Fire Escape Fridge

Sometimes you live in a really, really old apartment...

Sometimes you have a light in your bathroom that also has issues for weeks...

Sometimes the light basically explodes and leaves a big burned mark...

Sometimes your super forgets to follow up when he gets back in town...

Sometimes you have a crappy fridge that you've reported for leaking and having other issues for months and months...

Sometimes said fridge keeps being horrible for even more months and months...

Sometimes the fridge is plugged into an outlet that becomes questionable one day...

Sometimes your lame fridge dies...

Sometimes the outlet dies...

Sometimes you just don't know what to do...

But you want to save your food.

Because you just went grocery shopping yesterday!

Sometimes you put your food out on your fire escape because it's still so freaking cold outside...

This is what it looks like out on the fire escape --
everything as secure from squirrels, pigeons, and cats as we could make it

Thanks, Angela, for helping us come up with the idea to use the cold weather to our advantage ;)

Wedding Suit

My brother Brian is getting married in May, so Marcus got to get a new suit.  We headed to the big Macy's one evening after he got off work because there were some awesome sales going on.  Luckily he was able to find the right suit really quickly because Chase didn't have a lot of patience.  But we did snag two fun pictures I wanted to save/share...

Trying to look... suave?

Chase checking out the mirrors

Can't wait for May :)

Our Friend Matthew

About a year ago, our mutual friend Matthew Murray joined the church after investigating it for a long, long time. Matthew's journey with the church started with a work trip to Salt Lake City and a visit to Temple Square. In many ways, the Salt Lake City Temple - the structure, everything it represented - was the start of Matthew's conversion.

After returning home from the trip, he connected with a coworker (and member of our ward) named Brian Westover, and began attending church regularly. So regularly, in fact, that he was Marcus' home teaching companion for about a year before joining the church.

Marcus was able to take a quick trip to Utah this past weekend to be with Matthew and some close friends involved in his conversion as he received his own endowment - punctuating the journey at the place it started. 

It was a great day - there is a lot more to tell, but that's Matthew's story / Marcus' to tell to those that may want more details. Here are a few photos:

Marcus and Matthew after the session

Landon Kenworthy (Matthew's old home teacher who now lives in Atlanta), Michael Alemany (the former Elders Quorum president who now attends Dartmouth), Matthew Murray, Brian Westover (Matthew's co-worker who was keystone in his conversion) and Marcus

The larger group - Landon, Michael, Nathan (once Elder Turley), Matthew, Brian, Dallin (once Elder Busby) Marcus and Blane, Brian's father

Another individual played a key role in Matthew's journey - John Young, who now lives in the UK. He wasn't able to attend, but did Skype with everyone after the session at Marcus' parents house. 

(Blog Post by Marcus)

Cozette's Visit

Cozette came to visit earlier in the month.  It was a crazy week for us, so we appreciated tons of babysitting.  And Chase especially had a blast!

 Chase built tall towers with his blocks.

It took a lot of concentration

The kitty watched closely.

Marcus fixed our glider chair.

Cozette hid in Chase's cabinet

They collected ziplocks.

 Chase took several naps WITH his books.

and sometimes with cookbooks.

 We all read LOTS of books.

Chase crawled all over everyone.

We tried to take a group picture.

Chase LOVED the timer on the camera and would try to push the button and beat it back to the couch.

We actually got a smiling picture!

And some other pictures :)

Chase enjoyed several phone calls

And some Facetiming.

Chase also lined up his orange slices, instead of eating them.

He stacked all the Macaroni &Cheese.

 He organized and lined up his bath toys.

It was a busy weekend, but there was lots of fun!  Thanks for coming to play!

Morton's

While Cozette was in town, Marcus and I got to go to a fancy dinner, thanks to some gift cards we'd been given.  We'd been looking forward to our big Morton's trip for weeks, and there's a good chance we both stalked the menu multiple times.  We tried to get pictures inside, but they didn't turn out well due to the lighting.  Well, and then we couldn't get pictures soon enough because our forks just couldn't help themselves digging into the amazing food.

Marcus met me at the music school after my lesson.  We took a car over to the restaurant because it was super cold.  Plus there was no convenient public transit between the two places.  There's nothing like getting out of a car on 5th Avenue.  Probably not an experience we'll get to duplicate, but it was super memorable.

Mortons

The light holder on our table.  We named it, but know I can't remember it because there was a full name and title that went on for awhile :)

Our half devoured delicious bread

 We had a great waiter who made some fantastic recommendations, including to order our dessert at the beginning to make sure it was ready on time (and so we wouldn't skip dessert, I'm sure).

Marcus' French Onion Soup

My amazing salad

Our steak, potatoes, and asparagus

Yeah, it disappeared.

Sadly I don't have a picture of our legendary hot chocolate cake, but I took a picture off the Internet.  

It really looked just like this picture.  Soooooo good.
And our great waiter gave us our dessert free for celebrating.  He was awesome.

After our amazing dinner :)

Thanks for the gift cards and babysitting!