The morning commute

Dane got his new phone and promptly decided to shoot the morning commute and day on it.  I think this video is great. It shows what Dane and I see every morning on our commute into Boston.

Giving Thanks and Crooked Trees

 Thanksgiving was so fun.  We had tons of fun with our family and friends.  I have had this picture frame that has been empty since we got married.  So I decided we were going to take a Thanksgiving picture to fill the frame.  We just took our camera in the backyard and took some shots.  My dad was the photographer.  When we brought the picture to get developed at Walgreens the photo tec asked if we had the release to develop the picture.  haha.  She thought it was professional. Here are a couple good ones from our "shoot."

 We did some Black Friday shopping.  Dane was being very funny!

 We are still living on a student budget, so we decided to "shop" for a tree in my parent's yard.  We found this perfect tree...

 And cut that sucker down!!!

 Cut off some lower limbs so we could put it in a stand.

 We threw it in the back of the car after a fun bonfire with our friends.  We roasted hot dogs, had s'mores, and my mom brought out a huge pot of hot chocolate for us all to drink.  It was such a fun night. We also had fun with our friend's 3 year old and 20 month-old. We gave them a couple flash lights and they were tromping all over the yard looking at things.

 Then we got home and set up our tree! This was not an easy feat, and Dane may or may not have gotten frustrated.  Which is not like him at all.  I was secretly laughing inside thinking that this is just one of those things that is inherently frustrating and we'll probably go through this every year.  Dane of course realized that he was getting frustrated and said he was sorry.  It is just one of those things though.  I couldn't make the situation any better, so it was just funny. So we called it quits after a while.  We have a crooked tree, and it's awesome. 

And lastly... our festive door decoration.  Pretty fancy. Yeah right. It's just a little something to bring some holiday cheer!

More than I thought

So I was going to post about Thanksgiving and putting up our Christmas tree and the joys of that; but as I loaded pictures from our camera I noticed a bunch of pictures that were just fun.  So I thought I'd share the pictures and just a little bit about what we were doing in each one! 

 In October my brother-in-law Sean and I decided to go skiing.  We both wore two wetsuits.  Sean "warmed" them up for me. He was brave and went first.  I wouldn't have done it if it weren't for Sean coming back with glowing reviews of the experience. 

 The sisters getting nails and hair done on Friday, October 14th. The day of the reception. 

October 15th! The day of the wedding!

 ...and after the family dinner.

 During Halloween we went over to Salem and watched Hocus Pocus on the commons. 

 Salem loves their witches.

 Then in November my aunt Tammy and I went and auditioned for The Amazing Race.  We had 60 seconds to say why we would be good on show.  I ended up doing most of the talking... 60 seconds goes quickly.

Dane's anatomy teacher has an "in" with a Chinese restaurant so we went with 150 of Dane's closest classmates to enjoy a 10 course Chinese meal.

One of those courses included baby squid.  Yes we did eat it.  Little tentacles and suctions cups and all!

 Then the day before Thanksgiving we went to the tree lighting at Quincy Market downtown. 

There was a live band.  We enjoyed singing along to a few songs and doing some window shopping. 

So there are a few things that we've been up to lately.  I've been thinking that I didn't have much to blog about since our lives are pretty steady.  I surprised myself.  Life is great. I have a great husband and things couldn't be better. 

Wedding, Theiving, Halloweening, Schooling, and Working.

It's been a while since I've posted on here.  Life has been great.. and really busy. Since my last post my sister got MARRIED!!!!  It was awesome.  It was a very relaxed and they are a happy couple! They have been married for a month now and they couldn't be happier.  Dane made video's of the wedding, if you want to check them out take a peek at the temple or the reception.

