i love to see the temple

Our Family Home Evening committee leaders asked people to submit pictures of the Baton Rouge temple for a photo contest this month, and these are the four I entered. I love our little temple so much and hope to be sealed for time and all eternity to the man I love in this beautiful building (I WILL be married in the temple - no doubt about that - but it remains to be seen which one I will go to although as of now this one is my preference...it also remains to be seen which man I will marry as well...). They just added all of these beautiful flowers on the grounds in the past couple of weeks as the temple was closed for cleaning and I think the azaleas are a new addition. I love azaleas because they remind me of home and to see them in front of the temple (which is essentially the starting point of a home in our church) just makes me so happy. I look forward to watching General Conference this weekend at the stake center and spending the breaks between sessions outside in the shadow of the Lord's house. I'll leave you with a few more pictures that I took:




I love this tree by the stake center; it reminds of fractals and high school math.

happy pi day!

This is quite possibly the nerdiest/coolest thing ever!

l'hotel shuler

So my life is kind of blah right now (hence the lack of blog posts as of late). Boys, being a grownup and the economy have really been getting on my nerves recently so I decided to take a little break from everything and head over to Heaven on Earth, also known as Liberty County, Florida. Since I have a cap on my hours at my job and I worked two weeks' worth of hours in one week, I basically had a week off to take this little jaunt. Fortunately there was room for me at Hotel Shuler, which had accommodations suited just for my needs - isolation from the world, a lovely guest bedroom with no street lamps to shine through my windows at night, a wonderful in-house chef, many opportunities to exercise, and plenty of entertainment, mostly in the form of adorable children as well as great movies. It was so refreshing to leave behind all of my worries and ignore most texts and phone calls and have some good clean fun. Here are my favorite pictures I snapped of the four cutest kiddos east of the Mississippi:




Okay seriously how could anyone feel down with a face like that around? Lukey is sooooo cute and he knows it! I got some other great pictures but for now I'm going to post some videos that made this trip so memorable.

This first one is for Lydia and all others who love horses such as myself:

Then there's the Lukey Shuffle - pretty much the cutest thing ever! I cannot get over this baby's cuteness!

I don't remember when, but one time when I was visiting I had the soundtrack of Oliver! stuck in my head and apparently I sang it aloud. Well Juliette remembered this and kept me laughing with her renditions (as did Jonathan, with his 6-year-old humor versions).

Primary songs from Miss Priss Juliette, while we all enjoyed some ice cream (especially Matthew, who by the looks of it didn't want to waste a drop). I got another video of Jules singing but it's taking forever to load so I'll try to post it later.

Well that's all for now, as it is approaching my new bedtime (thank you acclimation to Eastern Time Zone!). I will try to post some more pictures in the coming days.

the art of a preview

Sometimes when I used to get bored at my old job I would watch previews of upcoming movies. Most of them looked like garbage and I would quickly move on to the next but every now and again I'd find a good one that got me excited about what would soon be hitting theaters. I haven't had much time to keep up with this hobby lately but this weekend a screen shot of Brad Pitt with a nice haircut caught my eye so I decided to check out what this latest preview had to offer. I've since watched it at least five times (and it really doesn't have too much to do with the fact that Brad Pitt is in it). Check it out here:



True beauty caught on film and depictions of real-life joys of the smallest degree - breathtaking shots and scenes of chasing bubbles, running in the road, playing in the tub, building forts from bed covers, enjoying the rain, and being tickled - coupled with the sounds of a lovely piece by Czech composer Biedrich Smetana ("The Moldau"). There are also the uncomfortable scenes of a seemingly aggressive father but to be honest if it were all rainbows and butterflies it wouldn't seem so real. A beautiful two minutes and eleven seconds that stirs many emotions inside me and evokes countless memories. There are some great lines as well - "Someday we'll fall down, and weep, and we'll understand it all - all of things" and "Unless you love, your life will flash by." Now of course I know that this movie may just turn out to be trash, but the preview - oh the preview! After doing a bit of research I discovered that the same people who made this also made the trailer for 'Where the Wild Things Are', another one of the best previews I've seen. And yet, I didn't enjoy the movie so much. So I guess that it shows that trailers can be beautiful in their own right, regardless of how the movie turns out. If there were a category in the Oscars for best preview, this one would take the cake. Simply spectacular.

national geographic photo contest

These pictures just blow my mind! Check out the winners and finalists at 2010 National Geographic Photo Contest - Galleries - National Geographic Magazine.

on this day

In honor of Inception coming out on DVD today I'd like to share with you my favorite version of the preview, which has brought me many laughs over the past few months.

