All Kinds of Stuff

The Good Life

2011-07-07T15:53:00.003-06:00

Oh, how I love Summer. Lately the Good Life for me has included...

Late Night Sushi with the Husband (when I say "late night" I mean after 9 pm. That is late for us. We also saw a movie after 6 pm the other night... which just might be a first since we have been married...)

Festive Cookie decorating (and dough eating, frosting knife licking...)

And a good book by the Pool (Bossypants by Tina Fey, but I gotta say, probably not the best pool book if you are at a crowded pool... my constant giggling to myself may have come across as a little crazy)

It is good to be me.

A Little Trip to Zion

2011-06-28T17:18:00.007-06:00

Last weekend we took a little trip to Zion with my family. I had never been to Zion and my mom got a great deal on some AWESOME cabin homes in East Zion, so we braved the heat and headed down to Southern Utah.

We got up early and did a couple of the more strenuous hikes like Hidden Canyon and Angels Landing. We went out in the evening and did Canyon Overlook and the Riverside Walk. Every hike we did was beautiful and I am always amazed by the great scenery that we live so close to. It was a quick, but much enjoyed getaway!

Hiking Shoes!!

Planking... the extreme sport (?) of the trip...

Canyon Overlook... and Craig's awesome Ghostbusters shirt! Craig is lucky enough to have two personal shoppers (my cousins) that LOVE to pick out the best shirts for him.

The view from the not top of Angels Landing (also known as the highest I dared hike... the chain part of that hike is not for me.)

Walter's Wiggles!!

OH... and a Mickey Mouse Cactus!!

Tuesday is a Good Day

2011-06-07T15:15:00.003-06:00

Tuesday is a Good Day because....

I picked up my newly polished ring and had a much needed lunch with a great friend...

(not to mention the great pink nail polish)

I got to run around town in my favorite sparkly pink toms...

I discovered 100 episodes of The Cosby Show available for instant streaming on Netflix...

Tuesday is a Good Day.

Some Weekend Motivation

2011-06-04T16:41:00.001-06:00

Just in case you are learning to ride a bike or tackle some other equally hard task this weekend...

Class of 2001

2011-06-02T17:06:00.005-06:00

That's right. It really has been 10 years since I graduated from high school. Working at a high school, especially working at the high school I once attended myself, this time of year always causes me think back to my own graduation, which of course always makes me wonder what I would have thought if you told this SHS 2001 grad:

Don't worry, I searched high and low for a picture of me with my siblings, because I thought Craig's was so fun, but apparently I attended graduation by myself, because I could only find this picture and then a few pictures with friends...no family photos...ha.

That in five years she would marry this fellow SHS 2001 grad:

Too cute.

And that a year after that she would then end up working at the very same school she was SO excited to be leaving... I am pretty sure I would not have believed one word of that.

But, I gotta say, I don't think I could be happier with how things have worked out. From this side of things, I can't picture it any other way. :)

And P.S. Sorry about the poor photo quality... our scanner was being lame, so I did what any lazy person would do and took pictures of the pictures with my phone, because I am ghetto like that...

It's Funny Because It's True (and also because of Tom Hanks)

2011-04-19T17:46:00.002-06:00

Craig and I have been enjoying the craziness that is the show, 'Toddlers and Tiaras." The show is just too great for words. I am pretty sure Craig posted this on Facebook a while ago. But, for those of you that may be lame like I am and do not have a Facebook, and because it is totally worthy of a double post, I present to you this video.

Besides the fact that Tom Hanks is my favorite, this cracks me up because it really could have been taken directly from the real show. Good times.

Peeps Show

2011-04-08T18:05:00.007-06:00

I love Peeps. Besides being cute and colorful, they are oh so tasty! I know that many people find these marshmallows dipped in sugar to be a not-so-great Easter treat, but I find them quite delightful. So, you can only imagine my delight when I found these:

These were a couple of the entries from the show in 2010, check out the link to see the rest of the finalists, including one of my favorites... "It's a Small World" (combining Disney AND Peeps?! What could be better??)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/03/29/GA2010032903934.html?hpid=artslot

I can't wait to see what they come up with this year :)

This could be a Problem

2011-02-28T17:07:00.003-07:00

Easter is not until April 24th this year... I am already on bag #2 of these, my most favorite chocolate treat...

I Love Love

2011-02-13T20:53:00.004-07:00

What's not to love about Valentine's Day/weekend when it includes...

Lots of pink heart sugar cookie decorating

An army of Robot Valentines

Heart shaped pizza

Cute dinosaur plates

oh yeah, did I mention Robot Valentines? (they are kind of my favorite part)

Hope you have a LOVEly day!!

Dude(Looks Like a...)

2011-01-27T19:48:00.002-07:00

Pound Puppy?

While watching American Idol last night, my sister Aubrey pointed out that Steven Tyler was looking very much like a Pound Puppy and I have been laughing about it ever since.

P.S. I am only a little bit ashamed to admit that I am watching and not hating new American Idol... don't judge.

This is Halloween

2010-11-03T17:00:00.006-06:00

Warning: Picture/post overload... this probably should have been at least three different posts...

We went back to Disneyland this October, this time with my family (minus Nicole who we missed dearly)! Halloweentime at Disneyland is fantastic. Some of the things I love about Disneyland are...

*Everyone is a kid again. The youngest person in our group was almost-13-year-old Taylor and that did not stop us from meeting our favorite characters, riding nearly all the rides in Fantasyland and skipping down main street.

Who doesn't get excited to meet Minnie Mouse in her cute red dress?

AND Witch Minnie!?! My favorite :)

Aubrey's dream come true!!!

Casey Jr.'s Circus Train... Craig's dream come true!!

*The food. Oh, how I love to snack my way through Disney... this year some of our favorite things included stuffed baked potatoes (where we also saw the guy from Voicemale, but that is a blog post of it's own...), hand dipped corn dogs, sourdough bread bowls, holiday treats, turkey legs (even if Aubrey was the only one man enough to try one) and of course Mickey Mouse pretzels, Dole Whip, and churros.

Enjoying our stuffed baked potatoes and corn dogs. The potatoes can be found in the "Princess Fantasy Fair" and the BEST corn dogs are found from the little red cart at the end of Main Street.

Aubrey's cute Mickey Bat cookie!! We also found our favorite pumpkin fudge, a delicious pumpkin spice cupcake, caramel apple cider.... yummm

Aubrey really was the only one man enough to eat a turkey leg. CJ and Craig talked about the ENTIRE trip, but never got one.

I didn't actually get any of these caramel apples, but I thought they were the cutest things ever.

*Even rain can't ruin the Happiest Place on Earth. We had one rainy day on our trip and it was probably the most memorable. We rode California Screamin and looked like we had jumped in the lake by the time we came off the ride. Believe the workers when they tell you the rain might hurt as you go flying through it at who knows what speed.

Riding Screamin' in the rain...

Led to seeing "It's tough to be a bug" SOAKING wet

We waited until after we had been soaking wet twice before breaking down and buying these stylish ponchos, which came in handy the next day on Splash Mountain.

*There is always something new to do. Every trip we find something we have not done before or something that has been added. This year we tried our hand at the Animation Academy and ended up going back a couple times to learn to draw our favorite characters. We also saw the new World of Color show and it was amazing.

Learning to draw Donald!! We also learned to draw Minnie Mouse and Jack Skellington!

Before the World of Color show, SUCH a cool show. Seriously. If you go, get a fast pass or do the picnic meals to get a reserved viewing area. We did the picnic and it was fun :)

We had a wonderful trip and it was great to come back and still have lots of fun things to do. We had our annual pumpkin carving time at my parent's house, which was good times.

We also had our traditional Halloween party at my parents house on Saturday which always includes homemade chili and doughnuts. As you learned from the previous post, Craig had the Bieber Fever. I was a lovely ballerina with pink hair, that really ended up making me look like the girl from Lazy Town.

We ended the weekend with a Jack-o-lantern pizza and a viewing of Nightmare Before Christmas. Good times were had by all :)

The Fever

2010-11-01T17:21:00.003-06:00

Craig was overtaken by a very common illness this Halloween...

That's right. The poor guy was struck with Bieber Fever. Symptoms included bleeding from the eyes and random bursts into song. Luckily it was quickly passing fever.

More to come on October Festivities... I promise.

Cupcake Corner

2010-10-06T15:54:00.007-06:00

So, my thoughtful and awesome grandpa saw this book and ordered it for me. I am most grateful that he did. This little dandy of a cookbook is packed full of tasty and easy cupcake recipes. They all start with a boxed cake mix as the base and have simple ingredients added to make unique cupcake creations. I am in heaven.

I figured I would pass on the cupcake love to you as I tried some of the recipes. If you like cupcakes even half as much as I do, you will probably want to buy this book immediately.

First up: Harvest Pumpkin.

The recipe is simple:
1 Spice Cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips

Combine ingredients. Bake @ 350 for 15-18 minutes. Makes 24 cupcakes.

I topped mine with cream cheese frosting and sweet cinnamon sprinkles. Tasty.

The best part about these cupcakes (besides eating them) was that they made my house smell like fall, which (for me) is basically defined as any sort of pumpkin/cinnamon spice baking smell. I also loved the butterscotch chips. I think I will start adding butterscotch chips to my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies...yum.

Fail/Win

2010-09-25T22:12:00.004-06:00

Fail: I only made it two weeks with the whole "Thursday" blogging... I am blaming Season Premier Week (which if it still counts, I am thankful for)... plus I DID add the disclaimer in my first Thursday post that it might not be every Thursday, so I am letting myself off the hook for this one.

Win: We made these super fun and cheap (we're talking $2) Halloween decorations this weekend :)
Inspired my sister Kayla's extra Halloween craftiness, we purchased some butcher paper, Craig used his artistic abilities, I used my tracing/cutting/1st grade level art abilities and I really like what we ended up with. Have I mentioned yet that I love fall/ Halloweentime?!?!

Thursday!

2010-09-16T19:13:00.016-06:00

Well, today is Thursday... and look!! Here I am :)

Today I am thankful for....

The tree outside my window Fall 2009

1. FALL!!! I have decided that Fall is my favorite season. But, don't be surprised if I say the same thing about Spring and Summer... I kind of love living somewhere with four seasons, even if I get grumpy and sick of winter. If that is the trade off for having Fall, I guess I will take it. I really love back to school shopping, school supplies, the subtle crisp in the air, sleeping with the windows open, sweaters, football games (not to say that I go to or watch many, but just the fact that they exist in Fall is good), the leaves, the beginning of anticipation for the holiday season, new TV show seasons, Halloween, pumpkin varieties of food (bagels, doughnuts, cookies, etc.) and on and on... Fall is great.