Shortly after the wedding Dane went and played football down by Boston College.  So I was cleaning the house and Dane comes and knocks on the door, I open the door to see my husband wide eyed.  He just says "I have some bad news..." So your mind goes a million places all at once in a split second.  He tells me his stuff got STOLEN!!! A dirty little thief came and picked through a pile of bags and decided to take Dane's bag with his phone, keys, and wallet in it... Not to mention his football receiver gloves.  Bummer deal.  The thief took went and charged $240 worth in Charlie Cards... the pass to get on to the T. So we spent the day cancelling credit and debit cards, and going around and replacing what Dane had stolen.  We are still working on getting everything replaced... the keys are the tricky bit to this equation. We'll get there.

Halloween was fun! We went to a murder mystery masquerade.  I was Ms. Una Verse - a brilliant astronaut.  Dane was... well, we don't remember his name. But he was a city food inspector by day and a comedian by night.  We had a fun time laughing and figuring out who killed the crooked law enforcement. 

Other then that we have been super busy with school and work.  I get up early, catch the 6:48 bus into Boston.  I work all day and catch the evening bus home. I'm typically home a little before 6.  My schedule got changed so I'm hoping to be getting off a little earlier in the future.  Every day is busy and I know that I'm going to go home tired, but I have really enjoyed the girls that I work with.  I really lucked out with my situation.  I count it as a blessing.

Dane just finished his gross anatomy class as well as nutrition.  Dane really enjoyed his anatomy class.  It was a nice change up from sitting in lectures all day.  In the lab Dane dissected a cadaver everyday.  He said it was weird at first, but he got very used to it.  I guess you just have to get used to these things.  He's glad to be rid of Nutrition though.  For some reason we have never had a great experience with any of the nutrition teachers we've had.

We've been busy and are looking forward to the holidays.  It will be a nice change up.  My family will all be in town.  We won't have to travel anywhere, ok... just 25 minutes up Route 1.  We are going to have fun and take it easy.  Now I really need to get going on Christmas shopping.  We're down to crunch time.

By the way... college basketball has started... and Dane is currently watching two different games on two different pieces of technology... at the same time.

Topsfield Fair

It has been so fun being home and bringing Dane to come and do the things that I grew up doing. It was the Topsfield Fair this month! :) And it was awesome! Dane got to see his first elephant in real life.

Dane has never been to a zoo before, but the petting zoo at the fair was one step closer.  It was fun seeing Dane admire the huge animal, and watching the workers hold out cookies  for the elephant and it grabbing the cookies with it's trunk and bring them up to his mouth, also watching the elephant "sweeping" some hay up off the ground.  Dane said that the elephant is his new favorite animal.

 We checked out the chickens...

This was such a funny chicken.

Here's some of the fun!

We went walking by the stand where my brother was working.  He worked 13 hour days at times. 

My aunt Tammy is a fire fighter, so we got to see her all dressed up in her fire woman uniform.  

We went and saw the petting zoo (the elephant), pig races, the bee hives, the flowers, vegetables, the weighing of the giant pumpkins, the art work, the money pole, the Bengal tigers, the sheep, we also went on the rides!!! The first time we went to the fair we had two free rides.  We went on this ride that we thought wouldn't make us dizzy and sick.  We were wrong.  So after that we went and did bumper cars.  I really wanted to go on the ride "The Zipper." I have a history with this ride. It took me years and years to get up the nerve to try it out, and when I finally did I loved it.  Dane took one look at that ride and just knew it would make him sick.  He is such a good sport and decided that he would go and just suck it up so his adrenaline junkie wife could love life.  I didn't want to make my husband sick, so we postponed that amazingness for later.  When we did return the next week we went on The Zipper and it was just as good as I remembered.  I was nervous it would make me sick or something now that I'm an adult. Nope.  I loved it! Better yet, Dane loved it also!  It was great.  We will definitely be going on that again next year! I can hardly wait.

