Ben's

We went to Ben's to hang out before we leave for Vegas tomorrow.

Getting Ready for Christmas

Here's Ben wielding the glue gun in order to make a Christmas Ornament.

Here is a picture of me with my haircut (that Rose gave me) unshowered and studying for finals.



Here are our stockings. We don't have a fireplace, so this will have to do.



Here is our Christmas Tree. Notice the mini-presents. Rose made those.



Here are our Christmas lights. We are very festive.


Rose is busy preparing her grad school applications and I've been busy with finals until yesterday. I got a really bad cold last Wednesday, so that made things frustrating because it was harder to focus with all the congestion and such. I gave my cold to Rose and so now she's been sick too.

Today we're trying to recover and clean up our apartment because it has been seriously neglected the last few days. I think I did well on my tests, at least, I felt like I did a good job coming out of them, but I won't know any grades for another couple months. Whatever they turn out to be, I sure learned a lot.

I'm looking forward to the next month or so with no school and have a lot of things to do to get ready for next semester and for Christmas. Yeah! Christmas!

Thanksgiving

This was our Thanksgiving turkey breast.  It turned out pretty well, except that the package said a 4 1/2 pound turkey would take 2 1/2 hours, but ours took 4, probably because our oven is so tiny.

This is our little oven slow cooking our turkey like a champ. We started eating before the turkey was done (we had a small ham we warmed up in Rose's even smaller toaster oven), but the turkey was ready in time for seconds.

Ben and Rose with clean plates.

For dessert we had pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Very tasty.

After dinner we played Phase 10, and then some Mario Party on Ben's Wii. It was quite fun and we were all very thankful to have a chance to hang out together and be thankful for all we've been blessed with.


Yesterday, Rose and I tried going to the Museum of American History which just reopened after renovations. It was packed like a can of sardines, so we went to the Natural History Museum instead. It was still full, and we didn't have to wait in line for any of the exhibits (except for the butterfly room, which we saved for another day). We saw an exhibit on Ancient Western Culture, a small exhibit on Korean Americans, reptiles, bones, and insects. The bones exhibit was interesting because they had skeletons there of nearly every kind of living thing - swordfish, bears, turtles, rhinos. One interesting thing we learned is that a rhino's horn doesn't have a bony core but grows from the skin and is basically like a huge fingernail. A rhino's horn also never stops growing and will grow back if cut or broken off. So now you know, and as G.I. Joe taught me, knowing is half the battle.

Dr. Who?

My sister, who is the proud possessor of a nice smile and a nice husband, is also now the proud possessor of a PhD. Isn't that amazing? I'm pretty impressed.

At Least One Good Reason for Text Messaging

It used to be that I made fun of people who seemed to be texting on their cell phones all the time (although for a while the cell phone was my main connection to Jordan and I was definitely texting a lot.) Or very young people with cell phones. And I'm going to say that I still think people can go overboard or over-young, but recently my 12 year old nephew earned a cell phone for getting good grades. And he's been texting me. And I love it. He always sounds very mature. He says things like, "Well, and how are you?" And he calls me "Rosey."

Last night when I was talking to my older sister and Sage texted her, I thought I'd play a joke on him and I texted him asking if he liked me better than my sister. He texted back, "What makes you say that?" And when I admitted that I was talking to her on the phone he responded with the word, "Cheater." This made both my sister and I laugh pretty hard. He's interacting with his aunts and uncles in the way we interact with each other. It's like suddenly he's entered the ranks of "adults" in the family.

And when I called home a couple Sundays ago and his family was visiting my parents for Sunday dinner his voice had changed! He sounds almost like his dad. I feel like in the past few months he's grown up suddenly and I missed it. (How did that happen?) But now because of texting and cell phones I still get to be part of it. So that when I visit home again maybe the only thing that he'll surprise me with will be his height. (He's already taller than I am, though, so how could it be that big of a surprise?)

The Wise and the Foolish, and other tales

Today Jordan and I were called, sustained, and set apart in new callings in our ward. Jordan is now Deacon's adviser. Though we often have boys visiting from another ward, for the most part the whole deacon quorum consists of two boys. One of them doesn't come very often. But we both really like the one that comes every week. He's very funny and from the few conversations I've had with him I'd say he's pretty perceptive. I am now one of the Sunbeam instructors. I'm excited and a little terrified. I don't know how to interact with little kids that aren't related to me. But I guess I'll learn.

