Sunday, May 4, 2014

In Other News...

Nikki and Derek were able to come down for ten days over BYU-I's Spring Break.  It was so great to have them!  We got to do several big group activities, like swimming, the egg hunt, family dinners, and a LOTR marathon (Ezra's first, and a special treat because he just finished the books.)  But to me the visit was really at its peak when Nikki and Derek came (by themselves) to our house for dinner.  Having a few hours one on one with Nikki was exactly what I was craving, and it made me so happy.  
Since 2006 when I was making plans for our first house, I have always wanted to do a gallery wall.  I've put it off forever because it's sooooo hard to do.  But last week, I finally got it done!  This project took probably about fifty hours total.   I bought frames and other fun stuff at DI, yard sales, and Walmart.  I spray painted until the fumes made me dizzy.  I pored over, edited, ordered and framed a few dozen pictures.  Finally, (and this is the part I'm really proud of, because I'm pretty sure I invented this technique) I took a picture of the wall, and then took pictures of the framed pictures from the same distance.  I laminated the picture of the wall and cut out each little object, then spent two hours arranging and rearranging them until I had the perfect configuration.  Then TJ spent all of Saturday morning getting it all up there.  Along with the fantastic gallery wrap of Georgia's St. George Temple, this wall completes the room!  I am so happy with it.  
 Alisha, my good friend from high school, college and Alaska, just gave birth to sweet little Everlyn!  I got to attend the blessing today given by her dad, Todd.  It was so wonderful to be there.
I finally got sick of sun headaches, so I finally took the plunge and bought my first cabanna hat.  Then I spent a whole afternoon by the pool with Georgia to see if it was effective.  You know, anything for science.  And...no headache!  Pretty sure I'll never do another summer without one of these things!  (Also, my new prescription sunglasses are on their way!)





I finally got sick of my glitchy old phone and bought a new one--like, brand new, not just new to me!!! crazy, right?-- with all my plasma money and birthday money put together.  It's a Samsung Zoom. Instead of a phone with a camera on it, it's a camera with a phone on it! Georgia says it's almost as nice as her amazingly awesome $900 camera; it has 10x optical zoom and 20 megapixels, and even has f-stop and shutter speed settings in case I ever get fancy. And the phone is a really fantastic smart phone that does everything I ask it to and never runs out of batteries!  (Also, I'm still not paying for data.  I just use wifi for all my apps since I'm almost always here at home.)  I'm in total technology heaven right now.


(Parenthetically, I'm just noticing that this post has a lot of parenthesis in it.)

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