2. The Show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". I will warn you that it can be highly inappropriate and there is a large amount of yelling in the show, but there is rarely an episode that I am not reduced to tears from laughter.

CJ ready for a haircut, looking very much like a relative of Draco Malfoy.

3. My brother CJ. It was his birthday on Monday and he turned the big 18. No longer a child (tears). But, no worries, I am highly confident that he can and will continue to be a kid at heart. As I type this he is downstairs involved in a very "serious" game of Halo with Craig. I really admire the fact that many guys seem to hold on to the "kid" perspective of life. CJ grew up in a house full of girls and for that alone probably deserves a pat on the back. I do think though, that growing up will all sisters may have helped to give him one of his best qualities, he cares a lot for others. He is a great friend and I am always impressed with his thoughtfulness and concern for those that might be having a hard time. He is funny, creative and a huge talk-o. I love to sit upstairs and listen when he comes over to play games with Craig because all I hear is his voice (that carries, ask any of his teachers) and an endless, somewhat one-ended conversation. I think he is probably just grateful to finally have a brother-in-law to talk to. He has been a man of many words since he was very, very young. One of my favorite memories of little boy CJ is when he was maybe 2 years old and had fallen asleep in the car. We were driving up the street that leads to our house, he sat straight up in his car seat, looked around and exclaimed, "Where the HELL are we!?!" I still laugh and laugh at that... And of course, "The CJ Show"... if you have not seen "The CJ Show" you should make your way up to my parents house and request a special viewing... too funny. I really wish I had a clip... stay tuned... maybe I can get it copied onto a DVD and then uploaded to YouTube... that would be the greatest.

What are you thankful for today?

Thursday, the Third Day

2010-09-09T13:01:00.006-06:00

This poor neglected blog of ours... I have started at least a dozen posts between July and now, but they were all boring and I never finished any of them. Not to say that this post will not be boring, but I am determined to get out of my bloggers-block, even if that means posting boring and pointless things. Which, now that I think about it, makes up the majority of my posts anyway, so I don't know what I am so worried about.

ANYWAY, some of my blogger friends do some sort of "Thankful Thursday" segment on their blog and I think that is where I would like to start. I won't promise this to be a consistent weekly update, but I am going to try for that. If nothing else, it is good for me to look over things and see all that I have to be grateful for, which is a lot.

So here we go!

Today I am thankful for:

1. No Egg Cookie Dough!! That's right folks, cookie dough that is made to be consumed as dough, the best form of a cookie in my opinion. My mom found the recipe on this fun blog and made up a batch of it on Monday. I made my own batch today and it is just delightful. I will admit that I have never really let the scare of salmonella stop me in the past from eating my share of cookie dough, but having a recipe that is egg-free does make me feel a little less gross when I consume it by the spoonful. Although, the grossness of making a whole batch of dough with no intention of actually baking any of it may be debatable.

2. Halloween Candy!! When I ran to Walmart today I was pleasantly surprised to see the isles and isles of Halloween candy. Fall and Halloween are two of my favorite times of year so mid-September is not too early for me to start buying bags of fun-size Kit-Kats and candy corns. But, I am also "one of those" people who gets secretly excited when I hear Christmas music in early November too, so maybe I jump the gun on my holidays just a little bit.

3. Thursdays!! I have always loved Thursdays. Back in the day, I don't think Craig and I went a single Thursday without pizza and watching Friends with whoever was around to join us. Craig even still continued to want to see me after I cried at the Friends finale. Today Thursdays still mean must-see-TV, we probably get pizza more often on Thursdays than any other day, and I really love that.

4. Which leads to my last thankful item of the day, Craig. I don't care if it is cheesy, I am really, really thankful for Craig. He is my best friend and keeps me laughing no matter what the situation. He is the voice of reason when I am being a crazy lady and somehow still wants to be around me even after he sees all my crazy. Plus, the man can rock any pair of glasses he puts on.

So, there you have it. I will warn you now, don't be surprised if the majority of my thankful items involve food somehow. Also, I apologize if it gets too cheesy. You are free to skip any entries that surpass your cheese limit.

Independence Day!

2010-07-04T22:16:00.005-06:00

Everyone always complains to me and Amber about how infrequently we update this stupid blog... so I'm making things worse by creating one post with two videos in it. See, I could have easily saved one of these videos for a day or so and then posted it, but that would have been dishonest since I have both videos finished and uploaded to the youtubes. So if you're worried that we won't be updating this again for a while, just watch one of these and save the other for later.

Cult of Apple

2010-06-26T08:46:00.003-06:00

It's true. Everything you've heard about me. I have a disease. I want to buy everything Apple makes, no matter how similar it is to something I already have. I am not ashamed to admit this:

I spent hours in a line on Thursday morning to get an iPhone, even though I already have an iPhone.

Now... it is important to understand one thing. I would have preferred to have it shipped to my house. However, the day the phones were available for pre-order, the ship-to-your-house method was not working. Amber was able to get one reserved at the Apple store in Salt Lake. Due to my inexperience with Apple's launch days, I thought it would be easy enough to just go pick it up Thursday morning. Well, this was like two thousand other people's idea as well. And they all got there earlier in the morning than I did. So, Amber and I waited patiently. And we waited and waited patiently. And then we got a little less patient. And the nerds behind us in line got a little more obnoxious. Yes sir, I understand how unfair it was for the U of U to expect you to keep a 3.0 GPA. They were just trying to screw you over and keep you in school longer so they could continue to collect your tuition. How ridiculous that they didn't understand that you were working full time with kids. That is completely the university's fault. And it wasn't worth it at all. Now all you can do with your life is miss work on a Thursday morning to pick up a 200 dollar phone. Life's rough.

I digress...

Well I eventually got my phone, and then made this video at the dinosaur museum yesterday. The coolest part is that I filmed it, and edited it all on the damn phone. You have to admit, that is pretty cool.

Baby Blues

2010-06-07T20:59:00.003-06:00

Alright all you moms out there, if I do not see your diaper wearing children in these ASAP, I will be very disappointed.

This really cracked me up. Not only are these limited edition, they also come with the slogan "The coolest you'll look pooping you pants." Genius. Pure Genius, or you might say JEANious (bwahahaha). Ok. I'm done. I'll stop now, I promise.

But, I do think they are pretty stinkin' cute... ok. NOW I am done.

Just One Question

2010-06-03T20:08:00.004-06:00

Am I the only one who accidentally stumbled upon this:

NBC's "new" show: 100 Questions

and found it to be a blatant and upsetting ripoff of this?

Just wondering...

Still Alive

2010-05-25T20:36:00.006-06:00

Well hello my blogging friends! Yes, I am still alive. I know it has been a while, and I offer no excuses. I hope to blog about recent thoughts and happenings soon, but for now I have a couple items of important business to discuss:

1. I am not sure what your plans are for this Saturday, but if you are in the mood for a fun 5K for a good cause, I have just the thing for you! I am helping my friend with the Live wElle 5K in Springville and it should be lots of fun.

More information about the race and the Live wElle Foundation can be found here:

http://bluecreekmedia.com/livewelle/

2. Part of my prolonged absence here on the blog has been due to the final few months of school and the craziness that comes with that for me. I love my job, so I am not complaining or anything, just saying it eats up major amounts of my time especially come May. Well, a group of the students and an awesome Mr. Boss (yes that is his name, aren't you jealous?) at SHS spent many of their own extra hours working on a LipDub video, that I think turned out really good. Their goal is to get a million views, so if you have a minute and would like to take a peek, I know they would be ever so grateful.

Being all depressed and sad about Las Vegas

2010-05-24T19:36:00.004-06:00

So Amber and I went to Las Vegas nearly 3 months ago and I just barely finished a 2 minute video clip from our trip. I am a lazy S.O.B. The problem with this particular video was my struggle to find a good song to use. You would be surprised how hard it is to pick a song that fits with the image in your head (especially when you only think about it once every 3 weeks... "wait which song sounded perfect during the bus ride home last month?"). So rather than picking the usual Frankie or Deano song (and I really, REALLY wanted to use that Black Eyed Peas song about how tonight is gonna be a good good night! </sarcasm></nerd>), I tried something else. I went with probably the most depressing Cure song I know... cause to me that's how this footage felt. Something about Las Vegas just makes me feel like this:

Here's the video. This one was so short I could upload it at 720p! You can watch it all high-res and full-screen and 3D and stuff at the vimeo website if you wanna...

Like You Really Need a Reason...

2010-02-23T17:58:00.005-07:00

Is anyone else as excited as I am about the return of Captain EO to Disneyland!??!

PLUS the new water-light show at California Adventure looks SA-WEET!

I never need a real reason to go to Disneyland, but those are two really good ones.

OH... AND... How could I forget? My most favorite parade OF ALL TIME.... The Main Street Electrical Parade is going to reappear in Disney World this year! Sigh... I want to go to there.

Something New

2010-02-04T17:15:00.004-07:00

I am sure that by now you thought I had made a resolution for 2010 to never blog again. I promise that is not the case. It was just a very busy January.

One thing I DID resolve to do was to be a little more adventurous. Crazy, I know... But, part of this adventurous 2010 meant that Craig and I decided we will eat somewhere we have never eaten before at least once a month. Don't laugh, this really is adding adventure into our eat-at-the-same-place-every- weekend-and-be-just-fine-with-it life.

So, on the second to last day of January we went on our first dining adventure! I read a Provo Blo g that bragged up something called a cupshake. This concoction involved a Sweet Tooth Fairy cupcake combined with a milkshake. Yes, this had to be our first stop.

Off to Sammy's we went. Truthfully, I really didn't care about the actual entrees, as I was there exclusively for the shake. But, I had to pretend that I was not eating a milkshake for lunch, so I ordered my favorite thing to get from a hometown burger joint, the grilled cheese. Why do grilled cheese sandwiches taste about a million percent better when they are not made at home? My most favorite grilled cheese comes from the Dairy Keen in Heber, with a side of their amazing ranch. But, back to Sammy's. I very much enjoyed my grilled cheese. Craig ordered a COWabunga burger that had pastrami and other yummy burger toppings. We shared a side of sweet potato fries (any place with sweet potato fries is usually a pretty good place in my book). It was all very good, but, OH the cupshake... it was TO. DIE. FOR. I ordered an orange flavored cupshake and it was the most amazing combination of cake, creamy ice cream, and frosting. Yum.

