with pictures from our wedding open house. The pictures and stories are two years old but they're definitely worth recording for when we're old and forgetful. The weekend after we got married we had an open house at Jon's parents. Jon's parents and grandma really put a lot of work into making sure we had a great time. We really appreciated all the work they did and are happy that we were able to get together with some of Jon's family friends. Jon's mom even went the extra mile to spoil Jon and made home made egg nog. If you know Jon then you know that this is his absolutely favorite drink (well lately it's orange soda floats but that's because I'm lazy and don't like egg nog so I won't make it...) I also loved the little cupcakes and cake that they made!!! They were super cute and helped to maintain my whole red and black color theme.

My parents were kind enough to make the long trek up to Friday Harbor with us and got to see where Jon grew it. It was really nice to have them around and it definitely helped to ease my nerves. Plus, my mom got to do my hair. I now know she's an expert and will have to do my daughters hair for prom. ;)

We had a good turn out and really appreciated the long trek many people had to make. We understand that riding the ferry can be a bit of a pain but we really appreciate that people were willing to make it work around their schedule. But I just have to mention one set of guest that made an especially long trip just for Jon. While Jon was growing up his branch president made a promise to the young men that he and his wife would presonally make it to each of their weddings when the time came. Jon had a close relationship with President Marsh but I'm sure he wasn't expecting the Marsh's to make it since they had moved to Grantsville, Utah. I'm sure you can imagine the surprise on Jon's face when they walked into the house. It was so nice that they were willing to take the time and effort out to come to our open house. It really meant a lot to Jon.