30 Day Photo Challenge: Day 2

Day 2: What You Wore

30 Day Photo Challenge: Day 1

Hi friends. In an effort to blog more often, I have decided to tackle one of them 30 day challenges that I came across while doing some of my daily random-stranger-blog-stalking. This particular challenge is a photo challenge, so you are duly forewarned that there will be a multitude of pictures of me, John, me and John, or whatever is the subject of that particular day's post. 

And so it begins. I present to you:

Day 1: Yourself

In light of today's subject, perhaps I shouldn't have waited until 9:43 p.m. after a long day of work and a dance performance afterward to take a picture of my lovely self. (And don't worry that we haven't even eaten dinner yet. And that John is in the kitchen cooking while I'm doing this.) To quote one of my favorite inside joke keychains that my best friends and I loved in high school, "Look away, lest ye be blinded by my beauty."

 And this is how I feel upon realizing that it's already DECEMBER. 

How in the world did we skip the entire months of August, September, October and November?? Because I seriously feel like it was just barely the 4th of July. Slow down, world. 

But P.S. I do love me some Christmas. :)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was fabulous as always. Earlier this month, we had a Family Home Evening at our house with my family and made a blessing tree. John sketched out a tree really fast and we wrote our blessings on the leaves. Things we're thankful for? Family, health, Jesus, the Gospel, sports, employment, and of course, good brownies and cookies. :) 

We spent Thanksgiving Day with my family.

We ate. The food was SO GOOD. My mom totally outdid herself this year. I could seriously eat her homemade stuffing every day for the rest of my life and be more than content. Our contributions this year were the candied yams and an apple pie. I am happy to say that both were successes. I am especially proud of the pie--my first attempt at making a pie from scratch. Behold them in all of their glory, pre-baking.  

We took naps. (And by "we," I mostly mean John. That boy sure does love his sleep.)

We put the little ones to work helping with the remodel of my parent's basement.

We saw The Muppets Thanksgiving night. I loved it. I've had the "mah na mah na" song in my head basically ever since.

I'm guessing that this song will now be in your head for the next week, so...you're welcome.

Mah na mah na. 

What we did in October

Lest you be alarmed that we have died, divorced or otherwise dropped off the face of the planet, I present to you:

 What We Did in the Month of October (and Maybe a Little Bit in September. I Forget.). In Pictures.

Grew these 

(Yup. Weeds. Aren't they lovely?)

 Went for an autumn walk at Silver Lake

 Made these adorably cute pumpkin-shaped rice krispie treats

 Ate this (and subsequently each gained 15 pounds...but holy moly, it was good)

 Dressed up like this

Carved this 

Here's hoping that life slows down just a tad so my next post doesn't consist of only photos taken on my iPhone. I know you all miss my witty banter. :) 

Best of Show

Ahem. Exciting news 'round these parts. SOMEbody's painting won Best of Show at the Utah State Fair!

And maybe SOMEbody kind of, sort of, freaked out when she saw the ribbons. And maybe started screaming and jumping up and down. And maybe pointed out to everyone she could that John was the artist. (And maybe also bragged about it to random strangers at a convention she had to go to for work last week when she overhead them saying they were going to the Fair.) Gosh, who would do such a thing? So embarrassing...

On top of Best of Show, Johnny's painting also won the Shirley Venus Memorial Art Fund Excellence in Art ribbon AND the People's Choice Award. It was quite fun to see people's reactions as they looked at it. They would get super close to it for closer examination and then say things like, "No way!" "That has to be a photograph...how is that a painting?" "I don't get it." One couple was even convinced that it was computer-generated. Ha. (I watched him paint it, people. I can verify that it is, indeed, a painting.) We talked to the lady in charge and when she found out John's was "the car painting," her eyes lit up. She told us the judges went CRAZY over it and were thisclose to bumping him up to the Professional category (John entered it in Amateur, figuring he would have a better shot at getting a ribbon. Umm, pretty sure he would have done just fine in the Professional category...just sayin'.) She also asked if it was for sale. To which we replied, if the price is right. Holy moly. We're movin' on up in the world!