Plus their menus are cute.
http://sammyscafe.blogspot.com/

If you like cupcakes and milkshakes then I am pretty sure you will like a cupshake. Next time you are in the Provo area, call me. I will meet you at Sammy's.

Best of 2009

2009-12-31T10:44:00.017-07:00

This is my obligatory 2009 year-in-review post!! Yay!! I think I will tackle this with the month by month approach like my sister did, and list my favorite thing about that month!

January:
We started the year off with a trip down to Cedar City to meet our new nephew who was born on the very last day of 2008. He sure is cute!

February:
Best part about this month: my cute husband gave me what every girl wants from Valentine's Day, a dozen cupcakes from Sweet Tooth Fairy! Yum!!

March:
The month of March took us up to Malad for my grandma's funeral, which was sad. But, going to Malad always brings some sort of fun surprise. This trip we discovered Malad has acquired its very own Taco bus!

April:
Celebrated 3rd wedding anniversary with dinner at PF Chang's, where we went on our very first date, aw. Spent a fun girls night out at Cheesecake Factory and seeing Wicked with my mom and Sisters!

May:
Went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving point, one of my favorite Spring activities! May is also Craig's birthday.

June:
We had a busy summer this year. June included a family reunion, wedding and, of course, Art City days! We also went and looked at some cool WWII planes for the Wings of Freedom tour.

July:
I spent most of my July away from home. The month began with a trip down to St. George with the student council kids for a leadership conference. Then when I got back Craig and I headed off to the Black Hills for a fun birthday road trip! I loved Deadwood, the haunted Bullock Hotel, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, The Purple Pie Place, and getting old fashioned pictures!

August:
3rd Row at Depeche Mode!!!

September:
Killers Concert! Such a fun show. We also were lucky enough to sit in front of this cute couple:

October:
Halloweentime at Disneyland! Best parts of the trip: flying to Long Beach, staying across the street, all the yummy snacks, Halloween decorations and costumes, eating at the Blue Bayou, the fireworks.

November:
Saw Regina Spektor with Aubrey and Nicole. Also enjoyed Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping.
December:
Made the most beautiful sweaters for the Sweeten family party. Had the best Christmas.

2009 was indeed a great year! I am very much looking forward to twenty-ten!

Holiday Fashion Tips

2009-12-24T20:50:00.010-07:00

Are you looking for that perfect sweater to wear to your next holiday party? You know the one. Just enough texture and glitter to get noticed, but also enough foliage and ribbon to safely blend in with the Christmas tree when you want to dodge Aunt Parmesan. Well, this year might I suggest you create your own, unique sweater? That is exactly what my sisters and I did for our family party, and we were quite pleased with the results. A quick trip to Kmart for 75% off sweaters and the Dollar Tree for subtle accents, a stick or two of hot glue, plenty of glitter glue, googly eyes, ribbon and jingle bells, and we were ready to sparkle and party the night away.

For all you couples out there, nothing quite expresses the love you have for each other like matching sweaters. However, don't be afraid to let your personality show. Even though the basic design of our sweaters is the same, you can clearly sense our different personalities through the different accents used on each sweater.

Homemade holiday sweaters are perfect for girls...

and the men in your life!!

And finally, always remember you can never have too many holiday birds on one sweater.

Dear Santa

2009-12-19T20:19:00.004-07:00

I was reading the Springville newspaper the other day and they had a "Santa's Mailbag" section! I especially enjoyed the following letters:

Dear Santa,

You are the best person in the world! You and me are buddy's! I have made 22 mistakes this year so get me two presents so I will be happy. Oh, my address is.... Oh, Merry Christmas!

From TaiNui

Dear Santa,

Merry Christmas. What are you going to give me for Christmas? I am a boy! I wish you could get me a stapler with staples. My 2nd present a camera. My 3rd present a robot. My 4th present one of your elves. My 5th present to see you. My 6th present tons of paper.....My 10th present 100 books...My 14th present markers. My 15th present that I have super fast speed. My 16th present that I can blast off. My 17th present your phone number. My 18th present never ending money. My 19th present that I can be famous. My 20th present a ninja hand book. My 21st present ninja clothes.

Love Jayden

Dear Santa,

This year I don't need a lot of stuff. All I want is a Wii, basketball hoop, spy gear and an O Gravity Nano. I don't think I have been good enough to deserve any of those things. You can give me what I deserve.

Sincerely, Drew

I really love this time of year. Merry Christmas!

Wish We Were Here

2009-12-12T12:32:00.004-07:00

December 12, 2008
Orlando temperature: mid to upper 60s
Activities included:
Riding Rockin' Roller Coaster till we were sick
Trying to beat the high score on Toy Story Mania
Watching Kayla win the Star Dazzle Award in the High School Musical 3 Show
Eating at Teppan Edo
Getting stuck on the Test Track and getting to ride it two times in a row, Nicole being equally scared the second time around

New Moon by Cats

2009-12-05T14:02:00.002-07:00

Picture from http://microsuede.blogspot.com/2009/11/movie-review-twilight-saga-new-moon.html

Craig directed me to this link the other day and it cracked me up.

http://microsuede.blogspot.com/2009/11/movie-review-twilight-saga-new-moon.html

Enjoy!

The REAL Disneyland Halloween Video

2009-11-07T14:03:00.004-07:00

HalloweenTime @ Disneyland 2009 from Craig Whatcott on Vimeo

If you find that the video is too small to watch here, clicking on the "HalloweenTime @ Disneyland 2009" link below the video will take you to the Vimeo site where it plays in a bigger player and with better quality... enjoy!

Halloween Time 2009

2009-11-02T20:38:00.017-07:00

I started writing this big huge blog about October and how much fun it is and how great fall is, etc. But, I realized the detail I was going into and the craziness of my life lately meant that I would not finish my Halloween post until sometime after Christmas, which really makes no sense. So, since pictures are worth a thousand words, here is a 10,000+ word summary of our October.

Travel By Bus, I Dare You

2009-10-23T08:44:00.004-06:00

A month ago, my office moved from American Fork to downtown Salt Lake City. I was able to buy a yearlong bus pass through my work for 25 bucks, so it was a no-brainer that riding the bus would save me a ton of cash. I have now logged over 20 bus rides, which is over 1000 miles! I believe this makes me fully qualified to point out some of the idiosyncrasies of bus travel.

1. Seat Etiquette

It was naive of me to expect that people riding the express bus to downtown Salt Lake City would behave like the professional business people they appear to be. A respectful person would board the bus, find an empty row of seats, and slide away from the aisle toward the window leaving an empty seat for his/her fellow passenger. Not the horse’s asses I ride with. If you ever ride the bus, expect to see over half of the aisle seats taken while the accompanying window seat remains empty or contains the aisle passenger’s coat and briefcase. Don’t worry, if it looks like the bus might be filling up to the point that passengers will have to stand, expect these giant sacks of dicks to pretend they are asleep.

2. Hygiene

Most of my bus rides have been quite pleasant as far as smells are concerned. However, there have been a couple of trips where I was forced to lean onto my own hand and smell it rather than dry-heave at the stale sweat and dried piss smell wafting from the incontinent man sitting next to me (yeah, I exaggerated a bit, so what!?). I would suggest wearing a jacket or sweater that you can take off once you reach your destination should any fellow passenger rub his man-funk onto you during the journey. It would be a long day at the office if your shirt smelled like an old man’s butt for 10 hours.

The other repulsive smell related problem I have noticed is more prominent on the ride home. It is bad breath. I would assume that this phenomenon is caused by people who have gone out to lunch during the day and then not been able to brush their teeth. I’m sure I don’t have the freshest of breath either, but I try to breath through my nose and not down another passenger’s neck. This problem seems to mostly come from a certain type of passenger, which leads me to my next point...

3. Talkers

For some reason, there are a couple of people who think it’s normal to talk on the phone or to the bus driver for the entire hour-long bus ride. It’s not usually the subject of conversation that is annoying, rather it’s the fact that I am trying to read or listen to music. Talkers don’t bother to lower their voices at all which leads me to wonder if they shout-talk at home to their families. Just expect to overhear a woman telling the bus driver how she had a hard time getting her kids to watch conference over the weekend. I don’t know how people have the energy for this kind of crap at 5:45 AM.

These are just a few of the things I have learned from my bus travels, but since this is ridiculously long I will end here. I hope I have prepared you for any bus travel you may have in your future. Always remember, it’s up to you to not be a douche, to put on some deodorant, and to shut the hell up.

Everybody SCREAM!!!!

2009-10-12T20:32:00.001-06:00

We had such a fun time at Disneyland last week. I will post pictures and stories soon, but for now enjoy the new Halloween Time firework show, filmed and edited by Craig :)

Disneyland's Halloween Screams 2009 from Craig Whatcott on Vimeo.

Missed Opportunity

2009-09-08T17:07:00.006-06:00

"But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. "

"Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide. "

"You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it."

"We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. "

"But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying."

"Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. "

"I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try."

All of the above are quotes from President Obama's speech given to school children today. Pretty much the message I try to get across to the students I work with everyday. Regardless of how you line up politically, or how you feel about our President, you cannot deny his power as a public speaker, or the fact that he is, after all, OUR president. I know this speech would have impacted several, if not all, of the students I work with for the better. It may have been just what they needed to hear to keep them in school and motivate them to try a little harder. It is a shame that they were not even given the choice to watch it.

***UPDATE*** It looks like the kiddies will have a chance to watch the speech after all! Just a week and a half after the speech was given... haha... I guess now we have enough "time" to let parents decide if they want to expose their children to a week old Presidential speech.

Labor Day Craftiness

2009-09-07T15:47:00.004-06:00

My grandpa could carve a chain out of a single piece of wood. It's true, he could. And this was just the beginning of his many talents. I may not be quite so handy, but I did inherit one of his cool chains and wanted to display it proudly. I took a trip to the local Robert's over the weekend, raided my parents pictures, did a little iphoto magic, scrapbooked up a shadowbox and was quite pleased with the end result.

August? When, where, huh?

