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allibug
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Name: Allison
Metro:
Gender: Female
Interests: Enjoying nature, pondering, spending time with my beautiful friends, feeding my internet addiction, "family bonding time," talking to Matt, reading good and uplifting books, scripture study, family history work, journal writing, and sleeping
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  alli bug37
Member Since:
4/3/2003
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| Spring has come to Cambridge, and I feel alive again! It's also definitely time for me to update! Here's a 10-sentence recap of the past year:
1) I graduated (with a decent GPA, even!) from BYU in April 2007 and Matt, my family, and Dick Cheney came to see the fun event.
 
2) In early June, I spent a fantastic week on Kauai with my mom's side of the family and ziplined, ATVed, and tubed all over that island. (Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!)
 
3) I married my best friend on June 12 in the Laie Hawaii LDS temple and we stayed in Honolulu for our honeymoon.
 
 
4) We arrived in Cambridge, MA, eight days after we got married and lived in Harvard Yard for the summer as proctors for high school kids; we also got to eat in the fanciest dining hall around.
5) I started working for the FAS Office of Finance here at Harvard in July - it's been a great job, but a little slow today, hence the update!
6) We moved into our cozy 440 square-foot apartment on the Charles River, about a 15-minute walk from Harvard Square, which has made it easy for me to get to work and Matt to get to class.
 
7) We went to Thailand in September for the Harvard Model Congress Asia conference that Matt was co-president of and had a great time exploring Bangkok.
 
8) In November we took an amazingly fun vacation to Burlington, Vermont, fell in love with the town, and are still dreaming of owning a house on Lake Champlain someday (or at least I am ...).
 
