Happy Halloween

Jamie and I have been having a lot of fun doing things for the holidays. I've had so many fun projects to work on (which was helpful when Jamie was gone for dental interviews in Boston for a whole week). So here are some sweet pumpkins that we carved for FHE one night. Jamie's was the face and mine the nature scene.

Here is a picture of a spider I found nesting in between my winter boots in our closet. It was huge. We've had a problem with these furry friends and it makes me wonder where else they are hiding in my house. Gross. I guess I won't figure it out until we move.

This is Jamie's sweet Halloween costume. This came from our costume box and just looked so good on Jamie I couldn't resist making him wear it. He decided it made him look like Steve Prefontaine so he was okay with it. I drew sideburns, mustache, and fake chest hair on him for effect!

I ended up going as Steve's girlfriend (we couldn't remember what her name was). Gotta love the orange polyester bell bottoms (I got them in Boston!). At the ward party there were some funny costumes. Here are some of my highlights: 1. husband = fire hydrant, wife = box of dog biscuits, baby= puppy, put them together and you have a baby that gets feed by the mom and pees on the dad. 2. husband = penguin, wife= bee, put them together and you get the birds and the bees. People are creative.


So our Halloween was kinda crazy. Jamie's interviews at BU and Tufts went well. We won't e able to know if we got in till December. It will be a long waiting game. I am surviving school. This week was the end of the first term, so grades were due and it was the yearbooks first deadline. It was pretty crazy, but its over. Awesome.

Summer tirps

Answers

1. A large red candle? On the left of the hot chocolate table

2. How many green leaves? 100 ish

3. A decoration from our wedding? red ball hanging from the top left

4. How many books? 8

5. How many objects are reflecting off the table? 6 (Two people, couch, table, candle, doolie)

6. Two badly cut sideburns? On Jamie

7. How many cups? 3 (michelle made them)

8. How many LaPierres? 3, one coming at the end of March!

A Riddle

This is my attempt to have a more interactive Blog. I spy...
The LaPierre Family: August 5, 2009

In the above picture locate the following.
1. A large red candle?

2. How many green leaves?

3. A decoration from our wedding?

4. How many books?

5. How many objects are reflecting off the table?

6. Two badly cut sideburns?

7. How many cups?

8. How many LaPierres?

Red Pine Trail

On Monday/Tuesday we went with our friends Rob and Jill Tobler on a short hiking trip into the mountains. It was awesome. It was about a 3.5 mile hike with the last 2 miles of it straight up the mountain!

Lugging our 40lb backpacks up it made things a little bit more tricky but it was worth it once we reached the top, as there was a beautiful lake we got to enjoy. It was such a relief to take off the packs and set up the tents. Dinner consisted of tin foil dinners, grilled corn, roasted cinnamon apples, and smores! Why does food always taste better when camping? The dirt and bugs that get mashed in. It was also really cold since we were close to the timber line which also accounts for the snow that was still on the ground. Jill and Rob forgot warm clothing so Jill used a trash bag (which she says worked great) and Rob a sleeping bag. So funny. The rest of the evening was uneventful, we played a few games with some cards and then went to bed exhausted.

In the morning Jamie and I hiked up the side of the mountain to see if we could reach the crest of the mountain and see the sun. Lets just say that there was always another mountain in the way. Jamie even scaled up further than Michelle, but still nothing. Oh well. It was a fun jaunt. Jamie is the very small figure in the center of the picture towards the top.

After a breakfast of oatmeal we packed up our tents and went home. We thought the trail would never end, but finally it did.

Michelle's favorite part was being outside where everything was beautiful and the air was clean and smelled great! Jamie's favorite part was eating and the company. Yeah for the beauty of the earth and for us documenting our life.

Let Freedom Ring

Both Jamie and I are huge fans of the 4th of July. We enjoy the feelings of patriotism, lighting fireworks, and having family nearby. Jamie even likes the 4th so much that he makes his food into American flags so that he can eat it and be one with the holiday.

This 4th of July we have had so much fun doing a lot of different things. We started out by waking up at 6:30am on Friday to watch the Balloon festival. They started filling up the balloons a few blocks north of our apartment so we just walked up to witness this fun event. It was worth it.This event is actually a competition among the pilots of the hot air balloons. Their goal is to swing over a large x on the ground and see who can get bean bags the closest to it. The guy above got pretty close on his second try.

It was such a beautiful morning.

