Mother

Now I'm all choked up. This video is beautiful.



Most appropriately, my mom told me about it, and the wonderful line within,

"Life doesn't come with a manual

it comes with a Mother."

Mmm, what a fantastic line.

I am so grateful for my wonderful, beautiful, hardworking, supportive, loving, creative, nurturing, good-advice-giving mother and mother-in-law.

Updates

The Nadine blog is updated. There are a few Christmas pictures.

Speaking of Christmas, here's a quick gush: in order to make full use of my fun new camera, I've wanted a good photo editing software. We've been watching Amazon, and it had a great deal on the one we wanted, so Todd bought it for me for Christmas. I've only skimmed the surface of what the software can do, but I'm very much enjoying it so far. I use it to edit the RAW photos, and what a difference it makes.

As an example, here's the original picture we took.

Here's a very quick Lightroom cleanup. So cool huh!

(These pictures are at the Washington DC Temple Festival of Lights.)

Santa's bringing me a list!

We've been singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" with Nadine, so now when we discuss that he's coming she says, "And he bring Nani a yist, an' he bring mama a yist, and he bring daddy a yist." Because, you know, Santa's making lists and giving them out. So cute.

We live in a really great county, and one of the traditions is for the fire department to come through the neighborhoods parade-style, with a Santa who gives out candy. Last year it took us by surprise (and they woke our sleeping baby, so we cursed fire Santa), but luckily this year we had the schedule, so we pushed Nadine's bedtime back a bit. They came through our street on Wednesday at about 8:00 p.m.

They rolled into our neighborhood with lights going and sirens blaring. It was so loud. And so ridiculously cool. Nadine loved it. They had the large fire truck with the ladder (the engine? Megan, help me out with the proper lingo! Ü), an ambulance, an SUV, and a pickup truck with Santa in the back. Then they stopped and gave candy canes to all the kids. The public relations nerd in me was so impressed that the firefighters do this for our community.

So now Nadine knows that Santa comes at night, but if you wonder why she thinks he also fights fires, you'll understand.

Merry Christmas all.

Halloween costume preview

I'll have more time later to blog, but for now here's a preview of Nadine's Halloween costume. This fantastically adorable costume is from Old Navy. It was a great price, and is amazingly well made (especially considering the price). AND it's machine washable; we're converts based on that alone.

I added the eyelashes to make her a girl blue monster. I love the eyelashes.

These Things are good Things

At my mom's request, here's a teaser for Nani's Halloween costume. I'm excited that it's actually done already, and fairly proud of myself for making the whole thing (well, compiling it).

I'm fearful this is becoming a tradition for me

I have a little bit of a wrapping paper compulsion--I love wrapping paper, especially when I can buy it on sale the day after Christmas. I have rolls and rolls and rolls of Christmas paper. It's a bit neurotic, but fun anyway.

Each year I have a favorite Christmas paper. This was last year's paper. I love how there's black on Christmas paper. So non-traditional and beautiful. Last year, because it was my favorite, I didn't wrap many presents with this paper because it is so beautiful. Again with the neurotic.

This year, this is my favorite paper. It's blue! I had forgotten I owned this paper. That's the best part about having myriad rolls of paper--I forget about the ones I have and get to rediscover them every year. Because this is my Choice Wrapping '08, I have a hard time using it to actually wrap presents (I know, I know), so next year I expect many presents will use this paper and I'll find another one I love and won't use. It's a vicious, wonderful cycle.

What Christmas things are you festively neurotic about?

Remember in Hocus Pocus when one of the witches rode a vacuum?

This post is about witches, and also about vacuums. Maybe not in that order. Or maybe it is.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. But I realized this year that I am a crappy fan. We didn't carve a pumpkin, wear costumes, or hand out candy (not that many kids trick-or-treat in our neighborhood any more. Lame.). At least I decorated.

We spent Halloween weekend with Todd's family and had a great time. His dad is the bishop of his ward, so they got lots of trick-or-treaters.

That afternoon we went to Gardner Village with Dave and Rachel and their kids. It's this surprisingly picturesque assortment of shops that displays lots of witches during Halloween. Lots of witches. They were so cool. They had some playing baseball, a witch flying over the creek, dancing witches, etc. It was so much fun to walk around and take pictures.


A month or so ago our vacuum died. This is the vacuum I bought four years ago for $89 at a post-Christmas sale. It was a tough vacuum that got the job done well enough. But then it croaked. And by croaked, I mean it made a nasty noise and emitted a burning smell . . . and sparked. So we stopped using it. And our floors got gross (because I am too lazy to sweep. Oh well.).

We went to Fry's one weekend because they were having a sale on a refurbished Dyson vacuum. We had a great time spending an hour looking at all the different types of vacuums (you know you're an adult when you get excited about appliances), and we were especially impressed by the refurbished vacuum that started it all.