2009-09-03T18:29:00.004-06:00

That's right, not one single blog post in August. Shame on me. I have not been feeling much blog inspirado at all lately. But, there have been some blog-worthy happenings, so I better get over myself.

DEPECHE MODE!?? How can I not blog about the super crazy fun time that was had at the Depeche Mode concert in August? Favorite things about the night included:
*The fact that my little brother was as excited as Craig and I were about the concert.
*The dinner preceding the concert, Taco Tuesday at Rubios!?! Really. Best. Fish. Tacos. YUM.
*3rd Row Baby!!! If it hadn't been for the strong stench of spilled beers all over my feet, purse, etc, I probably could have smelled the sweat of the band! haha, okay that came off just sounding gross, but that is how close we were! While I am thinking about it though, why do people spend big $$ on beer at concerts only to spill it all over me? I mean really people, you should be savoring every last drop of that Bud Light, I am sure it cost nearly as much as my concert T-Shirt you just spilled on.
*Martin's Sparkly Chest.... Okay, I pretty much loved everything about Mr. Martin L. Gore. His sparkly pants, vest, black finger nails, curly blond hair that looked similar to Steve Sanders hair on the old 90210.... his high smooth voice, his pretty guitars... But, the fact that he looked like he had literally taken a bath in glitter before the show was the greatest!
*Dave Gahan strutting around stage, dancing, spinning with his mic stand...
*I loved the fact that Craig and I both danced around and sang and screamed so hard that we were zombies the next day at work.
To sum it up... Depeche still puts on the best show I have ever seen. They sound great, they look great, the screens on stage are always innovative and always have cool, if sometimes strange, graphics to make the songs that much better. I never have more fun at a concert than I do at Depeche Mode.

The Mount Rushmore Trip Video

2009-07-27T18:41:00.000-06:00

The Black Hills from Craig Whatcott on Vimeo.

Freedom Fun

2009-07-06T17:50:00.008-06:00

The week began with a lovely trip out to the Provo airport to see the Wings of Freedom tour of WWII airplanes. They were neat.

We also got to take a tour of the Provo airport tower. Did you know that you have to be an American Citizen to go in an airport tower in the US? I did not know this. Good thing I am a citizen or I would have missed out on this excitement.

Thursday night my mom, a couple of my sisters and I went over to the Freedom festivities in Provo. Highlights included: sweet potato fries from Gurus (of course), mini doughnuts (ooooh the mini doughnuts...), and my new favorite part of Freedom Days: the Colonial Village. The history dork in me went crazy over the collection of historical documents they have on display there, including an 1823 copy of the Declaration of Independence (SOOOO rare) and a piece of a letter from my favorite Revolutionary gal, Abigail Adams.

On the actual 4th we celebrated with the traditional scones at Grandmas (sorry no pic, too busy stuffing my face).

We also met up with some old friends for a BBQ, which was tons of fun (again, no pic, I have learned from this post I need to be better at picture taking).

The night ended with the traditional crazy firework display in front of my aunt's house. This included Andrew strapping all kinds of fireworks to his skateboard, Craig and Tay being OH so excited about sparklers, and many minor burns. Yay for America!!!

See Me Drool

2009-07-02T10:05:00.005-06:00

photo from seejanework.com

I am a bit of a dork when it comes to things like office supplies, school supplies, containers, and all related organizational materials. I love them.

I found the most AMAZING website ever thanks to my good friend, Juliana.

http://www.seejanework.com/

I could not find one thing on the website that I didn't want. The only thing better than regular labels, file folders, bins, notebooks, clips, etc. are cute and colorful labels, file folders, bins, notebooks, clips,etc. I am in heaven.

Another dorky thing making me drool: fonts. I am a font-o-holic, I will admit it. A while back my most favorite sister-in-law, pointed me to this website. Fun, cute, FREE fonts. Perfect for all your scrapbooking needs, or just to fill your font fix for the day.

I can just SMELL the fresh ink and paper...

Yummy AND a Good Cause

2009-06-26T22:45:00.006-06:00

You have heard me rave about Sweet Tooth Fairy's cupcakes before... they are THE. BEST. Seriously. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. And the plain old vanilla with to die for vanilla butter-cream frosting is one of the very very best. Well, tomorrow they are hosting a fundraiser/birthday party for Stephanie Nielson from the NieNieDialogues. So, you can eat amazing cupcakes and support a great cause, all at the same time. Go to there. I know I will :)

In Loving Memory...

2009-06-26T10:38:00.001-06:00

Dog Days

2009-06-18T14:16:00.001-06:00

Mia the puppy got to come and live with us for a week. Oh, how exciting! Here is a look at some of our great adventures.
Mia got to go on her first trip to the carnival. I LOVED the new location at the Arts Park. Maybe next year there will be a little less rain and a little warmer temps. Regardless of the weather, I got to have a very "Paris Hilton" like moment, walking around the glamorous carnival with a tiny dog in my arms, pink leash and all. So hot. The puppy was terrified of the rides, remote controlled toys, and the carnies, but who can blame her for that?

No trip to the carnival would be complete (or even necessary) without a scone. No, mom, we didn't feed any to Ms. Mia, the puppy is spoiled enough with the homemade meals that grandpa cooks for her out of dog cookbooks (not a lie).

Mia went on adventures under the couch. She loved hiding under there. I loved having her scoot around and get all the dust up off the floor for me :)

Calee the Dog and Mia the Puppy played like crazy on our adventures up to my parents house. It was wet and rainy for most of the week, so the puppy usually looked like a wet rat by the time they were done, but they had a great time!

Mia has a special way of finding the two inch strip of mud along a yard full of non-muddy grass. This resulted in multiple baths for her.

Yep. I just made a whole blog post about a puppy. My week has been THAT exciting :) Does this mean I need more to occupy my time with? Possibly. But, she is a pretty cute puppy. And, I have no cute children to blog about, so one puppy post in my lifetime doesn't make me some crazy cat-lady but with dogs, does it?? Now I am a little worried for myself....

Dreams do Come True

2009-06-09T14:32:00.002-06:00

Craig showed me this today. If you have been missing Zack Morris as much as I have, then you will love this as much as I do. I gotta say, with the right hair, makeup, and clothes, dear Zack does not look like he has aged much at all. I heart Zack Morris.

Fingers crossed for a full cast reunion!

UP

2009-06-05T15:02:00.005-06:00

Craig and I went and saw Up today! SUCH a cute show. You really should go see it. Be prepared though, bring tissues. Yes, multiple tissues. Admittedly, it does not take much to make cry like a baby through a movie, especially one sprinkled with magical Disney pixie dust. Yes, I have even been known to tear up at the Disney fireworks. But, I am pretty sure this will bring at least one tear to the eyes of most, unless, of course, you are dead inside... Aubrey, it might even may YOU tear up... who knows...

Also, it is a MUST see in 3D. It took two tries for the theater we saw it in to get the 3D working properly, but it was SOO worth it. It looked amazing. Plus, who doesn't like seeing a movie in rockin' plastic shades?

But, don't say I didn't warn you about the tissues.

A New Appreciation...

2009-06-04T16:17:00.005-06:00

...for... Walgreens! We have a little corner Walgreens here in town and people are always telling me how much they love this place, the great deals, unique finds, etc. Well, up until a week or so ago I did not quite understand the love for this store. I have looked through the ads, found stuff I wanted, only to go to Walgreens and have it be nowhere in the store. I went to a coupon lady class a while back and found out all these crazy-good ways to get all kinds of free, yes FREE, stuff from Walgreens, but was too lazy to hunt down the coupons, send in the rebates, etc. So, I have just never jumped on the Walgreens Wagon.

This has all changed thanks to their 1 hour photo! About two weeks ago I needed to make lots of invitations and did not have lots of time. I made up something on the computer and thought if I could just print it as a 4x6 picture, it would look fancy and be tons easier than mass producing them at home. So, I hopped online and found out I could get 50 4x6 prints at Walgreens for $5.00! What a DEAL!! I did just that and the invitations turned out awesome.

Since it is now June, I am finally getting around to printing some pictures and making scrapbook pages for the trip we took back in December (yeah I know that was six months ago...) Again, I hopped on Walgreens website and they had another deal to buy 25 pictures get 25 free, so I got 50 pictures for about $5.00, again!! AND this is done in ONE hour! I have never been the most patient person, so to have lots of pictures printed super cheap, super fast, and super close, is, as Martha would say, a good thing!

Blackout?

2009-06-02T16:09:00.002-06:00

I went shopping today at Target and about 1/2 hour into my shopping experience (and YES shopping at Target is an experience that takes much more than a 1/2 hour for me...) it went dark. ALL the light went out. Needless to say, there was some freaking out by children and adults alike, but I was most surprised by how many people didn't freak out, or even seemed to realize that it had just gone really dark, for that matter. There were loads of people that just kept shopping like it hadn't gone from a florescent glow to some sort of horror movie lighting. I was one of these people. Because, hey, I don't make it to Target often enough, so when I am there, I WILL go up and down nearly every isle at least once. The weirdest part about this power outage was that the registers and speaker-thingy still worked just fine. Announcements were made every few minutes to let Target's "valued guests" know that they were working on the problem and that the issue would be resolved as soon as possible. I wandered around in the dark for at least another 1/2 hour. Enough people must have been freaking out because the last announcement I heard was for all guests to bring their final purchases to the front and check out. I left in the dark so who knows if/when the lights came back on... Maybe this just Target's way of going green?

Time Well Spent

2009-05-27T22:13:00.007-06:00

This Wednesday afternoon was the first in months that I did not have to spend supervising children in detention!!! How did I celebrate, you might ask? By catching up on this season of The Hills, of course!

As I watched back-to-back (to back to back) episodes of my favorite mind-numbing show, I noticed a word being used way too frequently by this girl:
Yes, Stephanie Pratt. I am usually not impressed by Ms. Stephanie at all, but WAS super jealous of her cute pink purse in this picture, so I figured I should point out the positive before bashing her vocabulary.

But, back to the word. A word she kept using to describe many different things on multiple episodes, what word???

Gnarly.

Yuck. I really do not care for that word at all. It is one of those words that just makes my teeth hurt for some reason. The word gnarly should really only ever be used by Michelangelo on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, mid '90s. Please Stephanie, stop using "gnarly" to describe situations, people, feelings, etc. I am sure there is a better word to use in each of these cases. If you are trying to make this word the new "cool" word, I will quote one of my other favorite shows when I say, "Stop trying to make fetch (or in this case gnarly) happen!" k. Thanks!