Other important things about today:

The 69th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and I haven't heard a thing about it on the news, which makes me sad. I wonder how long it will take people to forget about September 11th.

Elizabeth Edwards passed away today after a six-year fight with cancer. This makes me sad and happy at the same time. Although I never supported John Edwards it was exciting to see the Edwards family when they stopped in Natchitoches one August afternoon in 2004. John Edwards is someone whom I esteem about as much as the dirt on the bottom of my shoes but Elizabeth was a classy lady and kept her head held high. It's sad that her children are still so young but I'm sure she's happy to see her teenage son on the other side. These are some pictures I took of the pictures I took when the Edwards stopped by:With his $400 hairdo and wicked smile. Vomit.A classy lady and her double-chinned bodyguard.

In more cheerful news I helped Sister Woods decorate the mission home for Christmas today and I am hoping to finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) tonight. Wingardium Leviosa!

these are a few of my favorite things

Although this is one of the ugliest cars I have ever seen, I could listen to this commercial all day for two reasons: Wagner and Robert Downey, Jr.



Yes m'am.

handy

So you know how I became a fan of tap dancing this summer? Well yesterday my friend Ben showed me this video that takes tap dancing to a whole new level and puts that ole cup game everyone learned at summer camp to shame. Enjoy!

categories

On Saturday evening I went to a pool party for my friend Curtis. It was his birthday yesterday and I hadn't been swimming all summer so I suggested we plan a gathering at his apartment's pool but then our friend Scott offered his parents' - even better! It felt so good to dive into the water in my new swimsuit that I got last week for 80 percent off its original price and swim around like a fishy. Only seven of us actually got into the pool, so we felt it was our duty to have cannonball contests and get the wieners wet who didn't want to dip. After swimming around and goofing off I suggested that we play 'Categories', which I loved playing when I was a kid at the Storrs' pool. Some of them had never played before (gasp!) so I had to explain the rules. The person who's it picks a category, such as 'colors', and then plugs their ears while everyone else picks a color for themselves as well as a 'family' color. Once that's decided the 'it' person sits on the diving board with their back to the pool and calls out colors. When your color is called you have to swim to the other side of the pool without them hearing you and diving in to tag you. If he or she calls the family color then everyone has to go. If the person who's 'it' turns around after calling a color and no one is going, then they have to scoot up on the diving board, further from the water as a penalty. Anyways so everyone agreed to play and we nominated an 'it' to pick a category. As a kid with all of my Storrs pals we chose categories such as Disney movies, cereals, farm animals, colors, junk foods, etc. I must say that it is much more entertaining when playing with peers in their early to mid-twenties. Here are a few of the categories we used:

• 'Lost' characters
• Pizza toppings
• 'Lord of the Rings' characters
• Latter-day prophets
• Gale Beggy quotes
• Types of cancer

Some of the suggested categories that we did not use (all offered by the one and only Ben P):

• Goldmine era diseases
• Black US presidents
• People in this pool
• Wheelchair bound astrophysicists

This may be an "I guess you had to be there" story, but I can't help but laugh now, thinking about his suggestions and the manner in which he offered them so I just wanted to remember that moment by immortalizing it in a blog post. I <3 my nerdy witty guy friends!

DO try this at home, fellas

So the past couple of days I have been reading a book called The Nazi Officer's Wife, the true story of an Austrian Jewish woman who forged some papers and assimilated into German culture to survive the Holocaust. It was an okay book, not really inspirational but intriguing nonetheless. Anyways this lady was courted by and eventually married a member of the Nazi party, who wasn't all bad. She recalled this occurrence from the beginning of their courtship:

"Is that why you got a job that keeps you out of the war?" I asked. "Because you joined the party?"
"Ah, no, no - it's because I am blind in one eye. I had a motorbike accident and cracked my skull and severed the optic nerve. Look closely, you'll see." He leaned across the table to show me his blind eye. I leaned across the table to look. He leaned closer. I looked harder. He kissed me.
It was a shock, how much I enjoyed that experience. I was surprised at myself, and I must have blushed. Werner laughed at my embarrassment. "My, you're a sweet girl," he said.

Okay so I'm going to forget for just a moment the fact that he was a Nazi and just think of him as a guy on a date and say that that is the cutest thing ever! He really was blind in one eye but I'm just going to put this out there: future husband, wherever you are, feel free to try this trick with some suave for the first kiss instead of awkwardly going in for the kill. I'm just saying.