What Happened To Hans?

"Thank you Hans.
-Fritz
What happened to Hans?
-There is no Hans, only me Fritz.
Oh what a shame."

Hans bit the dust the other day, which is sad, but somehow this quote made it pretty funny. For those who don't know this quote it's from "What's Up Doc." So we're not sure what happened to Hans, he was fine one moment and dead the next. Fritz seems pretty unphased.

We plan to get another Hans ;)

Meet the New Additions to the Family

So I guess this is entirely my fault...I went to a RS meeting two sunday's ago and noticed that Melinda had two fish in a bowl on one of her bookshelves. They looked so cool, just as part of the furniture...if you weren't looking closely at everything you would miss them. So I came home and was like...um maybe we could get some fish? So that's what we did. Meet Hans and Fritz... "and the king",Pody(Poseidon) the frog. Hans is a Creamsicle Molly and Fritz is a Sunburst Platy. Pody (Poe-dee), who kind of steals the show is a "bottom dweller" frog. He's super cute. The plants we got are real so hopefully they will last. It's fun to have them around and they are a good addition to the family. Luckily Maki has no interest in the fish...she didn't care about "Worm" either. Mostly she is just interested in their food which smells like shrimp.

Here they are! ( sorry the pictures are bad, it's hard to take good ones through a bowl with bad light.)

Winter Wonder

Good Times Noodle Salad...or White Chili

We had some fun guests stop by Sunday night for White Chili and gingerbread! Originally the Stansbury 4, Airie and Abram, and the crew from Oregon were going to come but some of them, it seems, got struck by the plague...so Baron and the Oregon crew are the only ones that made it. I'm sad that you all couldn't make it, but we'll get together again soon...I hope you all get better quick, it's no fun to be sick.
For the occasion Leslie made her famous White Chili and we made gingerbread houses. It was really fun to have everyone over, and Talmage's house was cute even though he was mostly excited about eating the candy and had to be coaxed into putting any on the house ;) We're glad y'all could come!

The Gingerbread Man: evidence of what really happened to the candy

The garage edition in the back of the house...Talamage was pretty excited about that.

No fair

Me on Christmas.

I woke up on Christmas morning sick, unfortunately I remained quite sick for another week, spending a great deal of time in bed. I am finally starting to get over it, hooray! Also the majority of my family came down with the same thing :( I wish you all a speedy recovery!

Doubt

There haven't been too many films that I have looked forward to in the recent months but when I heard that Doubt was coming to the big screen I was excited for it, especially when I saw the cast and the short preview... it looked awesome. Even though I've been super sick for the last week, hardly even leaving bed, I really wanted to go see it so I bundled up, took a box of tissues and went with Leslie last night. Despite my sickly state I really loved this film. John Patrick Shanley does an amazing job of making the transition from stage to screen without out making it seem stretched or stuffed at all. The characters and story are so intriguing. The actors do an amazing job with their parts using a subtlety which is so crucial to the story. This movie makes you think and in the end everyone can come up with their own conclusions...even between Leslie and I we ended up on opposite sides as far as our feelings of what the conclusion was. Which was neat because that's kind of the point of the film, to leave you in doubt. This movie makes you think about what role doubt and certainty can play in our lives. What do we really know? How much should we trust our gut feelings? Do our impressions of people taint our judgements of them? I highly recommend this movie to everyone, it was very well done and highly enjoyable.

NEW JOB!!!!

So I was informed this morning that The Family Support & Treatment Center wants me to work for them! I applied at the Center about two weeks ago and had an interview with them last Friday and a second interview this last Monday. I will be working for them as their Intake Specialist and Receptionist. After interviewing with the Center twice and meeting all of the staff I am very excited to start working for them. Everyone was very friendly and dedicated to the work that they do...It seems like a very happy supportive place. The Center is non-profit and works with abuse and neglect victims. They offer treatment and support through therapy and support groups but also focuses primarily on prevention with a Community Outreach Program including parenting classes, 24 hour Crisis Respite Nursery, In-home Respite, education in schools etc. I'll be starting work January 5th, Hooray for new jobs!

Here's their website if you would like to check it out: http://utahvalleyfamilysupport.org/index.shtml

Ring Christmas Bells

First let me start by thanking Airie and Abram for the opportunity to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas concert. Without their generosity(they gave us their tickets) I never would have had the experience(until next year when the DVD comes out.) Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Next let me tell you that the concert was "out of this world" A-mazing! The Concert was entitled "Ring Christmas Bells" and there were bells with most musical numbers, tons of them. There were probably about 100 bell ringers with two bells each.