MBTA bus driver 69630

So since I last posted, I have a job!  A friend from church let me know of a job opening at the place he just left and I sent in my resume.  I have been hoping for a job like this so it was very exciting when I got the job.  I am working at a dental office in Boston.  They are an upscale dental practice that is working hard on improving the practice.  I'm working as a front office person.  That means that I make a ton of phone calls, check people in and out, figure out co-pays, deal with insurance and billing, and other tasks of that nature.  Since the job in in Boston I commute in every morning.  There are a couple ways I can get there.  I can take the shuttle from our apartment complex to the T and ride the train in, or I normally catch the bus.

Since I've been riding the bus, I've gotten to see some funny and interesting things.  I've learned the bus schedule, and I try to leave work in enough time to catch the next bus.  This past Wednesday I was leaving work at 5:12.  I know that it's a 7 minute brisk walk to the station from work. I also know that I wanted to catch the 5:20 which drops me off a little farther away from my complex, but it's better than missing that bus and waiting another 10 minutes to catch the 5:30 which drops me off right in front of the complex.  So I knew I had to move it.  (I am my father's daughter, I have to figure out things like how many minutes it takes to get anywhere.) Here's the predicament though... I knew I had to run down into the T station to load more money onto my card because I didn't have enough to pay to get home.  I also knew that the driver of the 5:20 bus is a stickler and he doesn't like to let people get on the bus once he closes the door.  I've heard him gripe at people when they knock on the door.  So I had better get a move on.  I checked the time when I was still a little ways away and noticed I had 3 minutes to be on the bus.  So I started running.  I rounded the corner of the station, I saw the bus there and that the doors were still open so that was good.  I ran down the stairs to the station and loaded some money onto my "Charlie Card" and ran back up the stairs looking over my shoulder to see if the bus was still there! It wasn't!!!! It usually takes them a minute to get out of the station because of the lights, so I knew I could probably still catch the bus.

I ran down the side of the station looking for my bus.  I spotted it, saw the numbers, then... the bus turned off it's numbers and went to "OUT OF SERVICE." I thought that was weird.  I kept going though, and saw that it was full of people, and it really wasn't out of service.  I went up to the door, knocked, and the driver look so exasperated! He let me on, and started yelling at me.  "You really can't do this. How do you even know where you are going? (He starts looking around) There are bus inspectors everywhere.  Don't ever do that again." I said I was sorry and headed to the open seat in the back of the bus.  As I was thinking about it, while trying to get my heart rate down, I realized that he saw me coming and was trying to deter me from getting on the bus by switching the outside numbers to OUT OF SERVICE!!!! What a chump! haha. I think I'm going to write him a thank you note for letting me on the bus and see if he'll be any nicer next time someone has to chase down the bus. 

Dane had a similar experience, but the bus driver was still in the station but had closed the doors.  Dane was with another guy and they walked up to the door, knocked, and the driver totally ignored them.  They kept knocking.... nothing.  Dane and the other guy walked in front of the bus and were waving their hands.  The bus driver refused to look at them.  Dane yelled, "Hey, let us on." Finally the bus driver looked at them but just to give them a dirty look. He WOULDN'T LET THEM ON!!!!!! The bus drove off, and Dane had to wait a half hour for the next bus to come bring him home.  Can you believe that!!!

I know it's a rule that the bus drivers shouldn't let people on after they shut the door, but really... ?  Most bus drivers are chill, and don't let the power of being a MBTA bus driver go to their head.  Oh how interesting the commute has been!

furniture for the apartment

Thanks to our good friends the Bintz family we got some great furniture for our apartment.  We got a great little table from them which we were glad to find that it had a spot in our home.  Upon first inspection of this piece we noticed that it had been painted four times.  In keeping up with that tradition we painted it again.  We went from this:
To this:  
Then this: 
Then moved to this:  
And finally this:   
It wasn't really meant for blankets to be stored under there, but we needed a place, and that spot seemed handy enough.

Then here's the big project.  We also got a dresser from the Bintz's. It was a sturdy piece so we took it. There were some water marks on it, so we decided to re-finish it. This was an experience.  :) First we took all the drawer pulls off, and put this finish stripper on it.