Happy Birthday Craig!!

2009-05-22T19:53:00.010-06:00

I have been absent from blogging for a while now... mid-April to now has been a huge blur! I think part of that has to do with the fact that I work at a school and it has been officially "crunch time" for so many of the kids I work with. Poor Craig has had to live with a very dirty house, "dinner" off of paper plates (if you even consider PB&J, mac and cheese with hot dogs, and fast food, dinner...), and a very boring wife for weeks now.

But, TODAY is Craig's birthday! And what did I do to make his day super fun and special? I drug the poor man to IKEA to pick out and then come home and assemble his birthday present... I think I just may qualify for the worst wife of the month award... Craig has not complained at all about any of this, which is just one of the many reasons I love him. Since it is his birthday, I think it is only fair to take a minute to list a few more reasons that Craig is the BEST:

Craig is very creative. When I was dating Craig, my youngest sister told me once that she was SO glad that I was in love with an artist. Me too, Tay, me too. Not only does he carve a killer pumpkin, he is always putting together great home videos and blog posts that crack me up.

Craig is funny. I can always count on Craig to make me laugh, cheer me up, or turn a not so funny situation into something that I will still be giggling about days later.

Craig is awesome with kids. This one was of the very first things I noticed about Craig when we started hanging out. He is so cute with our new little nephew. I am pretty sure he is also my youngest sister's favorite person in the world. I know that if we ever do have children of our own he will be a great daddy.

Which leads me to my next one, I am pretty sure my family loves Craig more than they love me. And Craig gets along with them too, we recently took a trip to Disney World with 16 members of my immediate and extended family and had the best time!

While we are on the subject of Disney, that leads to another reason Craig is the best, he loves Disney trips (or at least pretends to) almost as much as I do. Not only does he let us spend most of our vacations at Disney parks, he even gets into it, wears Mickey ears, has his favorite rides, and gets as excited as I do about the little things that make Disneyland/ World the Happiest Place on Earth.

If these few things have not convinced you that Craig is, indeed, the best, I will continue. Craig lets me watch all my silly shows on TV and even listens to me when I analyze and reanalyze what happened on the Bachelor, the Hills, American Idol, etc. He also is loves my all time favorite show Friends, and can almost win me at the game Friends Scene It. He keeps me up to date on the latest and greatest web viral videos, technology, and updates on our favorite bands. He can see a movie or TV show just one time and quote lines from it forever. He is super handy, smart, helpful, kind, and thoughtful.

So, even though this got a bit cheesy, the basic points are: 1. Happy Birthday Craig 2. You are the best

Dating Failure

2009-05-07T18:10:00.001-06:00

Inspired by my sister, who was inspired by Lola, I have a crappy-date story myself...

Back in college, a friend and I bought tickets to see Howard Jones at Abravanel Hall (from this statement, you can deduce that most of the awkwardness of this date was my own fault). My friend ended up being unable to go to the concert. I had paid for the tickets and since he wasn't going to be able to go, I was stuck finding someone else to go with me. At the time (and even now, still), the only other person I knew who liked Howard Jones was my mom. There was absolutely no way in hell that I was going to go to this concert with my mother (sorry mom!) because I was in college and way too awesome.

I decided that I'd try to be a little more outgoing than usual, so I asked a cute girl from my art class if she would want to go with me. Obviously she had no idea who Howard Jones was, but she agreed to go anyway. The problem with this whole situation was that I had now asked a girl I barely knew to a weirdo concert that she would probably hate. But like a total moron, I went through with it because I'd convinced myself that she would recognize Howard Jones and totally understand how great I was because of my excellent taste in music...

We had dinner before the show and held a decent conversation. It was going okay and at this point I was pretty optimistic that it wouldn't be too bad. The concert started and the first set of songs were acoustic with Howard Jones on the piano and some random dude playing guitar. I knew things were taking a turn for the worse when my date made the comment that she knew the song because she'd heard her mom listening to it on Kozy 106.5. The second half of the concert changed to electronic music with a full band and everyone stood up except my date. She sat through all of the second half, clearly in Howard Jones-induced pain.

After the show ended and we were driving home, we somehow got talking about some controversial topic. If I remember right, it had something to do with the LDS church and I was having my usual liberal opinion about it. The horribleness came when she stopped acting like she was agreeing with me and COMPLETELY disagreed with all that I had said. I was left with my foot directly in my mouth (imagine the Seinfeld episode where Jerry says at the dinner table that he hates anyone who had a pony, only to find out that his aunt had a pony when she was a little girl in Poland).

I didn't really talk to her much in class after that, and then the next semester when I ran into her at school she called me Greg. She probably just repressed that memory, and I can't say that I blame her for that.

"The License"

2009-04-18T09:48:00.008-06:00

I renewed my driver's license this week because it has been 10 years since I turned 16. I opted to renew by mail at the 5 year mark, so I have been carrying my original license complete with 16-year-old mugshot for all these years. Word got out at work that I had a funny driver's license and for a couple of days I kept getting asked to show off "the license."

Since I have a new license now and "the license" is no longer valid... I'm posting it here for all to enjoy!

Edit: I got a little paranoid about 10 seconds after posting the full license, so I cropped it down to just the picture... I'm sorry, I am definitely my mother's child.

Yum

2009-04-12T20:45:00.004-06:00

I made these for my mom's birthday and they turned out pretty good. I am no Sweet Tooth Fairy, but this was a good recipe! I like it because it uses a cake mix as the base, but then adds some yummy ingredients (like fresh raspberries and half and half) so it doesn't taste like a cake mix cake.

Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Raspberry Cupcakes:
1 White Cake Mix
1 (3 oz) Package Raspberry Jello
1 cup Fresh Raspberries
3/4 cup Oil (I like canola)
1/2 cup Half and Half
4 Eggs

Combine cake mix and Jello. Add remaining ingredients. Beat on low speed until blended and then 2 minutes on medium speed. Fill cupcakes 1/2 to 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

Lemonade Buttercream Frosting
SO... I never really measure or use any kind of recipe for frosting. For this frosting I used the juice of 2 lemons, a stick of butter, 1 Crisco stick and a whole bunch of powdered sugar (probably about 1 to 1 1/2 lbs.) I just keep adding stuff until it is a consistency and taste that I like...

Enjoy :)

No Title Can Do This Clip Justice

2009-04-04T19:06:00.002-06:00

This is really weird... and it is also really funny to me.

Girl's Night Out THIS SATURDAY!!!

2009-04-01T20:24:00.006-06:00

My cute friend Laura has put together an AMAZING event coming up this Saturday for all you girls out there.

At the McKay Events Center in OREM from 5:30 - 8:30

Don't miss this wonderful opportunity to get out of the house and enjoy an evening with mothers, daughters, and good friends.

Come enjoy: FREE 15 minute chair and table massages*FREE Prom updo's*FREE manicures*and a FREE fashion Show Courtesy of Eternity Bridal* Great Boutique Shopping amongst talented Utah Crafters and Artisans* incredible bake sale and finger food items, and AMAZING giveaways!

There will be shopping, food, giveaways, and lots of fun. PLUS, this is a great cause, all proceeds will be donated to Mothers Without Borders. See the flier and links below for more information. Tickets are only $5. You can get them at the door on Saturday, or if you would like to purchase tickets now, let me know!!

http://www.theprombomb.com/

Visit www.motherswithoutborders.org for more information about the women and children you will be helping JUST by participating in Saturday's event!

Pass on this information to your friends and family, it is going to be TONS of fun!

The Economy and Bible Stories by South Park

2009-03-28T21:46:00.005-06:00

This episode of South Park was really funny to me... if you've got 20 minutes to spare and want to see a great episode, here it is:

Margaritaville

Here's a clip in case you don't plan on watching the whole thing:

Also, mind the language...

Favorite Picture

2009-03-23T17:05:00.004-06:00

My grandparents, Ruth and Colen Sweeten. Love this picture! Love them :)

How It's Made: Big Hair Edition

2009-03-18T16:48:00.004-06:00

I know that these have been around for a while now, but Jenna Fischer was on Ellen today and reminded me how much I love this product.

And all this time I have been trying to achieve a giant bump in the back of my head without the hair insert. Now I am left wondering if all the big hair I see around is simply teasing and hair spray or if there is a Bumpit involved.... if I order the extra tall ones do you think they would let me in the Big Hair Club of Utah County???

For Ellen DeGeneres and Jenna Fischer fans... here is the Bumpit in action. I think you will agree we all need this product after you see how well it works, and how natural it looks.

My Facebook Face

2009-03-12T19:45:00.004-06:00

Let me explain. A few days ago my cute 11 year old sister invited Craig and I to be her friends on Facebook. Up until this point I have just kind of ignored this online fad. I had a facebook for about 20 minutes one day but decided I didn't like it. I didn't really understand how it worked, what everything meant, etc. So that was the end of that. But, after the sweet invite from my little sister I figured maybe I needed to give it another chance. I gotta say though, we set up accounts last night and I am still just confused. I don't understand why it is such a popular social networking sight. I know that this post is making me sound like I am 100 years old and don't understand technology, but I promise that is not the case. I would consider myself at least semi-tech-savvy. I spend a horrendous amount of time online, playing with my iPhone, etc. I am usually one of the first ones at work to be asked to explain how something works. But, I gotta say, this Facebook thing is just beyond me. I mean, admittedly, I have only played with it for like 20 minutes now and knowing me within a few days I will completely sucked in and addicted, as I am with the whole blog thing, but I just feel like maybe Facebook is overcomplicated? Is it just me??? Do I need a Facebook tutor?

Sign of Spring! Bachelor rant, etc.

2009-03-11T18:31:00.004-06:00

It is no secret that I am not a huge fan of snow, winter, cold weather, etc. Yes, I love the beauty of snow and such, but by March, I am just beyond done. So, I was super excited to peek out into my backyard and finally see something GREEN!!!

My cute little tulips are finally starting to peak up out of the ground! I LOVE tulips, flowers and just Spring in general. This came as a very welcomed sight to me. It made the snow still covering the rest of my yard look a little less cold.