Brian Stokes Mitchell was the preforming guest and if you don't already know I love him! I was able to see him preform on Broadway in Ragtime. I also really love him in Prince of Egypt.(He sings Jethro's part: "Look Through Heaven's Eyes".) Anyway he was charming and his songs were stunning.

Some of my very favorite songs were preformed including: "I Saw Three Ships" the Mack Wilberg arrangement, "Look Through Heaven's Eyes", "Heavenly Beasts" a fun song about the animals in the stable when Christ was born Brain Stokes Mitchell sang all the animals in there animal appropriate voices, "Grateful" a song that Brian Stokes Mitchell played on the piano and sang, "Go Tell it on the Mountain" an organ solo which was preformed mostly with the foot pedals it was truly amazing, and "Angels from the Realms of Glory".

The other guest was Edward Herrman (yes the Priest from North Avenue Irregulars) he expertly narrated the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the back ground for his Christmas carol, which I admit brought me to tears and ended with the Choir breaking out in "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day". It was beautiful.

Overall it was magical to be in the Conference Center and hear and see and feel everything that was there. It was also really fun to be there with Leslie, Mom and Dad! It truly gave me a special feeling of the Christmas season and the joy and love that can surround each of us.

Breakfast with Ed

I had a happy reunion with Ed last Thursday morning at the McDonald's on Bulldog. Ed, to answer to answer your questions is a super cool girl that I worked with at Camp Cloudrim. Finding old camp friends is not an easy task for me...especially ones from Cloudrim(which was my favorite camp experience).

First there is the whole name debacle. Since everyone at camp goes by camp names remembering their "real" name can be almost next to impossible at times. It would be convenient if people just listed themselves as their camp name in phone books or on facebook but that doesn't seem to be the trend among camp folk. Then there is the fact that I left on my mission to Japan right after I got home from camp and thus lost track of just about everyone.

So here's Ed's story... Ed got married when I was on my mission and moved to my favorite place, Oregon! So of course we were destined to find each other again. Like the week before I went up to Oregon in March of this year Ed joined facebook and we found each other. So while I was in Oregon for the week Leslie and I went down to Corvallis to visit Pesto(another camp friend) and Ed came up from Eugene and we went out to dinner with Ed and her 3 year old daughter Ahna. It was really fushigi(strange yet familiar?) It was crazy to see Ed after so many years and find that she hasn't changed at all. So a week or so before the recent reunion I noticed that Ed was online via yahoo chat... and I pinged her. She answered back and we started to chat and I found out that she was coming down to Utah the next week to visit family(her husband Colby was on a business trip back East)and she would be passing through Provo. So we set up a second rendezvous on Thursday December 4th.

We met at McDonald's because they have an indoor playground so Ahna and Ed's 18 month old nephew that was in tow could be somewhat entertained. It was wonderful to see Ed again. Ed was one of my favorite camp people at Cloudrim(and you too Moose). She was so genuine, fun, creative and sweet. She was always helping everyone with everything and played the occasional joke which was fun to be in on ;) I brought my camp pictures and we looked through them and reminisced about campy things. It was fun and it made me realize how magical Summer Camps have been for me. It was a short visit but it was wonderful to see her. We decided that since both of our reunions have been last minute miracles that we were meant to be friends. I'm excited to head back up to Oregon and go backpacking with Ed next time.

I was very sad that I didn't take any pictures of Ed while she was here :( So I stole a picture of her off of her facebook;) Here she is with her daughter Ahna.

Making Christmas

Trim Up the Tree with Christmas Stuff...

...and bingle balls and foo foo fluff. Behold some Christmas stuff...

And lets not forget the foo foo fluff...After finishing the tree Maki came out from her "bat cave" in the couch and headed straight over to check out the tree and of course the first thing she tried to do was chew on it. I think she was somewhat put out considering a.) her cat house had been moved and a tree put in it's place and b.) she no longer has access to the top of the fire place. I really think she loves the Christmas lights though...she eventually settled herself on the window sill and sat looking at the lights and purring for a long time.

Things I Love About the Season

-The glow of tiny lights
-Crisp white snow
-The smell of pine trees
-Singing
-Cooking and Munching
-Warm Scarves and Sweaters
-Potato Salad and Shrimp Dip
-Bone-In Ham ;)
-Temple Square
-The sounds of bells, strings and horns
-Soft warm flames
-The glow of falling snow
-Quiet Moments
-Icicles
-Cheese Balls and Summer Sausage
-Silver, Crimson and Emerald
-Peace
-Family
-Simple wishes
-Sharing, giving, serving
-Feeling and showing love

Order on the Court

It seems that Abram is finally finding ways to fill up the immense amounts of time that he has had since becoming a "law student" and working two part time jobs. (one as a law clerk and the other as my mechanic). He joined the AHM Provo City League for basketball. We got to go see him play on his team of coworkers at good old Independence High School. I used to go to school there with the kids I worked with, and yes it still has that same smell. Why is it that schools have unique smells that never go away? Anyway it was a fun game to watch and Abram is a very orderly player. Good Luck with the rest of your season, Go Abram!!