We waited a few hours, scrapped that off...

We let it dry out over night, and then sanded down the whole thing.  My hands hurt just thinking about that.  Then I bought some "stain and polyurethane in one" and painted that whole thing.

By the way I do NOT recommend the two in one product.  It was thick and sticky, hard to get even, etc.  Definitely worth the money to buy the products separately.
Here is the piece in our living room.  It's our TV stand.  We didn't need a dresser, so we figured this would work just as well.

Our plans include drilling a couple holes in the back of the top two drawers, and putting the drawer fronts on hinges so we can put the DVD player in there.  That's another project for a different day.  We'll get there eventually.

Dental School!

I know it's a little late, but here is my sweet husband on his first day of school!

We're now two weeks into it, and Dane has felt the pressure.  A typical day includes Dane leaving for school somewhere between 6:45 - 7:45 to catch the shuttle or bus to the T.  (For those of you that haven't been to Boston the T is the Boston public transit trains.) His schedule is different pretty much everyday.  His classes include gross anatomy, nutrition, dental anatomy, bio-chem, operative dentistry, ethics, and introduction to clinical experience.  After classes finish, he typically stays at school to study until about 7, then makes the trek home.  He usually gets home about 7:45 or 8.  Busy day! Dane told me that during dental school I'll probably get some hobbies that I enjoy doing without him.  It made me get emotional when he said that.  I'm such a baby. It's a hard pill to swallow that I'm not going to have my husband around much for the next 4 years.

In his anatomy class they spend some time in the classroom flying through labeling things and then essentially "drop them off" in the lab where they have been divided into groups.  Each group has their own cadaver that they are supposed to dissect and identify all the nerves, arteries, muscles, etc.  Because BYU has a good anatomy lab Dane was used to cadavers and was able to jump in the first day and start working on their cadaver.  There were some group members that did fairly well, and others that looked a little pale.  Two days later this girl, that was pale faced initially, showed up to lab and told the group that she had skipped breakfast.  This is never a good thing to do when you are going to be in the lab.  After a little while Dane was noticing that she had lost her color and was looking a little clammy.  He told her she should probably go outside the lab and sit down for a little while.  She finally agreed and Dane decided to follow her out the door to make sure she would be alright.  She got to the door and tried to pull it open.... and that's when she fainted for the first time.  Dane caught her and helped her get outside the door.  She came to about 30 seconds later, and rested for a couple minutes.  The teacher by that time was there to help Dane.  The teacher, having gone through this every year says, "well get up, and let's get going." She stands up again only to take two more steps and faint again.  Dane was there once again to catch her.  The teacher got her to come to again with smelling salts.  After another minute of resting they tried to help this girl up... She took about three steps again and fainted for the third time.  By this point they decided she had better go get some breakfast.  A wise decision.

Here's Dane in"Pre-Clin" - which really means pre-clinic.  Working on his head.

Unfortunately his sits behind a pillar and can't see the teacher but, he can see two TV's that show the feed from the camera that is on the teacher, and what the teacher is working on.

Our Second Apartment!

We finally got our apartment set up! Here is our dining area and living room. 

This is the table my mom found at a yard sale! We'll take it.

Our Craigslist couch!!! :) You can also see our nice big kitchen in the back there, and our front door. 

 Our bedroom.  This is all the nice furniture that my mom is letting us use! We put our bed on 7" risers, and now we have a little more storage under the bed.

 We were so happy when we realized that our new bed spread (found a killer deal and it was hard to pass up) and our old curtains from our kitchen matched... both circles!

And this is our bathroom! Dane arranged the "guest towels," he's very good at these things!

So there it is! Our new apartment.  Dane keeps telling me, "I really like our new apartment," "I think we have a great set up here," "I don't think I'll like another apartment as much as this one," "Our place looks really great babe."  Several other things like that.  We are loving having a dishwasher and washer and dryer. We did 4 loads yesterday! I was loving it, and thinking the whole time how easy it was to bring the laundry bins around the corner in our apartment ant just pop a load in! :) haha.  It's the simple pleasures right!