This has nothing to do with Spring, but I realized that I never took a blog moment to voice my opinions about the "DRAMATIC" ending of the Bachelor. I am pretty sure that Jason is fool and Molly is a bigger fool for giving him another chance. I mean, really? REALLY??? Six weeks may not be enough time to know if you want to marry someone, especially with cameras documenting your awkward dates, so probably proposing to someone at the end of these six weeks was a bad idea to begin with. BUT if you are sooo in love that you propose to someone, maybe giving it more than six more weeks after that to see if it will work would be a good idea. Of course things will be different, you don't have ABC footing the bill for all your fancy helicopter dates. You don't have fancy hot tubs in middle of New Zealand to make out in. So the obvious (and ONLY) thing to do at this point is break up on TV and ask the backup girl for another chance? Nothing but classy television. This did open up a great opportunity for Melissa who is now competing on Dancing with the Stars (which, by the way, I have never gotten into much, shocking I know, as I am a sucker for almost all things TV). I think that Melissa really has better chance of success on Dancing with the Stars than she ever would have with Mr. Jason. K- I am done with that now, promise :)

Don't worry though, we still have all kinds of televisions gems to blog about now... American Idol, the new Bachelorette (yay for Jillian!!), new episodes of the Hills.... maybe what we should worry about more is finding me a hobby...

The Wrong Technique

2009-02-21T19:45:00.005-07:00

Nobody cared about the "live" video (if you are not a fan, I can understand)... BUT the music video for the song is out now and is awesome and creepy, so watch that instead. (And if you watched my first video and thought it was dumb, give this one a chance).

Depeche Mode - Wrong Video Clip
by Mightybaut

D to the E to the L-I-C-I-O-U-S

2009-02-08T21:50:00.008-07:00

For those of you that made a resolution to give up sugar or sweets... you may not want to read any further (or you may want to decide that you made it all the way through January and that is longer than anyone should go without some kind of sweet and reward yourself with what you find below).

Saturday evening Craig was kind enough to humor me and stop at a new little bake shop I have been wanting to try in Provo, The Sweet Tooth Fairy. I imagine that when I die, I will spend my afterlife in a place very similar to this cute little shop.

I had a strawberry shortcake cupcake that had the yummiest strawberry buttercream frosting ever. Craig had a double fudge cupcake with equally delicious chocolate frosting. The shop had all kinds of cupcakes, cookies, and they have these things called cake bites that are supposed to be to die for. It also had cute girly aprons, cupcake shaped bath bombs and other fun girly gifts.

I didn't have more than my iphone with me for a camera, so I didn't get any great pictures, but just trust me on this one. It is super cute and yummy. If you are in the Provo area and are a cupcake fan, you should give it a try.

Check out their website for more information. They also have lots of pictures on Flickr of the shop and the sweets. See? Even their logo is delicious.

http://thesweettoothfairy.com/

Good Medicine

2009-02-04T19:52:00.001-07:00

I don't mean to one-up Amber's video, but this video is HIGH-larious.

Stoned Little Kid After Dentist Visit - Watch more Funny Videos

Where did we go wrong?

2009-02-04T15:59:00.003-07:00

All I will say is that I miss this Christian.

"Un-American"

2009-01-23T18:24:00.004-07:00

I was thinking about writing something on this topic, but this clip from The Daily Show has me covered...

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

History in the Making

2009-01-20T21:23:00.005-07:00

This was one of my favorite images from the inauguration today. So cute. I think we can talk about this inauguration without getting into party politics or what we believe, support, etc. Because today really was about more than that. Whether you like, love, dislike, or disagree with Mr. Obama and what he stands for, we can all agree that today we witnessed history. For a history dork like me, that is pretty sweet.

I promise not to get any more into it than that. Instead, we shall focus on the fashion of the event. I was so wishing to be an Obama daughter today. Their cute outfits were designed just for them by J Crew. When the word got out that the girls' outfits were J Crew, their website was overtaken by fancy moms trying to get their hands on the same stuff. Too bad those are originals. AND (as I am sure you heard on every news station) their first night in the White House was celebrated with their very own screening of Bolt and HSM3 (that's High School Musical 3 for those not in the 'know'). How cool is that??

I also really liked Michelle's dress, even more though, I LOVED her green gloves. I also loved the ball outfits of both Michelle and Barack. Any guy that can pull off a white bow tie most definitely deserves respect.

While we are on the subject of inauguration fashion... dear, dear Aretha....words cannot even describe the bow on that hat.

Canned

2009-01-18T20:29:00.005-07:00

This post is for the benefit of anybody who might be doing a background check on me. This weekend, Amber and I ran into my manager from Pacific Sunwear which is where I worked for about a year during high school. I was fired from that job. I also happen to have the letter I was sent telling me not to come back (click the thumbnail to read it in all its glory).

I'm sure you are dying for the story, so here it is:

I was fired for giving discounts to my friends. On the night of "the incident," I had given some acquaintances a pretty good deal on some shoes and I think some shirts. These guys weren't too subtle about distracting my manager and he suspected that something was going on. After the deal was done, the guys hung around outside the store. My manager went out and asked them for the receipt and that was the end of it. He made them return the items and I was reported to the corporate people. I was told that I was not to come in to work and that I'd hear from them about whether I was fired or not. I got the above letter in the mail a couple of weeks later...

So there you have it... its true, I was a stupid teenager.

Ghostwriter

2009-01-09T07:50:00.005-07:00

I've noticed something interesting about this little b-to-the-log... I can post anything at all and nobody will comment on it. On the other hand, Amber posts a story about the Snuggie commercial (which, by the way, is on-par with the types of things that I normally post) and it will get at least 3-4 replies from our friends who check up on us regularly.

I'm not complaining about my lack of blog-popularity as much as I'm complaining about the lack of feedback. Were you offended? Was it stupid? Did the post have an awkward typo in it? Did I subconsciously put an expletive in it and your mother was reading over your shoulder and saw it and then you got grounded from the computer? Any of these things could be true, but I would never know.

Please, don't make me have Amber post things that I've written.

(I swear, if this post doesn't get any comments I'm going to blog-retire).

Snuggie

2009-01-07T19:11:00.008-07:00

It was just another cold Wednesday night. I was scrolling through the few TV channels we currently have, when I stopped on CNBC. Yes, it was a slow TV night. I was in the middle of watching a very dramatic episode of American Greed, when they broke for commercial. Not just any commercial, mind you, this commercial:

Now I know what you are thinking, "My dreams of dressing up myself and my family like a group of friars while lounging around the house can finally come true!" I was thinking the very same thing.

I hope you are as excited about this amazing new product as I am. Please let me know what colors you will be ordering for your families so we can all coordinate. This would make a fabulous family picture....

The Popup

2009-01-04T15:10:00.005-07:00

One of the odd behavior differences between Firefox on OSX and Windows is the way popups are handled. On Windows, a popup usually takes the focus away from anything else that is open and you immediately see it and are annoyed by it. On OSX though, for some reason, popups end up behind the browser window that opened them and you don't notice them... which is where this story begins.

Amber has an uncle that enjoys sharing various websites with me (a lot of the time, they are things which cannot-be-unseen and should be viewed privately to avoid the scorn of your relatives). Because I spend a lot of time on the Internet, I have usually already seen or heard of the things he suggests to me. But on Christmas Eve, there was a site that I had not yet visited.

Amber's uncle Jeff has a way of describing images or videos so that you achieve a vivid mental picture. He is a master of language that is meant to embarrass those who choose to eavesdrop. Despite his ability to paint directly onto the canvas of your mind, he is not satisfied that you have successfully imagined his subject; he likes to be sure that you have seen it with your own eyes.

So with Jeff's description in my mind, he and I headed to the front porch of Amber's grandparent's house for a more private viewing of the site. Holding my laptop so that it faced away from both the street and the front window, I typed in the URL. The page quickly loaded and was exactly what I had imagined it would be. We both had a good laugh, I closed the browser, and we returned to the party.

Later that night, Amber's grandpa had some vacation photos he wanted us to have. I gave him my laptop and left him to copy the images to my desktop. On the drive home, I told Amber all about the quality time I had spent with Jeff and told her about what he had shown me. She was both disgusted and amused.

The next afternoon, Amber was working on the laptop and I was playing a video game with her brother. She had Firefox open and was also trying to copy a CD which was not working for her. I moved over to help her and needed to see what she had open, so I used the command to display all of the open windows... which is when Amber and I noticed a very adult-oriented popup. I do not know who else possibly saw the popup, but at least I had already told my wife about what I had been doing.

So, for those who may have seen the popup and haven't said anything to me, now you know where it came from and that it wasn't from porn!

Humour in the New Year

2009-01-02T20:40:00.004-07:00

These are funny videos... (and yes, I spelled it the UK way)

Tattoo

2008-12-30T16:28:00.004-07:00

Craig sent this to me today and it was too special not to share with the rest of you. Enjoy!

Disney World

2008-12-28T17:03:00.007-07:00

Craig and I were lucky enough to take a super fun vacation to Disney World a couple weeks ago. Here are a few of my favorite pictures and things from the trip.

We went on this trip with my family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. This picture is of my cute cousin Quin going gangsta for the camera when he realized he scored some serious souvenir cash before the trip.

My sister, Kayla, is the world's biggest High School Musical fan. While watching the parade/show at Hollywood Studios, Kayla was chosen to be part of the show and even won the "Star Dazzle Award". It was awesome.

Craig in his Mickey ears.

The Osborne Lights at Hollywood Studios was one of the coolest things we saw this trip. Millions of tiny lights, synchronized to Christmas music and topped off with lightly falling bubble snow.

Favorite rides this trip included the new Toy Story Mania ride at Hollywood Studios and Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom. The new Toy Story ride is pretty sweet. It is a video game and ride combined, which makes it Craig's favorite. It keeps your score as you compete in several different carnival games. Expedition Everest is the newest roller coaster in Disney World. It actually opened the very day that Craig and I decided to go to Animal Kingdom in April 06. We did not feel like waiting 3 hours to go on it then, so we went on it for the first time this trip, and never waited more that 15 minutes!

As with most trips I take, the best part of this trip was the food! We did the dining plan, which is a MUST if you go to Disney World. The people in my group thought I was a little crazy when I made them wake up at 5 am six months before the trip to reserve their dinners, but I think everyone agreed that it was SO worth it. The dessert in this picture was at our last dinner of the trip, Kona Cafe. It was an ice cream cone with cotton candy on top, who could ask for more? It also had little cups of toppings to put on the ice cream, including Mickey Mouse sprinkles! I really should have taken pictures of every single meal, because they were all amazing!

