Mmmmm....

I am really finding out how much I LOVE cooking. We've tried new recipes the past two nights, and they've both been great! Last night we made Peppered Citrus Pork Chops (recipe here), and tonight we made Chicken in Creamy Pan Sauce (recipe here). The chicken was delicious!! We served it with rice and it was so good. I love cooking. It's WAY more fun than my homework! :D

And a Happy Easter to one and all!

It was SO nice for us to go down to Logan for the weekend. I love spending time with my family, and it's neat to see how it has just gotten better since I've been married. We've always been close and had a great time together, but every step in my life seems to help me enjoy my family even more than I did before. I think maybe it is because we added a new family member with Kent; he fits in so well and everyone just loves him.

We did so many things this weekend! It was busy, but so good.

On Friday night after we arrived in Logan (and after my ear piercing adventure) we had a big family dinner and easter party in the Church gym. There's so many little cousins and babies that it's gotten easier to do it in a church than in a house. The kids can play basketball or run around all they want and it doesn't make any difference. We had great food, good time visiting with family, an easter-egg hunt in the dark with flashlights (very exciting!), and we gave my Grandpa Murray the Blurb book I made for his 80th birthday that had letters to him and memories of him from all the family.

On Saturday morning we woke up very, very early to drive down to Salt Lake because my sister, Sarah, is in the choir for the Young Women's General Meeting and we went down to watch the dress rehersal in the Conference Center. It was incredible! The Spirit was very sweet, and all those Young Women are so beautiful. Their version of "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" was especially good. Kent and I had lots of fun helping entertain the two little boys while we sat in the Conference Center for five hours during the rehersal. Lots and lots of "Rock, Paper, Scissors."

Saturday afternoon back in Logan we found our Easter baskets (The Easter Bunny comes on Saturday to our family) by following the trails of jelly beans all through the house. He even taped jelly beans up the side of the wall to lead to Jonah's basket above the cupboards. I got a paper cutter, DaVearl's Seasoning, and the movie August Rush in my basket. Kent got the soundtrack for Enchanted, a nice purple tie, pecans, and candy. Then we decorated LOTS of Easter eggs. And by lots I mean 6 dozen eggs!

Saturday night my oldest younger brother, Josh, was in a singing/dancing/acting show that my parents took Kent and I too. There was a nice pasta dinner and then the show was really, really good. My brother definitely got the genes for performing from my dad. I'm sorely deficient in that. :D He was great, and he looked so dashing in his all-white, polyester suit and vest in the disco number they performed.

Sunday was a nice, relaxing Easter with tons of good food and just having fun being home with the family. Now we're back at school, with only 15 school days to go!

If only we had a camera...

Here's a little funny story from our weekend in Logan:

Jonah and Nathan, my little brothers, were outside playing on Sunday and I noticed that Jonah was climbing around in my car with his muddy shoes on while Nathan stood outside the car with a sort of "I don't think this is a good idea" look on his face. I was going to go tell Jonah to get out of the car, but then I decided to have some fun with it. So while we were still inside watching them out the window, I turned the car alarm on. Nathan squealed louder than the alarm and then just started giggling and giggling because he knew Jonah was in trouble and he wasn't. Jonah's eyes got huge and then he jumped out of the car faster than I thought was possible. He started pointing his finger at Nathan, trying to blame his little brother, but Nathan was doubled over giggling, and Jonah was starting to freak out a little and trying to figure out how to fix the car without telling us he had been in it. We were laughing so hard. I just can't stop thinking about that squeal of Nathan's. So funny.

Pierced Ears!!

My parents told me I couldn't get my ears pierced until I was 13, and once I got to that age I never really wanted to do it. But then, a few months ago I started wanting to wear earrings, so on Friday, on our way down to Logan for the weekend, we stopped and got my ears pierced! Wahoo!

Acquiring Knowledge!

I was trying to come up with something to blog today, and I realized that there is a whole lot of information running through my mind. Some facts are from class lectures, some from essays I'm writing, some from books I have to read, projects I'm working on, and some are just because they are there. So here are 10 things that have gone through my head today as I acquire knowledge.

1. William Wordsworth’s contemporary, Samuel Coleridge, outlined one of Wordsworth’s strengths as “the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions as taken immediately from nature, [prove] a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the works of nature” (from my humungous research essay I mentioned a few posts ago...yep, still working on it)

2. "In the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already considerably advanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question, but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil, that made my heart sicken in my bosom" (Mary Shelley Frankenstein, Volume III, chapter II).

3.Raphael's fresco, School of Athens, is painted in a radial pattern of arrangement.