We thought the pig balloon was awesome. There was also a Smokey the Bear balloon but we didn't get any good pictures of it.

Jamie and I also woke up about 6:40am on July 4th to participate in the Freedom Run. Jamie ran a 10K and I ran the 5K. It was really fun. I saw some guy dressed up like Captain America (the full costume with muscles) and some guy dressed like Uncle Sam on stilts (and yes he did run in the race). It was a great way to start the day. After we cleaned up a bit we went to watch the parade. We arrived a little late but we were still able to find spots next to Bryce and Lisa. Sophie was so excited about the whole thing.

We ended the day with a family BBQ (both with some of Michelle's family and some of Jamie's family), a small display of fireworks for Sophie and Travis (courtesy of Jamie), and then watching the 'Stadium of Fire' fireworks. The fireworks couldn't compare to Bostons but there were some awesome loud ones (which are Michelle's favorites) and since we were right underneath them in a parking lot next to the stadium we could feel the shock waves as we watched the fireworks light the sky!! It was awesome. We love the 4th of July. It is such a wonderful holiday. Hopefully you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

"Free at Last!"

We are finally done with test taking and applications, at least for a while. Thank you for all the help with my personal statement and allowing me time to study while you were out here. The test was just over a week ago, Saturday June 13. If you thought the testing center was hard core, they have nothing on these tests. It felt like you were going into one of the highest security sites that the government has. (Actually, I'd have to talk to my brother-in-laws to confirm that one.) You get a locker and put everything including water and hats, etc. in it. Then you give them two forms of ID, and they take three digital fingerprints from each hand. You sign your name on the way in, they take your picture and look at your ID's again. They film you the whole time, and you need to bring your ID's, sign your John Hancock, and fingerprint each time you go in or out (there's a 15 minute break, it almost doesn't seem worth the hassle.) It went a lot better than I was expecting... even when I was finished and waiting for my score I thought I did terrible. But, the work paid off. Thanks to the help seen and unseen.

Here's a few pictures of our victory party. These are actually from Monday. We "celebrated" by hiking the Y to make the final edits on my personal statement from a more inspiring location than the library. As you can tell Michelle had the camera for this activity, she's still a little camera shy.Michelle and I just had our birthdays the week before the test, so we decided to postpone celebrating them until Saturday afternoon after the test. Apparently Michelle had something planned long before that Saturday. When I got home had lunch and we went bowling with our good friends and team mates (for a frisbee league) Christopher and Bethany Barnes. After bowling we said bye to the Barnes's, I got blindfolded, and driven all over Provo, including doing circles in a parking lot to get me mixed up. In the end we ended up...

...at the Barnes's home for our dual birthday celebration. They made this amazing chicken dinner and then we broke open a pinata (the guitar, which one of Michelle's students kindly donated to the cause.) It was filled with plastic teeth and candy! We went swimming for a bit then cam back up for chocolate cake and a movie... the instant classic, X-Men uno.

One weekend later, now that applications were in, we really partied. Reagan hosted (and Miles organized) a "Prom" at Reagan's parents' house. It was a "choose your own theme" prom. After having trouble finding matching outfits, we decided to just forget dressing up and go in our normal clothes.
Well, Michelle had to borrow a pair of my jeans. It was fun, though we were the only married couple there, which made us feel more like chaperones. But that didn't last too long.
While there we caught up with Reagan and Sarah. He just ran the Wasatch Front team race. His team won it... it goes from Logan to Heber, and then to Park City. It took them about 12 hours, not bad.

This last week also marks our six months of being married and 2 years from our first date. That's where this one came from... Frontier Night I think it was called. It seems like we really like the themed parties.
It's been a great two years and an even better 6 months. We've had a great time getting to know each other's families. They both are very entertaining and supportive... especially the past few months as we were getting ready for applications and admissions tests.
Thanks for everything.

Oh yeah, at the "Prom" we talked to our photographer from our wedding. He's getting us the rest of our pictures from our wedding today. So we will probably just post them once we get them.


So here's a few left overs from last post. I hope they're not too disturbing. We decided that for posterity's sake that we'd take pictures of some of the transition states on the way to being clean shaven. They're ridiculous enough to make Michelle atleast a little cautious about how I take care of ingrown hairs.

This one's inspired by Shakespeare. This is Mom's favorite.

This one's inspired by firefighters across the nation.

And lest you forgot what Bolts and Goat looked like, or your scroller isn't working...