Our ward is very small and very diverse. In life experience and in life beliefs. I just wanted to share a few of our stories from today's church meetings. (I've changed the names to protect the innocent

Story #1: Our landlord Kimmy's brother and sister-in-law are in the ward and they have a 3 year old named Eliott. He's very smart for his age. Today, sitting a couple seats away from us on our landlord's lap he announced cheerfully and loudly (the same we he says everything) "I have gas and I have to toot." Then a couple seconds later he announced, "My gas is relieved."

Story #2: I went to primary today for the first time since I graduated from primary so many years ago. The primary president Mary Joe wears trousers to church and talks to the kids like adults instead of children. She doesn't like calling the children "children." Just to give you a taste of what it looks like primary will be like, today we sang "The wise woman built her house upon a rock...the foolish woman built her house upon the sand." (Please see the above illustration I made Jordan quickly conjure up.)

Mary Joe also did an activity with the kids where she would say "When mother calls you..." and they'd say, "Quickly I obey." Or "When Jesus calls you...", "Quickly I obey." She went through Jesus, mother, father, teacher. Then she said, "When sister calls me," and the kids said "Quickly I obey." And Mary Joe said, "Well, now, that depends doesn't it? You have to see what she wants." She seems to be teaching the kids valuable lessons.

Story #3: Today there were four girls in the Sunbeams class. One of them, a little red haired girl who is famous for running up to the stand and playing the piano during someone's talk some months ago, sat by me in sacrament and glared at me through most of the meeting. However, after being introduced to me in Sunbeams she was very friendly. Another one, Krissy, wouldn't talk through most of the class. She'd just look at me with a shy, toothy grin that usually involved her tongue protruding from her mouth. Then at the end of class when her mom and sister came to pick her up, one of the other teachers told Krissy's mom that today we'd learned about telling the truth. Her mom said, "Oh, Krissy doesn't have a problem with that. She tells the truth on her sister. She tells the truth on herself. She's very truthful..." Krissy's grin grew wider and tongue-ier and, as if to prove her mother's point, she announced, "My sister said the word 'boobie.'"

Her mom said this was a word that Krissy had learned from other kids at preschool and that they were trying to teach her she shouldn't say all the words she learned at preschool. Then, while her mother talked to the teacher and another mom, Krissy, grinning at me and swinging on her mother's arm kept repeating gleefully, "Boobie, boobie, boobie, boobie." I'm afraid I might not prove to be the best Sunbeam instructor because I couldn't help but laugh the whole time. Which makes me a very bad influence on someone of her impressionable age.

Miriam visits and other things

So, Rose's sister Miriam came and stayed with us for a week a couple weeks ago and it was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of our adventures, I hope they don't embarrass anyone.



Rose (& Jordan) at Chincoteague Island Wildlife Sanctuary



Miriam, Jordan & Rose at Chincoteague Island Wildlife Sanctuary. We saw a wild horse from quite a ways away, cranes, cormorants, ducks, and geese. Oh, and a couple chipmunks.



Miriam pointing & Rose at the White House.





Jordan, Rose, Miriam, and Ben at the World War II Memorial




Rose & Miriam at the National Archives, where the keep the Constitution and Declaration of Independence among other things, which you can explore here.


Rose starts her new job tomorrow as a Production Assistant for Home Made Simple on TLC. I think that's pretty cool. It's a contract job, so it only lasts a couple months, but I'm sure it will lead to bigger and better opportunities in the future.

I'm still tenaciously searching for my summer job which is quite a challenge with things as they are. It's a bit more competitive than in years past, or so I'm told, but I'm sure I'll find the right place for me. It's just a matter of finding the right people at the right time. It's difficult deciding what you want to be when you grow up.

I also registered for classes today which was very exciting. I went to an open academic advising session with Dean Johnson and there was nobody else in line, so we talked for a good 40 minutes about my schedule. He said he'd never seen the actual registration process, so I registered right there with him, which was very helpful for us both. I'll be taking Evidence, The Federal Circuit (from a Federal Circuit judge and BYU/GW Law alum), International Law, a Constitutional Law Seminar on the Supreme Court, and Jurisprudence (from a woman with a PhD in medieval Arabic philosophy, yeah I know, awesome), which I guess is something like legal philosophy.

