Holy awesome

I still have one more round of NYC/CT pics to post, but I have two exciting things to mention, so I wanted to do that first!

First of all, my youngest brother in law got his mission call yesterday, and he’s going to the Bulgaria Sofia mission! Isn’t that AWESOME?! He doesn’t leave until October (longest wait ever) and he will be speaking Bulgarian. I believe the mission also includes Serbia but he probably won’t be going there.

Just in Dan’s immediate family, between his dad, brothers, sister, and in-laws, they have served in the following countries:

• Ireland
• Singapore
• Russia
• France
• Japan
• Phillipines
• Canada
• Brazil
• Australia

Isn’t that amazing? We are so excited for him and I can’t believe that out of 8 kids (6 boys, 2 girls), 7 kids will have served missions in Dan’s family. Pretty sweet.

My second bit of exciting news is that Dan got a new job!!! This is so awesome and exciting for us and everything just worked out so perfectly that we know it was meant to be. He has been working on campus at Weber State and he will finish his Bachelor’s degree this summer, then start his MBA in the fall through Utah State (classes are in Layton). His MBA classes are only 2 days a week in the evening so he was planning on getting a full time job towards the end of summer.

Last week, he applied for 3 jobs on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, one called, then he had an interview on Friday, another interview on Monday, and he was offered the job on Monday! Crazy fast. He will be working at US Magnesium as some sort of Account/Client Management. He is excited for something new, but nervous because change can be scary, and he will be really busy with school and work. But his job will work around the one class he has Tues/Thurs mornings until June, and his schedule is from 7-3:30 so he will be done with work every day in time for his MBA classes which start in the Fall! Another bit of awesomeness is that he will only be about 5-7 minutes away from my work, so we can carpool together! I get freakishly tired ALL THE TIME (even when I regularly go to bed between 9 and 10) and I HATE driving to work because I get so sleepy. So now we can carpool together and I can snooze in the car and we will save lots of moolah on gas. Sweetness.

The job also has really great medical benefits and the employees pay nothing out of pocket which is pretty amazing. My company has great benefits but we still have to pay a decent amount each month, so if we switch to his company, we can save that money. We will now also be able to pay cash for his Master’s degree which is something we didn’t know if we would be able to do. I’m really pumped about this opportunity for Dan and for us and I know it’s a great blessing. Dan works so hard and I’m so proud of him and all he does.

Final NYC/CT pictures coming soon.

East coast part 2

 

Dan and I went to the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Building) and it was awesome! We loved it and we could see downtown NYC on one side and Central Park on the other. I don’t think it’s quite as high as the Empire State Building, but we didn’t have to wait at all and the views were amazing. I highly recommend it.

Central Park behind us.

After Top of the Rock, we got on the train and went back to Shelley and Brian’s. We got back in time for a yummy dinner, ice cream and a movie.

On our second day in the city (Saturday), we were going to go with Shelley, Brian and Thad. But we woke up Saturday and Shelley had been really sick all night and was still sick! It was awful and I was selfishly sad because I wanted to hang out with her! But luckily she got better during the day and no one else got sick either. So Dan and I took the train again into the city and it wasn’t cold, but it was pouring rain!

We took the subway to Chinatown and did some browsing along Canal Street. There wasn’t a lot of people because of the rain but we didn’t mind it. We didn’t buy anything until later so we wouldn’t have to carry it around with us all day. We ate lunch at a tiny restaurant in Chinatown because Dan wanted to eat duck. Weird but he did and later regretted it…my lunch was good though and we ventured back into the rain and walked down to Battery Park, Ground Zero, and saw Wall Street.

We checked out the Statue of Liberty from the benches in Battery Park, but the weather wasn’t so great so we decided against taking the boat to see it. Dan talked to some shady characters selling fake Rolex watches, but they weren’t cheap enough for him so we didn’t buy any.

We walked back to Canal Street and it was packed because the rain cleared up and it was Easter weekend. I loaded up on cute purses (for myself and a few others), scarves, etc. All Dan got was a shot glass, poor kid. He just doesn’t like to spend money so I spent it for him! Woo hoo! We were going to try to get tickets to a Broadway show, but it just didn’t work out this time (I’m sure I’ll go back to visit soon), so we didn’t see a show. There were TONS of people in Times Square and everywhere while we walked back to the train.

We ate a yummy dinner at a restaurant in Grand Central station and caught the train back to Shelley’s house. We got on the train really early, so we had a little fun with the camera.

We also got some cupcakes from Magnolia’s Bakery in Grand Central and they were delish!