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I'll try to post some pictures of the Bells at Mt. Vernon, but for now, enjoy this Christmas music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I was at the concert where this was recorded a few years ago, and while a YouTube recording can't compare to the live performance, it's still beautiful. Plus, my friend Carrie was one of the dancers, my old clarinet teacher played in the orchestra and I know a couple people in the choir. Not being there for the Christmas concert this year makes me kind of miss living out west.
- Location:Washington, DC
I'm grateful for:
- All the little things, like paperclips and pennies and four-leaf clovers.
- The books I've read. From the classics I was "forced" to read in school to the books I'm given to review, reading is a joy I never want to be without.
- My teachers. There are many teachers, both in school and out, who have taught me lessons I will never forget and encouraged me is ways they will never know.
- Talents. So many people have been given so many gifts, and my life is better for all those who have shared their talents with me.
- Time. Time to do more, be better, learn something new. Time to say "I'm sorry" or "I love you" or "Good luck today." Time to enjoy life and live it to the fullest.
- The places I have lived. I am a cheese-head by birth, a city-girl by circumstance, a Cajun by adoption and a lover by location. I have been infected with wanderlust, and I've loved every place I have been blessed enough to live.
- Chocolate and ice cream. I think sugar is a far overlooked food group. Dietitians everywhere are cringing, but chocolate and ice cream have gotten me through a lot of very trying times.
- Friends who know how to listen. This is not a talent of mine--I talk way too much--but I have been the beneficiary of wise friends who know when to close their mouths and open their ears.
- Sisters, both by birth and by choice. I have an older sister who is one of my dearest friends, even if I didn't know it until after high school. And I have three of the best sisters in the world thanks to The Scroll, a children's lit class and a little thing called love.
This list could honestly go on forever. How blessed my life is!
Speaking of blessings, the turkey is now in the oven.
We have people traveling from Michigan and North Carolina, so we're having an early dinner rather than a late lunch. We'll really have a full house with kids and friends and maybe a random stranger or two as well.
I love the holidays!
- Location:Washington, DC
Left: Here we are at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago where my sister attempts to strike me down in front of a reproduction of Hammurabi's Code.Right: Everybody loves the Bean. I don't get it. It's a hunk of reflective metal in the middle of Millennium Park that is really called “Cloud Gate.” It's shiny and huge and odd shaped and doesn't look anything like a cloud. Maybe if I was from Seattle I'd find it more interesting.
Below: They were having this Prop 8 protest at Daley Plaza while Jackie was visiting as well. I don't know if I had ever seen protesters of a protest before, but there were people on both sides of the street, police all around and a lot of heated opinions.
Left: Here we are with our good friend Sue who lives at the Field Museum. We got to know Sue pretty well, like that she is 67 million years old, is 13 feet tall, had a bone disease and might not have actually been female. This also isn’t really Sue’s head--the real one is displayed on the second floor but was too heavy to put on the skeleton.Right: This is just a cute picture of me. I never like pictures of me, so I want to show off this one, at least until I stop liking it.
The next set of pictures is from my road trip to Washington, DC. We got a later start than I had hoped, so it was dark by the time we got to all of the pretty stuff in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Pretty much all I saw was this...
(the back of the trailer loaded with all my stuff) and this...
(way too many tollbooths) and this...
(it being a holiday weekend, the police were out in force). Not very exciting, I know.
Then the next day we unloaded and my roommate’s boyfriend (fiance as of last week) helped put all my furniture together. Go Kevin!
The final set of pictures is from New Years.
Left: This is my new haircut that only the stylist will ever get to look this good. I can’t figure out how she did it, and I was watching her and she was explaining what she was doing to me the entire time. I just don’t get it.Right: Celeste, Corinna and I went up to Maryland to see our old roommate Kit who is serving a mission in Baltimore. Kit was singing with a bunch of missionaries for the Festival of Lights at the Washington DC LDS Temple, and since that is only about half an hour from where we live, we snuck up and saw her. We dragged Kevin with us as well so he could take pictures.
Look at the pretty lights. Look at those pretty girls. Sometimes I’d just like to capture a moment in time and never let it go--this was one of those moments. What a way to start the New Year off right.
So now I am caught up. Hopefully I will be able to buy a new camera next month so I can take my own pictures and not fall so far behind again. While this was fun, editing, uploading and captioning all these pictures takes way too long.
- Location:Washington, DC
This isn't a great picture, but it's what I found in my email bin Ch
ristmas afternoon. The quilt is a beautiful green and purple, and I especially like it because it reminds me of gardening with my dad. So to have something my mother made that reminds me of my favorite activity with my dad, now that's a special Christmas present.
