Niece =)

Okay, so part of me considered complaining or writing about the paper I just wrote for one of my classes. (I'm just not really good at writing edu papers. *sigh*) But instead I decided I needed a smile and hopefully I won't get in trouble for this. =)

These are pictures of my niece, Ella. (Kelli and Aaron's daughter) I don't know why, but every time I see her cute squishy face I smile. She's just so freaking cute! I think I might try to steal her, but I'm pretty sure her parents would hunt me down.
(I'd consider stealing some other nieces or nephews, but their parent's might hunt me down too.)

The first two pictures were taken when she was about two weeks old by my sister, Kaylene. Definitely not shabby for wiggly, squiggly babies. The last one was taken by Kelli.

Careful, she's a drooler.

I think she might be a flower child.

While she makes a cute modern pumpkin, Kelli and I were cute pumpkins as kids too. lol.

Family Pic

Family pictures are SO not my favorite thing to try and pull off. We had to try and coordinate 24 people in a single effort of posing and smiling at the same time. Really!?! Have you met my family? Not to mention the fact that 9 of those people are under the age of 8 and are related to us. Oh well, I guess we gave it our best shot. =)

Funny thing is, I think this picture is more true to who we really are than any 'normal' picture.

See 'normal' picture of the siblings and I just don't know that I believe it.

Do smiles get any better than a kids?

If I'd only been taller this might have worked out better. =(

Guess for now this will be as good as it gets.

At least until the next time we have to do family pictures. And since two of my sisters are pregnant, that means by next Summer they'll be out of date again.

Holy Carp

Okay, so I know it's a lame title, but in a time crunch that is what I came up with.

I didn't realize how long it's been since I last posted anything. Plus, let's face it. Blogs are always more fun with pictures and sadly I just don't really have that many pictures. (It's hard to take pictures of yourself while holding the camera.) But if this weekend goes as planned (even if I'm not really looking forward to it). I should have a new up to date family picture. Hooray for the picture. Boo for the time to take said picture.

Anyhow, lets see how every thing is going...

School is crazy. Seriously, I re realized that I suck at writing papers. I just can't seem to get the words to come out in an interesting way that all makes sense and is wonderful to read. (For some odd reason my brain says that is how it HAS to be.)

Work is crazy. We're implementing a new QMS (Quality Management System). It's a complete overhaul is taking up any spare minute I might have to blink.

Life is good. I've gotten to see two movie recently with Megan. (Easy A and Secretariat) Easy A was worth a matinee. Not bad, but not great. I loved Secretariat though. It made me want to go watch a horse race, buy a big hat, and race a horse. (I'll have to see how many of those I can do.) Spent time with the family.

Outside of that I turned another year older and seem to be pretty on track with where I want to be in life. I know it's weird, but I really never wanted or saw myself getting married before I was 25. And I wanted to graduate from college before having kids. (I know weird for someone from Utah.) So as far as I can tell, I got married early (21), am still working on school (3 semesters hopefully to go), and am on track to having/adopting/buying/stealing/borrowing kids in the next few years. (Lol) So yeah. All in all life is right about where it should be.

Oh, and just as a side note, if you ever get the chance to bedazzle anything you should do it. It's always guaranteed to be a lot of fun. Fielding and I bedazzled the heck out of a pair of plastic flamingos for his parents. It was a lot of fun. (Okay, so they weren't really sparkly enough for me. I wanted them to shine like a disco ball, but no dice. Oh well, it was still fun.)

Tell me why I'm hot

Fielding confirmed something for me once again yesterday.

Deep down, he's a hard core (granted to say hot) GEEK! Seriously. I remember watching Beauty and Geek with him and he ALWAYS understood what the geeks were saying (including the jokes).

I asked him to tell me why I was hot yesterday and the first response was about how genes and proteins and...(Okay, I seriously can't even remember the rest. I don't even know if I got those parts right.) I said, 'No, tell me why I'm physically hot'. (I was feeling a bit dumpy.)

The next comments what did it though. He told me I had a hot phenotype. (Really!?!) I just burst out laughing. I was looking for you have a rocking body. I love your hair. All those normal compliments, but no my super hot, geeky husband tells me I have a hot phenotype.

Babe, you rock and your phenotype pretty hot too. Lub you.

Not cool.

You know what isn't fun? