Happy Fourth, on the Fourteenth

Ever wonder what would happen if you used a language-translation program to translate a phrase back and forth between English and five other languages? Well, someone did, and they came up with this really fun site where you can play with language to your heart's content. Here's mine, in special tribute to the fourth of July holiday:

Can the word of the OH consider it of the first light of the shovel,
of which what many we it hailed ferocious this with the buttock to the
lustrum of the dawn?

Can you guess what that phrase originally said? While you're thinking about it, here are the pictures of our July 4th festivities that I've long promised myself I would post:

First thing in the morning on the 4th, James, Allison, Anthony, Baby George, and Big George, along with Sterling and his wife, ran the 5k. I was doing the all important job of Photographing.












Next, we watched the parade:

Here's Max showing his patriotism by eating the flag.
Mom and Anthony cheesing for the camera. And sporting very patriotic colors, I might add.
Dad and James. Come on, everyone. You love that hat.
Later that night, after a delicious BBQ at James's Uncle Greg and Aunt Mary's house, we lit fireworks at Diane and Jeff's.









And, in closing:

The collapse assured that the test and of the system to ignite in the
thing and the aeronautics, that one that is our place of the symbol,
he had always red the material rocket here he with the use at night
what collapse of the force.

Happy Birthday Grandpa Wilde!

I've got a bunch of fun pictures to post of the fourth of July festivities, but I can't find the little hookup thing for the camera, so I'll do things a bit backwards and post the pictures I took tonight on my cell phone camera.

We had a surprise birthday party for James's Grandpa Wilde tonight. James and I made this cake, as Grandpa is a big baseball fan:


Here's Grandpa blowing out the candles:


Here's James's little cousin Mia - she just loved those flowers, kept picking them up and dragging them all over the yard. Cute, cute girl.


And lastly, here are Grandma Wilde's night bloomers: we waited very patiently to watch them bloom before our eyes. It was an amazing sight, and then when they were open they smelled so beautiful. Just gorgeous:

Tagged!

3 Joys:
Reading on the porch on a warm day with a light breeze
Kisses from my husband when he gets home from school
The fact that my new sewing machine works!

3 Fears:
Getting in a wreck
Getting into debt
Getting kicked in the head by a rabid llama

3 Goals:
Daily exercise
Daily scripture study
Learn new sewing skills

3 Current Obsessions:
Getting my kitchen floor clean

Reconstructing clothing

Being environmentally friendly

3 Random/Surprising facts:
I'm starting to like some of James's names for our future children: Octavian, for example
I really like painting - not artistic painting, just painting, like a fence or a wall.
Our floor-cleaning robot doesn't have a name. Any suggestions?

Robot Invasion

Aieeeeeeeee! They're here- the robots are here!

That's a squeal of excitement, by the way, not fear. This weekend was filled with various delights in robotic form arriving in the mail.

James received his Boe Bot, which he gets to build and program. So far it rolls very nicely across the floor and runs away from us. Almost like a pet. But not quite.

and I received my Scooba, the infamous floor-scrubbing robot that certain *unnamed people* ahem (Mom) ahem tried to shame me out of buying ("You only have two tiny floors to scrub!" she mocked. Well, Mom, now I have no floors to scrub. Ha.). It works like a dream - if you often dream of round robots gliding across your floor sucking up food bits and leaving behind gleaming linoleum. I know I do. It's a little noisy, but apart from that, it is amazingly cool and fascinating to watch. And since floor scrubbing is the only household chore I absolutely despise (worse than dishes, toilets, laundry, and vacuuming combined) and have never been good at (the floor always seems to still be dirty somehow), I'd say this little robot is sure to quickly become my favorite little electronic friend.

Our Weekend Achievement: Now with Bigger Pictures!

So, Saturday morning James and I had a blast learning a new cake-decorating skill: working with fondant. James made the cake and the fondant on Friday (the fondant was made out of marshmallows and a ton of powdered sugar and I don't even know what else), and then Saturday morning we set to decorating it. First, James expertly covered the entire cake with a layer of white fondant:
Next, we had to decide what we wanted to decorate it with, so we went to our huge box of 100 cookie cutters to choose a shape or two.

Once our magnificent shapes were selected, we began coloring and cutting the fondant and decorating the cake.
Ok, I have probably not had this much fun in a long time. James is hilarious. I love my husband -he's awesome. (It was, after all, all his idea to make this cake in the first place.)We spent a lot of time congratulating ourselves on our brilliance and laughing at our randomness.