Anyway, I'm excited about that lineup, should be a great semester. Plus I have no class on Friday, which I think is because no law professors want to teach on Friday. Also, I don't think they like getting up early because it's hard to find a class that starts before 11 a.m. I think that's wonderful.

The Emmy Awards

This weekend BYU Broadcasting flew me and my friends Hannah, Jim, and Kendall to Arizona so that we could attend the Rocky Mountain chapter Emmy Awards because a film we made called "The Christian Eye: An Essay Across England" was nominated for Best Student Production. We made the documentary a year ago, about English professor John Bennion's study abroad that involves taking writing students to England, having them hike 10-20 miles per day until their legs go numb, making them write about their experiences there, and actually changing their lives. The four of us must be really good at what we do because guess what? We won! That's right. We are Emmy award winners.

The ceremony was not quite what I thought it would be. I was thinking more...well, what you see on TV. What I felt when I was there was more...well, beauty pageant. It all played out at a not stunningly attractive ballroom in the Rennaissance Hotel in Scotsdale, Arizona. We had a cocktail/games/dinner party beforehand with fairly pricey drinks (I'm talking $4 for a water) and cold buffet food. (Although some of it was a perfect temperature and very good.) One part of the ballroom was partitioned off for the ceremony and a stage was placed at the front, with a podium and curtains and some screens. The picture below looks more exciting than it was in real life:



They decided not to allow speeches, which came as a huge relief to me because I was feeling a little socially anxious and did not want to get up in front of everyone and say anything, and also there were 91 categories to be announced. With speeches allowed it would have taken FOREVER. However, if I had given a speech it would have gone something like this: "I want to thank the BYU English and Media Arts departments, John, Kendall, Tom, Hannah, Jim, and digital media for this experience, because without this film I'd still be single, sad, and alone." (Actually Hannah and Jim and I had decided to take random names out of the program and thank them. Unfortunately we did not get this opportunity.)

Though there were things about the event that weren't quite up to my expectations, it was actually a lot of fun and I did appreciate all the work that went into it. Also, there were a lot of things that I really enjoyed. One, I got to wear a hot new dress. Two, I got to see some great friends again. Three, I got to stay in my very own super large hotel room with a balcony. Four, I WON AN EMMY AWARD! Five, the parting with Jordan made the reunion more exciting. And six, I got all of this for FREE. That's always a nice feeling.

Our New Apartment

This is our lovely long kitchen.





This is our unmade bed. Oh dear, what will our mothers say?





Our gourmet culinary arts center.





Myself sitting on our new IKEA love seat/sofa bed thingy.




Watching A Bit of Fry and Laurie on the old boob tube that came with the apartment.

--Jordan

We've been living in this English basement now for four weeks, to the day. I have spent most of my time here, sitting at the computer and looking for jobs. It's a nice enough apartment and it grows on you, so spending the last month of my life in mainly one room hasn't been too bad. Although the frequent outings into the main part of the city have alleviated any cabin fever I might develop. Jordan is spending most of his days at school, and when he comes home he is grateful we have the love seat now so he can relax. We're not totally moved in yet. The rest of my stuff arrived by mail a week or so ago, but half of Jordan's life is still at his old roommates' house in Crystal City. A sort of representation of his transition from singlehood to marriedhood? Perhaps he's feeling torn.

Or perhaps our car just can't fit all of his music equipment, computers, and books in one go. I have a lot of books too. And a very nice computer. Once we have all his stuff combined with mine our apartment will look something like a public library mixed with a music studio. Maybe then we'll have a lot more visitors. Of course, they'll have to phone ahead or yell loudly from the gate, as our "front" door is in back of the house and can only be accessed through the alley and a chain link gate, which is secured with a large padlock. Speaking of guests, did we mention that the love seat is also a sofa bed? A small one, perhaps, but perfectly capable of holding two horizontal bodies, if they didn't mind cuddling. Any takers?

--Rose

Ta Da!

This is our new blog. Above is a photo Rose took at our FHE picnic on the Mall a couple weeks ago. Pretty cool huh?