end of summer fun

the past two and a half months have been really draining on me. since i started working at wells fargo full-time while keeping my part-time job at pottery barn kids i have had no time for rest and relaxation. i was pretty sad thinking that summer was almost over and i will be working full-time the rest of my life. so we decided it was time to take a mini-vacation.

stephen's grandparents have a cabin in bear lake that he hasn't been to since before his mission. (about seven years.) i'll be honest, i was kind of scared to go after hearing stories of an indoor hot-tub, dead animals found around the house, and strange scents. but for me, any vacation is a good vacation. and all the hype about the cabin turned out to be over-exaggerated.

we spent most of our trip outdoors. we went on a couple of hikes, went swimming, and laid out on the beach. at night time we sat on the deck and saw millions of stars, way more than i have seen anywhere else. although we weren't too far from home, it was just the break i needed.

here are some pictures.
here is the view of the lake from the deck of the cabin.


here we are on the deck. i am trying to get stephen to throw away this Schmit house shirt, i hate it!
beautiful bloomington lake. the water was so clear, so fresh.

stephen walking past some wild flowers. they were soooo beautiful and colorful.
"take a picture of me with the wild flowers!"

summer veggies

Today i picked our first cucumber of the season!
We are excited for the many tomatoes, peppers, squashes, and green beans to come.

le cruset

I got my first Le Cruset piece about 2 weeks ago and I love it! I just wish i didn't have such a tiny stove and oven.


I made this yummy braised rosemary pork roast from The Silver Spoon (which Stephen gave me as a "prize" for getting a new job)

The Rest of our Trip

So i realized it was taking me forever to blog in detail about our trip which was a little over a month ago at this point. So I will instead just touch on the things we did briefly. We spent the remaining 13 days of our trip as follows, 1 and 1/2 more days in Kyoto, 2 and 1/2 days in Tokyo, 8 days in Singapore and 1 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Things we did in Kyoto:

Went to more Shinto ShrinesSaw some Geishas at the train station.
Went and saw some Buddhist temples.
Sat under a cool Aqueduct in the rain.
Walked around the city.
Took a little hike onto the side of a mountain and saw a beautiful view of Kyoto.


Shopped in this alleyway that lead all the way up the mountain.
Went to this shinto shrine that had tori gates lined up really close together to form a pathway up and around a mountain. The hike would have taken about 2 hrs so we just did a small portion of it.

Things we did in Tokyo:
Visited the Museum of Western Art designed by Le Corbusier in Ueno park.
Went to see the Senso Ji temple which was right by the hotel we stayed in.
Went to the busiest crossing in the world. Shibuya? Something like that.
Went to the Imperial palace and gardens.
Had lunch in Toyo Ito's concert hall.
Got good views of Tokyo from the Tokyo Government Building.
Went to the national Sumo wrestling tournament.
Visited and purchased something from every Paul Smith store in Tokyo.
Saw the Dior building designed by SANAA
TOD's building designed by Toyo Ito
Prada building designed by Herzog and De Meuron

Things we did in Singapore

Went to the National Orchid Garden
Got a fish pedicure.
Went to a Chinese Temple
Went to McRichie Reservoir, a place I went a lot as a child.
Had a Tea Ceremony to celebrate our wedding with my Family.
Rode Segways.
Took a boat cruise up the Singapore River
Went to the Jurong Bird Park
Visited the Esplanade Theater.

Walked around downtown near the financial district.

It was such a great trip. I was really happy to finally introduce Stephen to the rest of my family, and I am very happy the Stewarts got to meet them as well. I love my family in Singapore, they are so wonderful. And I look forward to visiting more often in the future.

Kyoto Part 1

As most of you already know, Stephen and I went to Japan the beginning of May. It was a really nice trip. It was kind of chilly and rainy most of the time, but still fun and beautiful. Here are a few things I learned on my trip...

• Most of Japan is uninhabited (around 70%) so the population is concentrated in metropolitan areas.
• Japanese people are "sensitive to the seasons" as described by our tour guide, they love all seasons.
• There are TONS of Shinto shrines in Japan.
• Japan is really expensive
• Japanese food is good in the U.S. but even better in Japan!
• Geishas are NOT prostitutes.
  
• Japan has the most amazing public transportation
• Japanese make amazing toilets with heated seats, built in bidets, and musical flushes.
• A bonsai tree is not just a small tree, it is any tree in a pot.
  

Overall, it was a wonderful trip. We were there for 5 days and I don't feel like we even scratched the surface. Here are some pictures
Dave and Jane (Stephen's Parents) got us plane tickets with their skymiles which was very very nice of them. The purpose of our trip was actually to visit my family in Singapore, but since it was cheaper to get tickets through Japan, we thought it would be nice to spend some time there. We only spent one day in Japan with Dave and Jane because they went to Thailand for a week with my sister-in-law Melissa before visiting my family in Singapore.
Here we are with Giro, a friend of Jane's family. He flew up from Okinawa to Tokyo to meet us and then planned our trip to Kyoto. We are at a Shogun palace. It was pretty cool. The floors inside are called "nightingale floors" because when you step on them they are supposed to sound like a nightingale. It was designed as a defense mechanism.We visited a lot of beautiful Japanese gardens in Kyoto. It is amazing that the gardeners put in so much time and effort into planning how to manipulate the trees to get them to look how they want. This is just one example of how they pulled the branches of this tree lower to the ground.
According to our tour guide Japanese try to "miniaturize everything" he said that the pond in this garden is made to represent a sea and seashore. According to him the big rocks are cliffs and rocks found along coastlines. It was really a beautiful garden.

Red Japanese Maple trees are my new favorite trees. They take a long time to grow as big as the one in the picture. There are also Green Japanese Maples in the picture, in the fall they turn the same color red as the Red Maples.
Here is a cute picture of Dave and Jane.We could always tell we were in the right place when we would see herds of Japanese school children. I think their uniforms are so cute. These are barrels of Sake, Japanese wine. They were donated by Sake makers to a Shinto temple.


Here I am trying to imitate the school children.

A beautiful crane on an island surrounded by irises. And perfectly manicured trees.


This is the golden pavilion in Kyoto, one of its most famous sites. On the top of the golden pavilion is a Phoenix, which is quite fitting for a building that has been burnt down several times. Because many of the temples and shrines were built out of wood, many of them have burnt down and been rebuilt. This one was rebuilt around the 1950s to the original design after burning down.


Beautiful lotus flowers.

Here is Jane getting close to the Lilly pads.

We had lunch at the cutest little restaurant. It was in this small ally-way and we would have never known it was there if our guide hadn't shown it to us. It was very delicious. These small rooms that people eat in were surrounding a beautiful courtyard with manicured trees and water features.
Here are Stephen and Jane with a big tori gate. Tori gates are a sign that a Shinto shrine is near by.