New York City day 1

For my birthday Matt bought me a trip to NYC to visit my aunt Karen, who teaches at NYU. I flew in on a red-eye last night and arrived at 8am this morning. We got started right away with a boat tour around Manhattan to see all the sights from the water. It was a good preliminary activity - now I feel a bit familiar with the different areas of the city and kind of where everything is. After that, we ate dinner at the Shake Shack (delicious burgers, fries, and shakes!) and then walked around Times Square. I'm exhausted but I'm having tons of fun. I miss Matt and Owen, but frequent phone calls and texts are helping out. I'll be here for 9 days, and after today's tour, I'm so excited to see the rest of the city!

Karen and me waiting for the boat tour to begin.

Part of the city skyline.

Lady Liberty from the water. It's both bigger and smaller than I thought it would be (I know that's weird :)

Brooklyn Bridge.

Times Square Broadway play posters. We're going to see Catch Me If You Can and How To Suceed in Business Without Really Trying (with Harry Potter as the main character!). SO excited.

Times Square!

Hershey store in Times Square. LOVE.

We're on that jumbotron! If you divide the screen into four quadrants, we're in the top left quadrant in the bottom right corner. Make sense?? :) (This made me think of the line in Despicable Me: "We stole the Times Square Jumbotron!")

Ferris wheel inside the Toys R Us on Times Square.

This picture is for Owen... it's a Kung Fu Panda 2 trailer on the jumbotron. 

Don't know if I'll blog every day (likely not), but I'll definitely be taking lots of pictures! I'm so excited to be here! Thanks for a great birthday present, Matt!

Easter

We had a great Easter week. I got to perform with the Temple Hill Symphony Orchestra and Choir in the Easter oratorio "Lamb of God" by Rob Gardner. It was awesome! The music was beautiful, and we got to meet the composer. This was the premiere performance of this work in California, so he came and did a fireside as well as some personal meetings with the orchestra and choir. We performed at the Interstake Center on Temple Hill as well as at the Catholic Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland. The concerts kicked off a joint service effort by the Catholic and LDS churches in this area. Go to this website to learn more about the music: http://www.spiremusic.org/lamb/. Especially take time to listen to watch the video under "About the Work" - it's a video of Rob Gardner conducting the London Symphony Orchestra on my favorite song "Hosanna".

We also got to spend lots of time with family. Grandma Auman visited for a day and we were able to dye Easter eggs with her. We went to a community Easter egg hunt and saw my cousin Melanie and her little girls there. We dyed more eggs with just the three of us, and then spent some time at Matt's house with his family, where we had a yummy Easter dinner. We've been working hard to teach Owen what we celebrate on Easter - if you ask him, he can tell you that Jesus died for us and we're happy on Easter because he came back (ie - he was resurrected). He can say "resurrection" if prompted, but right now, we're just happy that he knows that Easter has something to do with Jesus. Anyway, enjoy these pictures... I'm working on posts of Hilary's wedding, so hopefully those will be up soon.

 Community Easter egg hunt - it was over in about 10 seconds. There were SO many people, but it was fun.

 Mad that I won't let him go first, before all the kids.

 We found cousin Emma!

 SO excited to dye Easter eggs.

 Inspecting the one he dropped on the floor.

 Easter Sunday outfits.

 This kid has mad eyebrow skills.

 In retrospect, 18 eggs is probably too many for one kid to find. None of them survived the throw into his basket.

  Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, California. Isn't it beautiful? I'm not one for modern architecture, but I loved this cathedral. It was even more beautiful in person.

 Can you see my head? (I'm in the violin section)

Life....

Yeah, I know that's a totally boring title, but our lives are pretty boring right now. We're just hanging out here waiting to find an apartment or condo or something of our own. We're preparing for Hilary's wedding and all the craziness that summer will bring. Life with 12 people in this house is nuts. With 16 (come summer), it will be ridiculous. Anyway, here are a few pictures of things we've been doing recently. 

 Hiking in the dark and through the mud to help Matt set up a treasure hunt.

Eating Ghirardelli ice cream. It's an obsession.

Going to the beach.

....and kicking sand everywhere.

At least he's enjoying himself.

Building sand castles.

Eating tons of seafood.

Visiting the butterfly house in Monterey.

Visiting the butterfly sanctuary in Pacific Grove.

Dennis the Menace park.

Brushing with a new light-up toothbrush. Owen makes us brush our teeth in the dark now.

Helping dig in the yard....  

....making the yard look pretty for Hilary's wedding.

Yeah, we're working really hard.

Can't you tell?

Practicing a little ping pong.

Making funny faces. 

Practicing photography.... using full manual mode on my camera.