Other fun things we did at the Fair?

-Ate greasy, deep-fried, kind-of-gross, kind-of-delicious food.

-Danced like fools with the nephews during one of the musical acts.

-Had light saber battles.

-Enjoyed the royal butter sculpture.

-Booked it over to see the little piggies before the Fair closed up for the night, whereupon I discovered that they perhaps smell the worst of all the farm animals. But those piglets are maybe the cutest things in all the livelong world.

All in all, we had a grand time. Email me if you would like John's autograph. I don't know if you've heard, but he's kind of a big deal these days. :) 

 

Ten years later

I know I'm a few days late with this, but I still wanted to write down my thoughts on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I still can't believe it's been ten years...

I was a freshman in college on September 11, 2001, just starting my second week at Utah State. My classes didn't start until 10:30 on Tuesdays, so I slept in a little bit and took my time getting ready on those days. I had just gotten up when my roommate Skipper yelled on her way out the door that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. As far as she knew as she left for a day full of classes, it had just been an isolated accident. I was a little weirded out since I had been in New York just three months earlier for a senior trip. We didn't go to the top of the World Trade Center while we were there, but I remember looking up while we wandered around the Financial District and getting a little dizzy at how tall they were. I made my way out to the living room to watch the news, curious to see what had happened. By that time, the second plane had hit the south tower. I was glued to the T.V. for as long as possible before I had to leave for class. I was watching live when the first tower collapsed and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I went to campus having just seen thousands of New Yorkers running through the streets covered head-to-toe in white ash.

There was really no point in going to school that day. The terrorist attacks were the buzz around campus; packs of students were gathered around T.V.s in the TSC (student center) getting as much information as they could. In my second class, Media Smarts, we didn't do any course work. We talked about what had happened and the implications the attacks would have on our country. The rest of the day I just remember watching the news for hours, seeing the same footage over and over and over but still not quite comprehending what had happened. I remember seeing people falling from the towers and thinking it was like something out of a movie, not something that could in any way be real.

On the days that followed, I remember how weird it was not to see any planes flying overhead. I remember patriotic logos at the bottom of every TV station. I remember American flags everywhere and attending candlelight vigils. For the first time, I remember tearing up when I heard the Star Spangled Banner and being immensely proud to be an American. I remember how patriotic and united our country became.

John and I found ourselves watching countless TV specials about the attacks after we got home from church on Sunday, and I couldn't hold back the tears as I re-watched footage that is ingrained in my brain but doesn't get brought to the surface quite so often. We went to the Healing Field in Sandy that night with my parents and brother Jason, and seeing 3,000 flags, each representing a person who died ten years ago that day, was overwhelming. As I read the short paragraph about each person attached to the flags, I couldn't help but get emotional.

As I've gotten older, I realize more and more how short and fragile life is. If there is one thing I have taken away from such a terrible tragedy, it is to love a little harder and never take anything for granted. I am so proud to live in this country and to have the freedoms and opportunities that I do. God bless America.

Remedy for a bad day

On days like yesterday, when you wake up and are already having what you term an "ugly day," and then go to work and everything seems to go wrong and to your utter horror and mortification, you resort to crying in front of two of your co-workers, and then somehow manage to get grease on your shirt and hair as you're walking into your house at the end of the lousy workday...it sure is nice to have this cutie face to come home to. 

Also, might I say thank you to whoever blew the generator that caused us to be without power for most of the night yesterday. It had been far, far too long since John and I had been on an actual "date," so thanks to the no power (and thus, no stove or oven), we had ourselves an impromptu dinner date.

And last but not least, thank you to whomever invented sweet pork and decided it would taste good in a salad. Sweet mother of pearl, that's some good eatin'.