Catching Up

As you can tell by my sudden increase in posts, I'm catching up now that I have had some down time. My job at Booz Allen Hamilton has been a great blessing and I am very grateful. And I have been really busy.

John and I have had a great time living in the Washington D.C. area and we are looking forward to our next adventure. We should find out the possibilities of our next location mid to late January and we will most likely be moving again in March. While we have really become comfortable in Northern Virginia, we are excited for what comes next.

Right now we are in Utah visiting the Zincke's for Christmas and New Years. Christmas was lovely and we've had a great time hanging out. We're going to get together with our friends from ASU on Friday, which will be awesome. Then my little brother Paul gets home from his mission to Chile in a couple of weeks so we'll be going to Colorado for a short visit to see him and the Woodbury's. So far it has been a very happy holiday season!

We hope you've also had, and will have, happy holidays!

Giving Thanks

We had a lovely Thanksgiving this year at our house. Shea and Jeremy Wilch came over and we had dinner and watched football. I forgot to take pictures of dinner, which is a shame because it looked great, but I did get dessert. I planned much better this year so I wasn't hardly stressed at all. Plus, John was a lot of help.

And we setup our Christmas tree for the first year since we've been married. It hasn't ever made sense to have one because we aren't ever in town for Christmas, but we found one on sale last year. It makes me so happy!

Phun in Philly

In October John and I took an overnight trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We have never been before and we figured that we had better go before we leave the east coast. We stayed in a hotel on Friday night, which ended up being an adventure in itself when the fire alarm went off at 11:00 at night. It really wasn't much of a surprise. There was a big group of high school students staying overnight for a sporting event. We overheard the fire marshal say that someone had been smoking illegal substances...

The next day we drove into downtown Philadelphia. We went to the Museum of Art to see the Rocky statue then headed over to see the historical parts. It was really fun, especially because there is such a different feeling from downtown D.C. The Benjamin Franklin house was probably my favorite. The house isn't there anymore but they have a museum underneath where it used to stand.

To complete our Philadelphia experience we went to Pat's for authentic Philly cheese steaks and they were awesome.

Woodbury's Come to Visit

Mom and Dad Woodbury came to visit at the end of September. We had a great time with them visiting Mount Vernon and hanging out. And we had leftover cake for several days after they left... We love you guys!

Quick Update - Happy Fall!

John just checked our blog, for the first time in forever, and complained that I haven't posted anything for a long time. So this is me posting a quick update.

We are loving Northern Virginia in the fall - the colors out here are amazing with all the different trees. It's also starting to cool off, which I love. We've used our fireplace a couple of times - I also love that. And I've made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies a couple of times, too, which we both love.

We have both been really busy at work. They are giving John lots of projects and he's getting some great experience. I also got an increase in my workload recently, which is great, but has been pretty stressful the last couple weeks. But we're both grateful for our jobs, despite the craziness and stress.

I am doing NanoWrimo again this year, but I am painfully behind. I hope to catch up and make the 50K mark in a couple of weeks.

John has recently discovered how to make split pea soup from scratch so he's been spending more time in the kitchen. He also got to take a couple of trips for work in the last few months.

I've still got pictures to post from when Lauren and Julia visited and when Mom and Dad Woodbury came through. We took a quick trip to Philadelphia so I've pictures from that as well. Wow, I've got some blogging to do!

Zincke's in D.C. - All Pictures

Mount Vernon - George Washington's home

Rangers Game

Updates

Okay... so the last couple of months have been a little busy, but a lot of fun.

We moved out of the hotel and into our apartment in August. We live on the fourth floor of an apartment building in Herndon. Its close to John's office, which is nice. But we still haven't gotten used to all those stairs!

John enjoys his job, I think. He likes the people he works with - they play volleyball every Thursday - and they're keeping him challenged with lots of projects. He comes home tired, but generally happy. And that's always good!

I got a job as an Account Manager with a technological manufacturing company. It was a little rough for the first couple of days and I felt extremely overwhelmed. I tried to be positive, and some days were actually pretty good, but when I got a call to interview for another position, I was excited at the opportunity. They offered me the job about 15 minutes after my interview and I started my new job 3 days later. I am now a Recruiting Administrator at Booz Allen Hamilton. I've been in training for a week now and I think I'm going to like it.

We've already had visitors! Mom and Dad Zincke came for almost 2 weeks. Then my sisters Lauren and Julia were here last weekend. They're on their way out to the United Kingdom for three weeks of frolicking in England, Scotland, and Ireland. We took tons of pictures, which I will post shortly. The best part about having company is that we've had the chance to see most of the great stuff downtown in Washington D.C. I don't think we would have done the White House tour if Mom Zincke hadn't gotten us tickets (thanks!).

Coming up next: Mom and Dad Woodbury are stopping by for a weekend and then we'll see Lauren and Julia again when they come through on their way back home from their British adventures.

I am finally starting to feel settled.

Getting Settled

Here are some pictures from our first round of sightseeing out here. We went to a park nearby for fireworks on the Fourth. We went over to the National Air and Space Museum the next day and saw some very cool things, including the SR-71 Blackbird (the fastest jet in the world). Then the next weekend we went downtown to the National Archives and the Museum of Natural History. We're excited to see more stuff and I'll keep posting pictures.

John is getting settled in at work and I'm still looking for a job. I've had a couple of interviews and I have a couple more lined up so hopefully something will pan out soon. We got callings this week, too. I'm teaching the CTR 6 class in Primary and John's is the Duty to God Specialist. And we're moving into our apartment on Friday so we'll be all settled soon. Woot!