Comfort Books

As most of you know I love children's illustrated book and I have a quite a little collection of carefully selected books. They all have beautiful illustrations and quirky stories from people such as Shaun Tan, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Emily Gravett, Gris Grimly and Toni DiTerlizzi. I love all my books but there are a few special ones that I reach for on grey days that lift my mood. I call them my comfort books, and I thought I would share them with you.




The Red Tree by Shaun Tan is a beautifully illustrated book about what having a grey day is like. Shaun uses wonderful imagery to capture the feeling of simple phrases such as: "sometimes you just don't know what you are supposed to be", "all your troubles come at once", wonderful things are passing you by.

This picture depicts the phrase:
"nobody understands"

Although the book seems dark and depressing from this description, it has a wonderful message of hope. That at the end of the day things will turn out alright and good things will come.

My next book: The Tale I told Sasha is a a poem about a girl that has a yellow ball that her mother gave to her "because the day was wet and dull."
Through following her yellow ball through the rooms in her house she discovers many wonderful things and we see into her imagination the beauty

of

make believe. This story again has a message of hope and joy in small things. The end of the poem states:

Our house is quiet, small and plain

and yet it's rooms run far and wide

A hundred pencils, swift as rain,

writing on sheets of beaten gold

would not be quick enough to hold

the strange adventures shadows hide.

My last book, You Are My Sunshine, is a Toot & Puddle book by Holly Hobbie. This book is simply written and has an important message: Sometimes people are sad and there might not be a good reason or much you can do about it and that's okay. In this story Toot wakes up one day and is

"moping". As his mopey days continue his best friend Puddle tries to cheer him up by doing everything he can think of that will make Toot happy. But Toot continues to

mope. I'm not going to spoil too much of it for you but in the end Puddle learns that sometimes all you can do is love someone and Toot learns that friends are very important.

Maybe it's time to apply dirt?

I put this thing is water probably about two months ago...

Maki checked it out and let me know there was a problem: too many roots to get a good drink out of it.

Maki and the Remote

Maki has this habit of trying to pet herself with other objects, usually it's shoes, but today I caught her doing it with the DVD remote. She got a little carried away a few times and tired to chew on it(hence you'll hear me yelling). I put the remote up right after this. Man raising a cat is hard work ;)

Can You Believe It!!!

I saw a fully decorated Christmas Tree up in someone's house/window yesterday, yes yesterday the 6th of November! Wow. I remember when people were putting them up over Thanksgiving weekend and I thought that was pushing it. This year I also saw Christmas Decorations for sale at Target at the end of September! ...don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, I'm just not a huge fan of the commercialism.

Yoga!

Yes it's true I've started doing yoga again over the last month. I say again because I took a yoga class forever ago in college. I enjoyed the class but just never kept up with it. I know I've talked about doing it again for quite some time but now I'm actually doing it.

For anyone that has done yoga before, you know that it's not that easy to just get into it. Yoga is all about flexibility and strength, two things that I greatly lack. I picked up a new mat and video from...where else? R.E.I. I got the AM PM yoga with Rodney Yee video, and although good old Rod is said to be one of the best, the man does yoga in a Speedo and I'm NOT a big fan of Speedo's. Luckily for me yoga video's are more to listen to and not to watch. But when I do have to glance at the screen to make sure I'm doing the pose correctly I always wince just a little. I know guys say that they are comfortable but whoever designed the Speedo was not thinking of everyone else that would have to see guys in them.

So yes my yoga journey has started, and you can now make fun of my new age ways. I've been REALLY sore from all the abnormal things I've made my body do, but I will testify that Yoga does wonders for your stress levels, and helps you to have more energy and helps aches and pains a LOT.

(I don't think Maki quite knows what to make of the Yoga experience, she hangs around and rubs up on my legs while I do it...I think mostly she just wants to use my mat as a scratching pad.)

Halloween Hoopla!

It was a super fun night!

Spanish Fork Canyon

Another hike this weekend up to the Hot Springs in Spanish Fork Canyon. It was wonderful, I love this time of year!

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