Summer in review via movie!

So I've been reading the series Uglies, and yesterday I was reading the final book just chilling on our couch, and Dane says, "Hey Aimee, want to come take a look at this?" Why, yes I do! So I slide on over and he had whipped this together while watching football that evening.  Here is our summer in 4 minutes. It has been so much fun, and tomorrow is the first day of dental school.  I'm sad our partying has come to an end for a while, but with any luck we'll still find time to have some fun. 

Unfortunately, in order to load a 4 minute video we had to put it in lower resolution, so it actually looks better if you keep it small. 

Massachusetts... no, spell check did not have to correct me.

We are officially living in our new apartment here in Revere Massachusetts... and I am actually proud that I can spell the name of the state I grew up in.  It only took me until college to "sit down" and memorize it.  But don't tell anyone I told you that.  When we arrived three weeks ago we drove straight to my parents house and stayed there for two weeks.  In reality we weren't there for that long since we drove up to Maine a few days after our arrival.  We spent a couple days touring around Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  It was fun, and I just wish that we had bikes to bring up there to ride around the park.  It was beautiful and helped me remember the beauty of the East Coast.

Dane getting his "fisherman" on in Bar Harbor Maine. 

 And this is me screaming because Dane caught me.  I was trying to sneak up on him.

 Acadia National Park, Me. This is by "Thunder hole." It's supposed to shoot water up into the air... It didn't really.  If we only had a hurricane around to get those waves a little bigger... Humm. 

 Acadia National Park

 My funny parents. Haha! I love that mom is posing... Proud that she was strong enough to make it to the top of "Bubble Rock," ...and dad is just confused.

 Sunset!

 Dylan, my cousin, trying out some of the local fruit.

Shortly after we returned from Maine we headed up to my parents cabin in Wakefield New Hampshire. We had tons of fun.

 We went blueberry picking!

 Dane tried his hand at wake boarding! I was SO PROUD!!!! Dane is really getting the hang of these water sports.  He got up on his FIRST TRY.  What a man!

 Dane also got up on his first try knee boarding!  This picture is hilarious to me.  We were trying to slap "high 5" for the camera... Since we were both looking at the camera we totally missed each other! (I tried to zoom in on the pictures, but blogger won't let me.  So to see more detail just click on the pictures.)

 And us cracking up once we finally got each others hands.

 It was windy on some of the days we were there, so to take advantage we just flew a kite off the back of the boat.  If the wind ever let up a little we could just make up for it by hitting the throttle on the boat. 

 See how high we got it!

 In the words of Jim Rome, two dudes should never ride on the same motorcycle.  Dane has taken that advice to heart, so when my neighbor would offer Dane a ride on his jet ski he'd just say no thanks. Eventually, our kind neighbor Barry figured out a way to get Dane on the jet ski.  He asked me if I had my boat license.  (I do.) We loaded up and Dane finally got a ride...

 What a character.

 We made a trip up to Diana's Baths in North Conway and we had fun playing with the settings on our camera.  We're still beginners, but we'll get better. 

 I also went for a ski. I'm proud to point out that this year I didn't stick my tongue out with out realizing it. 

 Dane also skied.  He did a ton of water sports! Can you spot the rainbow that he made?

 And this was moving day... Yes, Dane is wearing safety goggles he found while unpacking.  He makes me laugh. We unpacked tons of boxes... I'll post more pictures once we finish things around the apartment.  We found a really nice couch on craigslist, and my parents are kind enough to basically furnish our apartment. We have them to thank for our two dressers, bed, night table, kitchen table and chairs, and the start of our food storage and supplies.  Everything was at their house, except the table that my mom found at a yard sale.  We are so grateful for their generosity.  Thanks Mom and Dad!