9) We just decided last week that we'll be moving to Durham, North Carolina, in August so Matt can attend law school at Duke! (Quite the change ... from BYU to being the Blue Devils. ;) )
10) Boston finally warmed up after a brutal winter and it's GORGEOUS outside - I've been celebrating with picnics in Harvard Yard during my lunch break. (The painting below now hangs over our bed and is our view from our balcony, with just a little artistic license taken!)
Life is more wonderful than I expected and Matt and I are SO excited for all of our adventures ahead! Marriage is pretty dang happy and, especially on sunshiney days like today, I'm so grateful for this amazing place where I am in life right now. Matt graduates June 5 and then we're bouncing all around during the summer before law school starts, so we're looking forward to enjoying friends and family. I'm also working on reviving my blogging life so we'll see how things go in the next bit, but for now, this recap will have to do! | | |
| It's been a while since I wrote, and I've been keeping myself *quite* busy in the meantime! School, work, family, and Matt are all going well, but juggling everything is leaving me a bit frazzled and I'm looking forward to graduating three weeks from tomorrow and heading home! This summer is probably going to be the biggest transition time of my life ... being done with school (for a little while, at least), going to the temple, getting married, moving to Boston, starting a full-time job, etc. Gratefully I'll have Matt with me during all of it, which will be a very welcome change!
Matt was here this past weekend and we were able to take engagement pictures, despite the 30° weather, wind, rain, and snow! It was good practice for wedding pictures and we had a bunch turn out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. We were able to go to General Conference in the conference center on Saturday morning and then enjoyed the other sessions from my apartment. I got to go to his mission reunion with him on Friday night and we had a fun time together ... I love that each time we're together we learn so much about each other and grow so much closer. It was a good visit!
I'm off to clean and nap, but here are some of my favorite pictures before I go:
And the one I think we're going to use for our announcements ...
Have a great day, everyone! If you're in Utah, enjoy the sunshine!!! It's *so* beautiful outside!
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| My bubbas are so cool.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/desoto/article/0,1426,MCA_451_5265949,00.html
It's my second day of classes and I have a couple minutes to kill before I head off to my next class.
Life is so wonderful right now. I had a glorious, glorious
Christmas break, and I tell you what, nothing beats knowing that you're
where you are supposed to be. This is my last semester before I
graduate, and things are just working out. Pretty darn well. lol
Off to eat ... I'll try to write more later. And by later I mean
before the end of January, lol. Have a great day, everyone!
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| I don't know why I'm choosing right now to post, because I definitely
don't have any more time now than I have had all semester. But I
figure I needed to update and had some fun pictures to share ... so
I'll procrastinate unpacking and studying for a couple more minutes
while I write!
I got back around 3:00 this morning from the most wonderful weekend in
Boston ... wow, I love that boy. We hadn't seen each other in two
and a half months, but got to spend almost four full days together and
it was incredible. Matt is so good.
I got back in time for about two hours of sleep before my 8:00 class
and then had the privilege of hearing President Hinckley speak this
morning at our devotional. The minute he walks into the room, you
feel his strength, love, and humility. He is so inspiring.
This semester has probably been the hardest one in my education thus
far ... I'm taking 18 hours, 15 of which are major courses, and am
constantly behind. I've been amazed, though, at the way my
Heavenly Father knows me and exactly what I need and is so willing to
help me have the right attitude and give me the things I need. I
have not been alone, even though sometimes it has felt like everyone I
love is somewhere else. Anyways, because this semester has been
such a challenge, my Boston trip was such a relaxing getaway.
Matt and I talked, we went to class, we laughed, we got 15 feet
of Subway sandwiches across the city in a taxi in the pouring rain, we
attended an incredible stake conference, we had tons of fun with Matt's
friends and roommates, we read, we ate fancy desserts, we walked, we
dreamed ... it was wonderful. Here are a couple of pictures of
us, the Harvard campus, and Boston in the fall.
(This was after the Subway adventure ... my hair *had* been straight earlier that morning, lol)
For months I've been saying, "And after we get married I'll move to
Boston for his last year of undergrad" ... it was crazy to realize that
this is the real, live city I've been talking about this whole time and
will be calling home in a few months. We're not pretending
anymore - this is it!
I just realized that I never posted wedding plans or anything here or
anywhere ... in case anyone is wondering, we're planning for June 12,
2007, at the Laie, HI Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints - right after my mom's side of the family gets done
with our family reunion cruise around the islands. Happy day!
Thanks for reading - have a wonderful day! | | |
| So I haven't posted for quite a while ... oh, the things that have
happened in the past 6 weeks! I finished my Memphis internship,
then made a cross-country trip through Bossier, San Antonio, Colorado,
and then made it back in time to start summer classes here at
BYU. They're all going well, but they're so busy! Summer
classes are so condensed that it's a struggle to keep up, especially
when there's an amazing boy you want to spend most of your time
with. Luckily I've been able to keep my grades pretty stable!
It's been so wonderful to have Matt here with me, to be able to see him
every day and cook dinners with him and go on adventures with him and
to just have him here. We've loved exploring Provo ... he takes
such good care of me. There have been lots of surprises and just
all of those fun things you can do when you live in the same place that
we've been missing for the past ... what is it ... four years now?! lol
I hope I've already shared our big news with everyone I'm really close
to ... if not, I apologize! But last Sunday Matt asked me to marry him, and I said
yes! Thanks to Luke and Courtney for being his sounding board ...
the proposal was beautiful. It involved our tradition of Sunday
afternoon picnics, daisies, and Scrabble ... what more could I ask
for?! We're planning on getting married sometime next summer -
the details are still pretty fuzzy. I'm graduating in April and
can then move out to Boston for his last year of undergrad ... it's
been so fun to look at apartments and jobs in Boston. Wow, what
an adventure. But there's no one I'd rather share it with! And amidst all the wedding plans we're throwing
around, we're working on marriage planning, too. That's been the amazingly fun part.
Here are random pictures of past adventures ...
This is the view from the restaurant Matt took me to in Salt Lake last week. So yummy, so beautiful, so wonderful.
And these are the proposal props! (By the way, he didn't actually
ask with the Scrabble board ... it just emphasized the question, lol)
Aren't my proposal daisies beautiful?! And impressive, especially
because Matt made them all by himself. They all had something
written on the back, some made me laugh, some made me cry. My
personal favorite: "I'm sorry my last name is Vandenberg; there's
not much I can do about that now, lol." Several people have
pointed out the fact that I'm going from an "A" to a "V" ... like I
told Matt, if there wasn't such an amazing boy to go along with that
last name, I might have second thoughts, lol jk.
I hope you are all doing well ... have a wonderful Sunday! | | |
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