The final product:

Yes, those are stegosauruses. They represent our neighbors, to whom we gave this masterpiece as a magnanimous show of our appreciation and admiration of them. (Applause here would be appropriate.)

Pathetic

So, I have a cold. :( The good part about this is that I've been asked, or maybe invited?, to work from home soon, so today I was able to work from home as sort of a trial run of the future. The bad part is I can't get the bottle of my generic not-quite-DayQuil open. Pathetic, I know. Guess I will just have to wait for James to get home.

*Update* I tried again, and it turns out I was reading the instructions wrong. There was an arrow on the top, so I thought I was supposed to turn it in the direction of the arrow (while squeezing). Turns out the arrow was pointing in the direction I was supposed to turn it in order to "close tightly." Whoops. Interesting note - the day version of my generic wal-mart cold medicine tastes much better than the night version. I wonder why that is?

Weekend Update

Our weekend in outline form:

1. Got to hang out with friends Tracie and Austin who
   a. made us delicious margherita pizza and cheesecake.
   b. provided awesome conversation.
       i. you know you're getting old when your favorite
          thing to do is sit around and talk.


2. Dad and Anthony came down from Idaho to hang out. We:
   a. went to see Iron Man, which was a lot better than 
      I thought it would be.
   b. went on a double date
        i. made cookies
        ii. played wii fit
        iii. played apples to apples
        iv. went to see fireworks at Orem summerfest
        v. had a lot of fun

3.  Taught nursery
    a. our lesson was: I have feelings.
    b. we sang "If you chance to meet a frown, do not
       let it stay"
         i. the adults were the only ones singing
    c. we only had one minor disaster - Tori bumped her 
       chin  while jumping during the "beam" part of "Jesus 
       wants me for a sunbeam"

4. Hung out at Grandma and Grandpa Wilde's house
    a. talked (again, getting old)
    b. watched the Celtics and the Lakers
         i. darn you Wests for getting me into sports
    c. Grandpa made me us chocolate malts.
        i. yum

Happy Friday

So, it's been way too long since I've blogged about anything - life has actually been pretty interesting and fun lately, which gives me more to write about and less time to write about it! So, sorry, I know you've all been dying to know about our exciting life.

One of my oldest friends came to visit last Thursday/Friday with his wife and baby. There were driving through Utah on the way to Portland from Connecticut. We had a great time showing them around Provo (the canyon, BYU campus, you know, the excitement was almost too much) and mostly just playing with Vera who was too adorable to resist. We have a great video of her playing with James's robot which we will post soon. Once again David and Calla Maria - we're very sorry for getting your child addicted to technology.

Another awesome friend from the Northwest also dropped in this week - just knocked on my front door and totally surprised me. It was so fun to hang out with her again. I've missed her terribly.

And last of all, I started teaching English again - I have several new students (four, for now) that want to improve their writing and speaking skills, so I'm having a blast with them teaching about organization strategies, transitions, etc. I come home after our one hour session and just feel happy to be teaching again. I had forgotten how much I liked it.

Anyway, that's all the excitement we've got for you for now, until we get some pictures up on here. Have a great Friday!

New Project

So, when I was a teenager, a great frustration of my life (especially around prom time) was trying to find modest clothing that wasn't, well, butt-ugly. Ok, I suppose I should soften that up a bit: most of it wasn't ugly, it was just boring. I always had to settle with something less than what I wanted because I didn't know how to find modest clothing in the styles I liked.

Recently, I've gotten interested in a phenomenon called wardrobe refashion, which is the idea that you can take clothes you already have, or used clothing from thrift stores or freecyce groups and refashion them into something you like and that suits your needs and desires. All this is in an effort to keep perfectly good clothing from ending up in a landfill and sort of curb our consumer craziness.

The more I thought about this idea, the more I realized you can definitely combine these two ideas--the desire to dress modestly and the ability to refashion clothes.

So, of course, I started a blog - modestify.blogspot.com It basically exists to help people either find resources to buy modest clothes--or to learn new ways to make their own. I like the latter of course, being cheap and having slight crafty tendencies.

So check it out, pass the word along, and hopefully we can spread the culture of modesty through sheer ease of access. :)

Somedays Aren't Yours At All

This is a Regina Spektor song that I simply adore called "Somedays." The video is not an official video, but one a fan made, and I think it's brilliant. Enjoy