I was planning on hitting up a couple after-Christmas sales yesterday, but I woke up sick. I've been watching TV online and think I have found my new favorite show—The Legend of the Seeker. It reminded me of the old Hercules and Xena shows that I loved to much in middle school. It even airs Saturday afternoon like those shows did and features a lot of the same character actors. Of course this wonderful invention called the internet helped me confirm that it is produced by the same people. I am a genius. (Okay, the internet is a genius.) It's been fun to watch, but I'm trying not to get too attached because shows never seem to last very long anymore. I miss the old days when you could depend on even a crappy show staying on the air for a couple of years.
I want to get a haircut. I've even made an appointment for New Years Eve. I'd like to go shorter and funkier, but I don't know if I'm brave enough to do it. I'm thinking of getting it cut like Ashley Greene who played Alice Cullan in the Twilight movie. Though I didn't much care for the movie, I think the haircut is cute. Plus I like to wear headbands, and this seems like a god headband haircut. What do you think?
- Location:Washington, DC
This was an incredibly busy weekend. I know I often complain about having too much to get done on the weekend, but in reality, I prefer to be busy. Not that I don’t love spending three nights and two days doing nothing but reading, writing and catching up on TV, but that gets kind of old after awhile.
Saturday I got some shopping done before heading to a couple of holiday parties. On my way to the first party, I needed to drop all of my moving boxes off at a recycling center, but for traffic-ridden DC and my directional challenged self, that didn’t go as smoothly as it should have. There was a car on top of the median that was holding up traffic in both directions on I-395 and then I was talking on my cell phone and missed the tiny, ill-marked side-street where the recycling center is. So I got to the first party late. The second party was way out in the boonies of Virginia, so I white-knuckled it all the way there. I was so nervous about getting lost in the middle of no where that I think I stopped to check the directions about 20 times in 20 miles. I ended up making it just fine and seeing some deer and a fox along the way.
Sunday morning I went to church and then went to the Holocaust Museum in the afternoon. This is about the fourth time I have been to that museum, but my friend had never been and really wanted to see it. I honestly don’t know if I can emotionally handle going again. If you have never been to the Holocaust Museum, you really should go at least once. It is more powerful than any history lesson you will ever get in school and isn’t as hard to get to as the actual concentration camps in Europe. But it is very emotionally draining.
- Location:Washington, DC
2. Though many of the indie bookstores in my area have closed, one just opened! I'm excited to visit Hooray for Book! to see what they have to offer. And I'll be visiting many of the other indie bookstores in DC in the coming weeks.
3. I am living with two of my favorite people again. Celeste and Corinna were my roommates in college and just happened to have an empty room in their apartment right when I was looking for one. They are tons of fun and both have a passion for YA and children's lit. We have already started trading books and recommendations--even Celeste's boyfriend Kevin is getting in on the book-fun.
4. There are an over-abundance or great Asian restaurants in this area. I can find great Korean, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese...The list could go on forever. I LOVE Asian foods and am excited to be around so many of them.
5. You can do DC on a budget any day. Because so many of the sites in DC are federally funded, I can visit great art, historic sites, gardens, all for free. I know it is kind of nerdy to admit, but I love spending the day wandering museums and learning about interesting things.
6. Some great musicians frequent DC. I know, more of them go to Chicago and the music scene in SLC is more intimate, but there is Ford's Theater, the Kennedy Center, music halls, jazz clubs and so much more right on my doorstep.
7. My brother has talked about coming to visit me for New Year's, my sister is planning a trip out here for the Inauguration, my dad will be here for a conference in March and my mom is visiting for Independence Day. We might not all be together this holiday season, but we'll all see each other again soon. And I'll get to share with each of them in the coming months.
- Location:Washington, DC
I know I should be grateful I come from a big family because it means more people to love, more people to depend on, more people to connect with. But honestly, the best part of coming from a big family is the holidays.
While I just have a younger brother and an older sister, my mom is number eight of twelve, and my dad is the youngest of eight. When you include cousins, in-laws and visiting friends, you can't imagine the number of people we fit into modest-sized homes. As a military family, we always joke we have enough people to make a platoon and enough food to feed a company.
I don't often get to spend holidays with my family and as I won't be home for Christmas this year, I'm especially excited about Thanksgiving. My mom and sister make the pies (I watch from a safe distance), my aunt Marty makes the sweet potato casserole, my aunt Elaine brings the veggies, and the list goes on. I can't wait to see everyone and dig in.
Check out these pies, not including the cream pies Gwen will make tomorrow morning. Maybe if I have just one bit of each pie I won't half to be rolled home at the end of the day. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll have to be rolled home anyway, so I might as well dig in.
(back: apple and cherry; front: pumpkin, pecan, pumpkin)
- Location:Aurora, IL
I went to the Naperville Labor Day Parade this morning with my mom, two of her sisters and various other family members. I haven't been to a parade since I went to the 2006 Boise Thanksgiving Day Parade and the New York City St. Patricks Day Parade right after that. But I used to be in parades all the time when I was a marching band nerd. (In all honestly, can you really ever outgrow being a band nerd?)