The castle was all lit up with lights to make it look like it was covered with icicles! It was so pretty! It also made the perfect backdrop for my favorite firework show, Wishes!

We had the best time... I am already planning what I want to do next time...

Fun Blog Tag

2008-12-22T09:58:00.004-07:00

I just read Juliana's blog, and this did look super fun, so here goes!

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search
2. Using only the first page, pick any image
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker (go to )http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php

The Questions What is your first name? Amber
What is your favorite food? sushi
What high school did you go to?: Springville
What is your favorite color? Pink
Who is your celebrity crush? John Mayer
Favorite drink? Diet Coke
Dream vacation? Disney World
Favorite dessert? Cupcakes
What you want to be when you grow up? A princess
What do you love most in life? Craigy
One Word to describe you? particular
Your flickr name? I don't know?

So fun! Now I tag everyone :) Even Craig.

Walter Disney Wishes You Merry Christmas

2008-12-20T20:50:00.002-07:00

Enjoy the Osborne Lights, which are found in Hollywood Studios at Disney World during Christmas time. (I also hope you enjoy the little something I've left at the end of the video.)

Halloweeeeen Time

2008-11-05T18:33:00.007-07:00

How is it already November 5? I am not sure where the month of October went. So, this post is a little bit late, but here is a recap of our Halloween.

My family has always had some pretty fun Halloween traditions.
Tradition #1- Pumpkin Picking and carving. This year Craig, Kayla and I headed down to the pumpkin patch to pick out our perfect pumpkins! Carving always happens at my parents house. Craig out does us all with his artistic carving abilities. This year he carved a pretty darn good George Bush face. I struggled to create my vampire Mickey Mouse, but, after some strategically placed toothpicks, it turned out alright.

Tradition #2- Halloween Movie "date". I don't have any pictures for this one, but it is worth sharing. I am not much of a scary movie fan (I am the world's biggest baby). Craig, on the other hand, loves scary movies and would not consider it Halloween time without watching at least a couple. How do we solve this conflict of interest? Enter my sister, Kayla! She also loves scary movies, so for the past couple of years, Kayla and Craig have planned out at least a couple nights to scare themselves silly with classic scary movies. My contribution this year: we decorated cookies before I retreated to the upstairs to watch something less scary, like The Hills (I know, I know).

Tradition #3- Halloween. Every year my parents host a family gathering at their house on Halloween. My grandma always makes homemade donuts and we always have lots of homemade chili as well. This year was the perfect night for trick-0r-treating and Craig hoped for a good turn out at my parents house. He found a very scary mask that he paired with coveralls and sat out on my parents porch to scare the children. He was disappointed in the turnout, but I think he scared plenty of poor kids. Here he is with the kids getting ready to go trick-or-treating. Scary huh??

We always love Halloween and this year was especially good!

Munich Liberty!

2008-11-01T22:19:00.003-06:00

I took German for 2 years in high school and of course we learned all the words to '99 Luftballons' by Nena (yes, those are both spelled right, Google it if you have to...), BUT we also learned all the words to THIS song:

I don't know what triggered that memory, but I couldn't justify keeping it to myself.

Fall Memories

2008-10-20T18:03:00.002-06:00

Watch it from the vimeo website (click 'vimeo' at the bottom right corner) for full awesomeness...

America!

2008-10-18T10:19:00.003-06:00

Dear Utah Voter,

You and I are about to take part in one of the most historic elections in our country's history. Election Day is just over two weeks away and I'm sure you have some feelings of anxiety and concern. The economy is going crazy, we are in a seemingly endless war, and the definition of marriage is being challenged in California. This does seem like troubling times... almost end-of-days troubling. But if there is one thing that you can count on to ease your mind, it is this: my vote is going to cancel out your vote.

Love,
Craig

Another Literal Video: Tears For Fears

2008-10-14T21:10:00.002-06:00

I bet you all will get sick of me posting these, but they are freakin' funny so too bad for you.

Contextual Advertising Fail

2008-10-13T21:40:00.003-06:00

I don't remember what my life was like before the Internets were around to entertain me... thanks for the ad ABC 7!

Picture Tag

2008-10-13T15:10:00.006-06:00

Teresa tagged me a while back with these instructions:

Go to your picture folder, select 4th folder and the 4th picture and explain. Then tag 4 people.

So here we go....

This is actually a pretty funny story. Last summer my family went to Disneyland without me (rude, I know!!) But, it ended up being a good thing that Craig and I did not go because we ended up having to move the week they were gone. SOO, it all worked out. I am still only a little bit bitter. But, the fact that we are all going to DISNEYWORLD is exactly 59 days makes up for it a little, I guess (I am just a tiny bit excited!!!!)

Anyway, Craig's favorite ride at Disney (land or World) is the Buzz Lightyear ride. It really is the perfect ride for Craig: you get to shoot guns at moving targets- just like a video game, they keep score, and there is a "high score board" at the end of the ride. My family knew of Craig's love for this ride. At the end of the ride you can view the picture that was taken of you while you were on the ride. You then have the option of emailing it to someone. Everyday of their trip, Craig got at least one (usually a dozen) emails from my family on the Buzz Lightyear ride. He even got some pictures of strangers sent to him, which was especially funny. The picture that came up as the 4th picture in the 4th folder is of my sisters, Kayla and Nicole, trying their hardest to beat Craig's high score :)

I tag Emily, Lisa, Melissa and Annie.

Literally A-ha!

2008-10-06T20:24:00.000-06:00

Amber's first thoughts on Pointless Childhood Stories: Halloween 1986

2008-10-03T22:41:00.003-06:00

I was going through some old photos for a Halloween scrapbook layout I was working on and I came across this dandy. Welcome to Halloween 1986... I was three years old and Rainbow Brite was my hero. I think the best part of this picture has to be the mask. Rainbow had quite the hairdo, and the costume makers smartly depicted it by making her hair so much bigger than the rest of her face that the eye holes had to be placed in the middle of the 'do. Even better than this, only one of my little eyes is peeking through the holes. The other hole somehow ended up on my cheek.

If anyone else remembers this style of costume, I am sure you remember how much you wanted to keep that mask on all night (because really, without the mask you are just a regular person wearing a plastic apron). But, after about two minutes behind that plastic mask it became sticky and hot from the inadequate breathing holes, forcing you to make a very hard decision: suffer through with a sticky face and try not to breathe so much OR take off the mask and make your costume super boring. I always tried for the first option. Try as I might, I probably never lasted more than a few minutes behind the mask (but then again, with the creepiness of the mask and my vision impaired as it clearly was, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing).

I believe 1986 was also the year that the little jack-o-lantern I am holding had a mind of its own. Home video records show me carrying on a lengthy conversation with "pumpkin" including an argument over what song we should sing for the camera. "It's a Small World" won in the end (apparently causing some tears to be shed by my pumpkin).

Aahh, the imagination of a three year old :)

As a side note, I must add that while my depiction of Rainbow bright was on the creepy side (due in large part to that mask), it pales in comparison to a Mr. Joel McHale of the Soup's own interpretation of the dear Ms. Rainbow.

Jesus is My Friend Too!

2008-10-02T18:47:00.000-06:00

Billy Bob Does Usher

2008-09-14T19:57:00.001-06:00

Amber showed me this video and it is awesome... Showbiz Pizza was so terrifying.

NIN Tour Article

2008-09-13T16:20:00.002-06:00

Here's a really cool behind-the-scenes article about the Nine Inch Nails tour...

NIN Dazzles With Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens

Taxes

2008-09-06T18:59:00.002-06:00

Please take the time to read this article:

Obama vs. McCain: Taxing and Spending

Post-Concert Report: I Still Love Nine Inch Nails

2008-09-04T20:30:00.019-06:00

I saw Nine Inch Nails last night in Salt Lake City. I was nervous about going, mostly because I'm not one who enjoys crowds, but it ended up being the best live show I have ever seen. I can't find any videos from last night yet, but here is one that compiles a bunch of the visuals from the Seattle show to give you an idea how impressive this tour is (plus a couple other videos just because)...

Here's "Vessel" since I didn't see it in the clip above:

And "In This Twilight" cause it's an awesome song:

Updated 09/08/2008
People have started putting up videos from SLC, so here's some cool ones...

"The Greater Good"

"Reptile"

"Survivalism"

You're not scared... you're uninformed.

2008-08-29T09:29:00.006-06:00

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams

So far it has been fairly easy keeping politics off this blog, but I'm starting to get really annoyed by people telling me that Barack Obama scares them. I know that by posting this, I'm putting my own political opinion out into the world (which is something I usually try to avoid doing), but it seems like it is unavoidable this election. Most people are probably thinking to themselves, "Oh hell, another pro-Obama blog... I've already heard it all, what a waste of time." If that just described you and I don't know you personally, fair enough, stop reading. However, if you are someone who I interact with on a regular basis, please do me a favor and read the rest of this post.

I have heard some people state that they are afraid of Barack Obama. I have heard them say that they don't want to have their taxes raised. I have heard them say that they don't want their guns taken away. I have even heard them say that they don't want to have flags banned (this was based on Obama not wearing a flag pin on his lapel...). If you are a person who thinks that Obama is scary, please watch a few minutes of the following video:

Now that you have watched some of the video, please spend a few more minutes and read some of the following information:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/973560/Barack-Obama
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp

I don't think I'm asking too much of anyone. I'm not asking you to support Obama or agree with any of his policies. All I really want is for people to stop reciting "facts" about Obama that they read in a forwarded email. If you would not believe an email written by some liberal psychopath that is full of lies about John McCain, why would you believe a right-wing psychopath doing the same to Obama? Snopes.com is your best friend when it comes to forwarded emails.

And just to be fair, here is some information about John McCain. Please read some of it:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/353872/John-McCain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain
http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/mccain.asp

If you want to start up a conversation about politics with me in the future, you better have some facts to discuss because I don't want to talk about email forwards. If I hear anything about Obama being a secret muslim who hates the United States of America because he won't wear a flag pin or refuses to put his hand on his heart, I may correct you. Or I may just keep quiet. Either way, I'll be thinking that you are an uninformed fool.

While We Are On The Subject Of John Mayer...

2008-07-27T19:55:00.001-06:00

Besides being a great guitar player, he is a pretty funny guy as well...

My John Mayer Post Is Better Than Lisa's

2008-07-26T20:20:00.005-06:00

Here is my post to one-up Lisa's John Mayer blog. Mine has youtube video clips that we recorded our own selves! Beat that, sister!