So . . . now we have an awesome bagless spiffy vacuum that looks like a robot. My sister said we should name it Kitt, and I think we shall.

We're excited about the new vacuum, and although I loved the old Kenmore vacuum, I was really excited to leave it in the alley.

This blog is slowly devolving into a forum about bugs. What does that say about me?

We went to my happy place this weekend, my parents' cabin in southern Utah. I love long weekends and church in Pine Valley. It's such a beautiful building.

We did many happy things this weekend. We went on a happy hike up a volcano, and it was a tougher climb than I imagined, but the view at the top was totally worth it. I love these white and red mountains. And you can't tell from these pictures (even though I do have an awesome Gollum thing going on with my bangs) but I got my hair cut a few weeks ago. It's a really cute bob, shorter than my hair has been for years. I love it, and some day I'll get around to posting a picture of it.

Sisters are happy.

We had a Foosball tournament, and it was happy. Lindsay and my dad, whose team name I won't repeat because most people don't work in the medical field and therefore don't appreciate its humor, won the tournament. They were amazing. I was impressed because we all are actually pretty dang good Foosball players.

We also played this crazy (but happy!) game that we called Around the World Ping Pong (I think that's what we called it) where you run around the ping pong table trying to hit the ball. It was fun but totally dizzying.

So overall, my happy place was happy. But the following story is not happy.

My favorite bathroom in the cabin is in the basement. It's bigger and has better water pressure and no one uses it because it's in the basement. Where the mice die in the toilet and the daddy long legs retire in the corners.

I got out of the shower the first morning, after I had done what I thought was a complete sweep of the bathroom. There, staring right across from me, was this bug. If it hadn't been on its back, things would have been really sad. And naked.

(You'll notice I again used my forensic skills to show the size of this thing.) I still used the bathroom the whole weekend, but it was a bit disconcerting to see it laying there, staring at me with its alien eyes. And no, those black things under its face aren't outlining its chin--those are its pinchers. Which it was waving at me the first time I saw it.

I was going to ask you guys if you know what bug it is (those of you from Idaho are probably shaking your heads at me, wondering why Nevadans don't know these bugs). Yesterday I contacted What's That Bug to try to figure out what this is and on their site I discovered--it's a potato bug. What?! And as my sister Lindsay so eloquently said, "Could you imagine one of those things just waving from a russet?"

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

In my 28 years I think I've had three white Christmases (Christmi?). This year I went to Todd's family's house in West Jordan, and we very much had a white Christmas. Lots of snow fell Christmas Eve and early Christmas morning, and although it's beautiful, it's so cold and slick. But it was fun to have new snow on Christmas morning.

We drove up to Utah Friday night and hit a storm going up the mountain near Cove Fort (where a raging fire tried to eat me and Lindsay last summer) but we were very lucky in our drive up there. And the drive home yesterday was beautiful and so nice. It's so much easier to drive during daylight, and also to drive south where it only gets warmer.

I am very lucky to be marrying into a great family. It was nice to spend more than a day and a half with them and to see other families' Christmas traditions. Also it was so nice to relax for a few days. I think I might be finally getting over my cold.

And I am so excited because I finished Todd's stocking before Christmas. I feel so crafty. My mom is great and stayed up with me until midnight to finish it. And I'm pretty proud of it (notice the crooked letters--Jen isn't a master sewer, but her goofs have a cool effect).

Todd got me a ceiling fan/light to put in my front room and I am so excited. I don't have any ceiling lights in my front room and have wanted some for 3 years. Yea for Todd. And his parents gave him tools for Christmas, so we're good to go. Todd rocks.

One very cool thing about getting married three weeks after Christmas is people have an easy wishlist for us, and we were very fortunate to get some great gifts. We really do have awesome families.

OH, and at his parents house on Saturday we watched the Las Vegas Bowl game. Go Cougs. That was such a great ending to what was actually a really bad showing by BYU. I now know another random football play--take the knee! Sheesh.


And of course, here's the requisite Jen's Random Picture of the Trip picture, taken through the windshield of my car, just north of St. George.

For no mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller

I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday of the year. I love the decorations, the changing season, costumes, and trick-or-treaters. This year the trick-or-treaters were surprisingly sparse. It was weird and sad, because they're so cute. And also sad because I now have pretty much an entire Costco-sized bag of Willy Wonka candy. Which is the kind of candy I eat. Oh well.

Todd and I dressed up for a 5-ward activity on Monday. His costume was hot (literally and figuratively) and my costume "fit me," as several people said. Which is true, and I think was a compliment.

Although if I could get my costume to do this

I'd be happy.

I also dressed up for the actual holiday. As a poor girl with a rat eating her brain. Which we all know is a sad thing to happen. This is me and my friend Amelia from work.

And here's the rat. Notice my bloodless face. It was nice to not have to worry about doing my makeup well. Another reason to love Halloween.