The Naperville parade is a community parade through and through. All of the local high schools play, dance schools perform, clubs make floats, scout troops throw candy and politicians kiss babies. I can't vote in the Naperville elections, so I spent most of the time avoiding the flyers/head dresses/stickers/nail files/fans/frisbees people were shoving in my face and instead watched the kids around me go crazy over suckers and puppy dogs. The most exciting moment came when a local restaurant's ice cream float got stuck under the train bridge and held up the parade for quite awhile. The plumbers' union had to go around and the Wabansee High School marching band had to be held back until the float could be backed out and hauled away. This resulting in many waiting for the ice cream to melt on a hot day jokes and a special laugh on my part because I know the family who owns the restaurant, and Clinton will never hear the end of this.
(I'll post a picture of the ice cream float as soon as I get a copy from my mom, and we can all point and laugh together.)
Last night we had a big family picnic at my aunt's house. My uncle just turned 50 so we had cake and ice cream for him, but it was really an excuse for all of us to get together and have some fun. A bunch of my cousins were in town from school and jobs, and most of my mom's siblings were there (she comes from a family of 12 kids, good Roman Catholics that they are). My cousin had made his dad a bean-bag toss game for his birthday, so a bunch of use played that, but I lack the coordination it takes it get a 4-inch bean bag into a 6-in hole from twenty feet away and ended up watching most of the time. Then my cousin from California brought out her bocce ball set, and I found that I am actually pretty decent at the game because it takes more finesse and physics than actual skill and coordination. Hooray for European sports!
Now the holiday weekend is almost over. I'll have to get back to actually writing (I mean it!) and finding a job. Oh the glories of having a college degree and no job to show for it.
- Location:Aurora, IL
My friend was supposed to come up from Salt Lake City for the holiday--you know, fireworks over the river, day-trip to Yellowstone and all that--but she ended up not being able to come. So instead, I made a ginormous fruit salad to take over to another friend's house and gorged myself on burgers and home-made rootbeer and peach cobbler. Plus, I got to play in the wading pool with their 18-month old, which was way too much fun. Every time I'd splash him, he would let out this squeal of delight that would send all of the neighborhood dogs into a frenzy.
(Post-splash squeal)
I've really been getting into the WFMAD challenge. You have no idea how timely it was for me to be given this motivator. So in honor of the challenge, I've been thinking about my favorite time and place to write. And it so happens that I am doing it at this very moment.
I love Saturday mornings when the house is clean and quiet--the tub is scrubbed, the garbage has a new liner, the dishes are clean, the floor is vacuumed-- and I am ready to the day--showed, dressed, teeth brushed, hair as done as it ever gets. I throw open the window and sit down at my clean desk and just type. Smelling that fresh summer air (even when it's cold I'll crack my window open a little) and knowing that I have already done a lot that morning really helps the creativity move.
Then to wrap-up, I like to take a walk along the irrigation ditch where everything is so green and fresh. Sometimes I'll walk to the post office and then up to the library. Or maybe I'll just go along up to the gas station and get an ice cream cone or sit in the park and read. I love summer.
(Who would have guessed Idaho really could be green?)
- Location:Rexburg, ID
I went to visit some friends in Boise for the holiday. Usually I do Thanksgiving with them, but my Uncle passed away, so I went to Chicago instead. Last week when a friend of mine said she was driving up to Boise to visit her sister and invited me to go with, I jumped on the chance. And it's a good thing I did.
My friends whom I was visiting have three kids, all under the age of five. They are the most amazing parents who totally love their kids and play with them and do fun things as a family but aren't afraid to discipline their kids. I think if I was a parent, I wouldn't be able to be friends with them because they'd just make me look bad.
The problem is that the dad has some pretty major medical problems. He's been really lucky and hasn't had to be admitted to the hospital since before his oldest son was born, but friday night his wife woke me up to say she was taken him to the emergency room. So I "watched" the kids (they were all asleep, and so was I for that matter) until she came home from the hospital at 5:30 a.m., without her husband.
He's doing okay now but is still in the hospital. So instead of just visiting my friends, I've been helping with the kids and the housework and spending time at the hospital. While I wouldn't exactly say it's been a fun weekend, I was really grateful I was able to be here.
This family have been really good friends to me. They've feed me at Thanksgiving when I couldn't afford to fly home to be with my family. They let me stay with them for a week when my job started but school hadn't and I couldn't get into my apartment yet. They let me park their car in their garage for the summer, they've invited me to weddings, baby blessings, family dinners and birthday parties. Really, they are my family in the West. I was just glad I could give back, in a little portion, all the love they have given me.
So now I'm going back to Rexburg, and my friend's sister is coming from Rexburg to Boise to help out until the dad gets out of the hospital. Keep your fingers crossed he'll be back with his family tomorrow!
- Location:Boise, ID
