we're alive

has anyone out there been wondering if we've fallen off the face of the earth? does anyone even read this thing? well if you do, and if you were, know that we are still here, just a little preoccupied; three midterms, two papers, work assignments, personal projects, and designing your friends wedding invitations and trying to start planning your website (thank you sarah for being my web builder) all over a couple of weeks will do that.

i'll hopefully be updating some more soon, but until then, here are some highlights:

-my yoshi plant is blooming (see above image). in the fall. curious, don't you think? i consulted it's little tag thing, which only told me that it's native to south africa. maybe it's blooming now because it's spring in south africa.

-democracy. here's what mosiah has to say about it: "Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord. Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people. And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you." i really do feel like in most instances, the majority will make the best decision according to the knowledge they have. in politics of course it's more difficult because it's hard to see past all the banter and facade, but only time will tell. i'm certainly happy with the results, but andy and i have been saying all along that the election of either candidate would not be cause for rejoicing. there's a long road ahead, and as obama said in his election night speech, there will be setbacks and false starts. we can only hope for the best and be grateful that we have a hand in it all.

-re-designing my c.m. photo logo in preparation for a real live website.

-getting back to climbing with stacie.

-being a tethered shooting genius at work

-getting to fall asleep to andy playing me lullabies on his ukelele thursday night.

-sunday: the one day a week when i get to sleep in.

-quite a few delicious meals created (recipes to post soon)

-starting to see an end to my subconscious stress induced jaw clenching and subsequent headaches: only two weeks and two days 'till thanksgiving, followed by two weeks 'till finals.

-a new month, which means a clean slate on the budget...that always feels good.

-new speakers=more music in our lives.

-my bike, and the fact that the snow-free weather has held out (more or less) allowing me to ride it to school and work. what a joy

-the fact that this house only costs $8,300 (learned about it in my finance class). all we would need to do to be homeowners is move to peru, indiana!

-managing to get my daily dose of scrubs with andy

-despite stresses, life is just good.

st. george weekend

andy and i went down to st. george this weekend for general conference. we got to meet our niece arvilla for the first time, and of course i took some pictures.

another baby!

congratulations to dan and emma, who had their baby yesterday around 11 am. since i don't have any pictures of sophia, some photos of the parents will have to do (because really, who wants to see a post with no pictures).

sophia was born 9 pounds 2 ounces.

good job emma!
the niece count has now reached eight.

ps: my speedy posting of sophia's birth does not mean that i love her more than arvilla! speaking of which, i have some photos of arvilla to post today. hurrah for babies!

new shoes

i bought these shoes for a shoot yesterday. we had to do a white on white for my still life class, and this is what i came up with.

i had every intention of returning them once the shoot was completed.

i didn't need new shoes, but i decided to get them in my size, just in case.

this morning i put on a white shirt. i looked for shoes to wear and nothing seemed quite right.

until i spotted the vans bag in the corner of the room and thought to myself: hm, well, i'm sure just wearing them once would be fine, and then maybe i could still return them.

after a full day of walking campus in these babies, which resulted in some lovely scuffs and scratches, i realized

you cant return white shoes once you've worn them...

or if you really like them

baby!

this morning, my brand new niece arvilla turned one week old.
i feel like a bad aunt for not having written a congratulatory post the very day she was born,
congratulations juli and tom!

i'm looking forward to going down to st. george soon to see her (and photograph her)!

i am an only child, so obviously i have no siblings to provide me with nieces and nephews. luckily, i inherited six lovely nieces (and five lovely siblings-in-law) when i married andy. the niece count has now reached seven, with another one due this week AND another one of andy's sisters is expecting a baby in the spring.

babies, babies, everywhere. what an exciting time.

the bike of my dreams will soon be the bike of my real life!

see that beauty up there? that is the gary fisher simple city 3 women's. that is the bike i've been coveting for months and months. that is the bike that my birthday bike fund was for. that is the bike that's back-ordered (in my size) through the end of january. that is the bike that, thanks to my incessant weekly (sometimes more frequent than that) calls to all the local bike shops to check on the availability dates, will be mine within the next seven days!

after being shot down by racer's who said they couldn't get it until january (even though my name is third on their list), i made a routine call to mad dog's on friday to see if they could tell me any different. and they could; september 29th! i made a note in my planner to call on the 26th, and ten minutes later they were calling me back. the employee (who must have been new because i'd never talked to her before) said that the owner would be able to special order it for me and it would be there within the week.

i was flabbergasted.

how could that be possible? why are so many people suffering through the waiting pain when some store owner can just make a call and have the bike within a week? i don't know where the logic in bike production is. maybe there's some big secret i just wouldn't understand. maybe they just wanted me to stop calling them and by a week they really meant four months.

when i went into the store to order it, i questioned the owner. would it really seriously be here in a week? he seemed confident.

as i was checking out, he said to me "you've called on this bike quite a few times, haven't you."
i may have blushed slightly and laughed a guilty laugh.


persistence pays!

awww!

how can you not have a good day when the first thing your husband says to you when he wakes up is "wow, you look amazing!"?

new floors!

the week before we left for france, andy and i discovered that our gross carpet from the 80's was covering up really nice hardwood floors.

we got permission from our landlady to rip out the carpet, and we went for it as soon as we got the ok. the only catch is that now we have to sand and refinish them (the agreement with the owners is that they'll pay for supplies if we do all the work).
but since the wood is in really good condition as is, we're putting of the refinishing...at least for now.

pulling out the carpet gave us some interesting insight into the history of our apartment though. i think it was built in the 50's, and the wood is definitely original. sometime in the 60's, they must have thought it would be really rad to put in orange shag carpet (we found remnants), then in the 80's, the orange shag was replaced with brown low-pile, and now we're back to the wood! it's funny how fashions change...even with flooring.

in anycase, i feel alot better about our respiratory health now that the carpet is gone.
and the new floors make our apartment even more awesome than it already was. hurrah!