The New Star Wars Kid: Cardboard Halo Weapons

2008-07-11T09:24:00.002-06:00

This video is one of the most awkward things I've ever seen... it's especially funny if you have ever played Halo. For those who have never played the game, this kid copies all of the animations that the game characters do in the game (which would not be complete without some teabagging action... watch for it).

Pointless Childhood Stories Vol. 2

2008-07-04T20:20:00.002-06:00

Pointless Childhood Stories Volume Two:
Tree-House Ninja

This one is short, but I think does a great job describing what an awesome kid I was...

During one of the summers when I was in elementary school, our next-door neighbors' oldest son built a huge tree-house. I was friends with his younger sister, and we liked to hang out in the tree-house and play the usual kid games like 'house' ("usual games" DOES NOT include 'doctor', by the way).

Well one time I happened to find her brother's toy nunchucks and thought that I would make quite an excellent ninja in our game of 'house'. I hooked the nunchucks across a branch, swung out from the tree-house platforms and did some really badass side-kicks. This lasted about two times before the nunchucks broke and I fell out of the tree-house.

When I hit the ground, it knocked the wind out of me. I jumped up as fast as I could to try and limit the damage to my ego. The only thing I could think about was how pissed her brother was going to be when he found out I had broken his nunchucks. I didn't even bother to say a word... I just bawled like a baby and ran home. So much for the ego.

Art City Days: The Movie

2008-06-20T22:23:00.002-06:00

I finally put together the video I recorded during Art City Days last weekend. That is pretty much all I have to say about that.

Art City Days 2008 from Craig Whatcott on Vimeo
Oh yeah... you can watch a larger and better quality version of the video by following the links on the video itself (if you really care).

New Toy: The Details

2008-06-17T18:08:00.005-06:00

As Amber said, I am Mr. Technology and so here are the details of our new camera (for those who are nerds like me and know what I'm talking about).

It is a Canon VIXIA HF100 and it stores video on SDHC cards (we've got 2 of them... a 4GB and 16GB, both class 6). The video is stored in AVCHD format which is pretty new and uses the MPEG-4 codec. It can record up to a resolution of 1920x1080 at a frame rate of 30p, 60i, or even 24p.

I don't have a set editing workflow yet since I am still trying to confirm the effects of certain settings within iMovie, but so far I have been able to do the following:

1) Record at 1920x1080 - 30p (supposedly at this point, if I were to burn the AVCHD files onto a DVD, a PS3 would play the video back at the HD resolution)
2) Import video into iMovie at 1080i (although I have my preferences set to import at this resolution, I am not sure whether the video is actually being imported at that resolution on my Macbook. If you know how to determine this within iMovie, please let me know...)
3) Edit the video
4) One of the following:
- Export at 1920x1080 for HD playback on my Xbox360 (I will probably eventually post something about this since it was quite a pain to get set up...)
- Export at 1280x720 for "HD" playback on the website www.vimeo.com (This website is cool because you can share the video through their nice-looking flash player or you can download the original file to play back at 720p resolution).
- Export and burn to DVD (I'm not even sure what the resolution is for this... the DVDs look pretty good though...).

You now know as much as I do about all of this. As you can tell, I have a lot more to learn when it comes to this stuff. Luckily, I really enjoy it.

Here is an example of what can be done with the camera (keep in mind, this was one of the first things I've filmed and it was quickly edited so please forgive me for how crappy it may seem).

Faux Wishes from Craig Whatcott on Vimeo.

Disclaimer Time!
Disclaimer #1: The music and subject were chosen by Amber, so direct your Disney/Wishes/fireworks comments to her.
Disclaimer #2: I am not an expert at this yet, so it is very likely that I have my facts wrong. Please, if you spot a factual error, let me know so I can correct it!

New Toy

2008-06-13T17:04:00.004-06:00

So this really is a subject that Craig should be blogging about, since he is Mr. Technology and likes his electronic toys. I am sure he will post something much more technical about it. Our new little video camera is really fun and cute (see how technical I am?)! It films in HD and is all fancy, but I am most excited to have video camera to start capturing memories. I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent watching old home videos that my parents have made of us kids over the years. They are priceless. We really wanted to have a camera before our next Disney trip (which is in December, woo hoo!!!) And, I think Craig was getting sick of using the little camera that is built into the laptop to help my siblings film various video projects for school (ask Taylor, Craig makes the BEST school movies). So, even though we don't have any kids or pets, I am sure we will still have fun filming random family stuff. I will even have to try posting some video to the blog now!

For those of you that want to know the details, it is a Canon Vixia HF100, which takes little SD flash cards instead of tapes or DVDs, so that is pretty fancy. And like I said it films in HD, just the little bit we were filming yesterday (the flowers out back, the trees, etc.) looked really amazing on the TV.

High School Graduation

2008-05-30T12:31:00.004-06:00

Brian and I being SOOOO excited!!!

Here we all are looking at the wrong camera

Kayla and I are always super photogenic

Me being short with Craig and Brian

Wednesday was Graduation Day for Springville High School. My sister, Kayla, and Craig's brother, Brian, were both graduates! It was also my first year participating as a member of the faculty, so that was fun, too.

Yesterday was the last "official" day of school, which means I survived my first year at the high school!! Yay!! I actually really, really enjoyed being there and am excited to see what it will be like to have a summer off. I will probably help with stuff at the school as they need it, but I am hoping to get some of my own projects done as well.

The Cure

2008-05-24T17:36:00.004-06:00

We saw The Cure last night at the E-Center in SLC. Since we didn't get any video or pictures ourselves, here is a video I found on youtube... nice shoes.

Update 05/26: I found some more youtube footage...

The Kids in the Hall

2008-05-14T19:09:00.009-06:00

Last night, Amber and I went to see The Kids in the Hall at Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake. I randomly found out they were coming a few weeks ago when I was surfing digg.com and so I quickly bought tickets. I've been a pretty big fan since I discovered them through Comedy Central reruns in high school; in fact, we used to skip our classes after lunch to stay at home and watch episodes.

Anyway, the live show was excellent and very funny. The material was nearly all new stuff and included sketches with the some of the classic characters like the Chicken Lady, Gavin, Headcrusher, the C/Kathies, and Buddy Cole. I won't try to explain any of my favorites since you just have to see them... I'm sure they they will eventually end up on youtube anyway. If you get a chance to see them before the tour is over, I definitely recommend it.

The show itself was awesome, but the best part of the night happened afterwards. I read online that the cast had been coming out afterwards to sign autographs and take pictures, so we hung out in the lobby for a little while to see if they would show up. After a bit I was ready to give up and leave, but we overheard one of the theater workers talking like maybe there were going to come meet the fans. This gave me some more patience, so we waited a little more and eventually the whole cast came out. We got pictures with each of them and I had them all sign my Season 1 DVD. It was great to get a chance to meet them in person and to see how gracious they were to their fans.

Tagged

2008-05-11T22:20:00.002-06:00

Normally, I probably would not go along with the tagging but, it is Sunday evening, I am being SUPER lazy, "watching" Craig play video games.... so this is sounding pretty fun :)

Four Movies I could Watch over and over:
1. You've Got Mail
2. Mean Girls
3. The Back to the Futures
4. The Indiana Jones movies

Four Jobs I've Had:
1. Teacher/Tracker
2. Scrapbooks Store Manager
3. Partyland Girl
4. Secretary

Four Places I've Lived:
1. Springville, UT
2. Ephraim, UT
3. Orem, UT
4. Orlando, FL

Four of My Favorite dishes/foods:
1. Cupcakes
2. Zubs Cheese Sticks
3. Bagels
4. Sushi

Four T.V. Shows I Love:
1. The Office
2. Friends
3. Jon and Kate + Eight
4. The Hills (haha, yeah I said it)

Four sites I visit daily:
1. disneyworldmoms.com
2. Gmail
3. my work email
4. cnn.com

Four Places I have Vacationed:
1. Disneyland
2. Disney World
3. Europe
4. Moab

Four Places I'd rather be right now:
1. Disney World
2. Europe
3. Maggie Moos
4. Really I am pretty content right here on my couch...

Four Bloggers I'm Tagging:
I have never actually tagged anyone before, so I am not really sure what it means or how it works (I figure it is like the chain emails except you won't have bad luck for 2934023 years if you don't repost it???) So I guess I will tag...
1- Lisa
2- Melissa
3- Annie
4- Craig (haha!!)
Those are pretty much the only other 4 bloggers I know :)

John and Abigail Adams

2008-05-03T16:59:00.008-06:00

A few years ago I read the book John Adams, by David McCullough, for a class I was taking at Snow College. I read it again a couple years later at UVSC for another class. I fell in love with the story of John and Abigail Adams. This year, HBO turned the book into a miniseries. If you have not read the book or seen the series, you should do both!! I will admit, it might be a slow read and fairly boring show for those who are not huge history dorks like me, but, Craig is for sure not a huge history dork and I think he liked the HBO special as much as I did. The book and movie both prove that history really is written from our own modern perspectives. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin hold such a hallowed spot in our history hearts, yet John Adams is often overlooked and/or made a bad guy, when really, this man is just as important and impressive as any other of our "Founding Fathers." Don't even get me started on how we overlook the ladies like Abigail. Truely she was a strong, admirable and amazing woman that we usually hear no more about than her name as "first lady."

So, now I will take a minute to say thank you to John and Abigail Adams. Both sacrificed in ways that I will never understand, nor be able to equal. Their story is a classic love story, and their letters to each other, so well weaved through McCullough's book, are priceless. Not only can we learn about what it really means to be a Patriot from these two, we can all learn a great lesson in selfless service and devotion. Towards the end of his life, John worried about how his story would be written and receieved by future generations. He knew he would not compair in the eyes of historians to Washington or others. Yet, he sacrificed no less than any of the other great people of that time. Thank you John and Abigail for all you did for America, and for your example in the relationship you had with each other. Both refered to each other as their "dearest friend". It was nice to see the revolution and founding of our country through the eyes of a couple, to see the struggles and stress it put on a faimly, and the closeness they shared throughout. I think that they would be happy with the McCullough book and HBO movie. I also know I have learned so much from their story.

A blog about John and Abigail Adams would not be complete without a couple good quotes.

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."
-John Adams (in a letter to Abigail)

"You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you an inactive spectator... We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."
-Abigail Adams (in a letter to John)