4. A goldfish, if kept in the dark for long enough, will turn white. (I read that in a magazine, and I tend to hold on to silly facts forever)

5. "The Vitalist Debate”: Pitted “materialism” (life stems from biological sources only) versus “vitalism” (life stems from a higher, extra-biological source). Publicly staged debate held at London’s Royal College of Surgeons. Senior surgeon, John Abernathy, lectured in 1814 on the mysterious “superadded” force, a “subtile, mobile, invisible substance” that animated humans.

6. Michealangelo's David statue is in what pattern of arrangement? Answer: a) Vertical.

7. On average, women blink 10 times more often than men. (refer to explanation on number 4)

8. A horizontally-arranged painting or photo has a strong line going across the page, and usually follows the rule of thirds, with the horizon on either the first third or top third of the image. (Kent and I had a humanities test today...can you tell?)

9. "To Helga Crane it was the realization of a dream that she had dreamed persistently ever since she was old enough to remember such vague things as day-dreams and longings. She liked it, this new life. For a time it blotted from her mind all else. She took to luxury as the proverbial duck to water. And she took admiration and attention even more eagerly" (Nella Larsen, Quicksand, Chapter 13).

10. The Reading Tutoring Center (where I work as a tutor) has a secret stash of candy. It's in the top drawer on the left side of Sister Engstrom's desk.

I have realized that there is always something to learn every day, even when we're not going to school for hours and hours. Some learning is forgotten quickly (as I'm walking out of the testing center), and some sticks around, and sometimes learning changes the way you view the world or your life. What have you learned today?

It's all relative

Yesterday some of our friends from the ward invited us to dinner, so we walked over to their apartment. I was so happy because it has finally gotten to what I can call


Flip-Flop Weather! (Three cheers!!!)



My feet were so happy to be out of normal shoes at least for a little while! Flip flops aren't allowed on campus because of our dress code, but you can be sure I'll be wearing them everywhere else from now on this year. I've also stopped wearing a coat and I'm down to just a jacket or a sweater. And I can't decide if all of this is because it's actually getting warmer, I'm just rebelling against this stinkin long winter, or because I've gotten so used to the cold by this point that I can hardly feel it anymore.


And yes, that is snow next to my foot. Here's the weather forecast for Rexburg this week, just so you understand what Flip-Flop weather actually means to me. Yes, it's all relative.

A day in the life of me

Thanks for the idea, Teresa!

Adorable

I just had to post these pictures of my adorable cousins. They're so cute! It's amazing how much they look like twins (or at least sisters) since Mia, the oldest, was adopted from Korea when she was 6 months old, and KaiLi was adopted from China only this January. They're adorable! I'm sure it's a difficult adjustment for the family at times, and hard for KaiLi as she learns how to communicate with her new American family, but I think that these beautiful girls--Tristin, Mia, and KaiLi--are all going to be best of friends.

Our lives as a musical

Last night Kent and I had my old roommate Kayla and her husband Tayler over for dinner. We had nacho chicken and Italian dressing broccoli and Kayla brought a delicious bean dip and tortilla chips. It was so yummy! Then we played Blockus (one of our favorites) and Wackee Six (our other favorite game). It's so great being married and doing fun things like that on a quiet Sunday evening. It was also fun to have so much extra sunlight!

After they left, Kent and I were getting ready for bed and he decided to make the moment a musical. He stepped out from around a corner, singing and singing. And I remembered how a few semesters ago my roommates and I all decided that we would designate one day as a musical day, where we would have to sing everything we said, and if someone started singing a familiar song (like a primary song), we would all have to join in. We were so excited, and we set the date and everything, but that Saturday we were supposed to do it, every one of us completely forgot until we were going to bed. Sad.

Tonight we're getting together with a couple in our ward to do Family Home Evening together. We're going to have a little lesson, go bowling, and have Strawberry Freeze for dessert. I'm excited! We had some of the strawberry freeze last night after dinner, and it's incredible! And it's fun to have an activity all planned out to look forward to all day long.

It's really too bad that sometime today I also must start working on my humungous English essay. I've procrastinated this for seriously way too long. Oh boy.

Inigo Montoya

Okay, so I've been debating this for two days. Do I put this movie on the blog...or not? And after watching it again, and laughing until I thought I'd die, I decided that it was probably something that needed to be shared. And I'm just going to have to not let myself be embarrassed by the silliness of it. But I just couldn't let my husband's incredible acting skills continue to go unnoticed. I mean, just look at those facial expressions!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The price of a good day

What we did on Saturday:

Homework done: 5 hours

House cleaned/organized: 2 hours

Bowling for 2: $5.30

Gifts for each other at the dollar store: $2.12

2 Corndogs from Dairy Queen: $2.08

Trip to the Grocery store: $26.89

Swordfight between "Zorro" and "Sepherioth"in the living room : Priceless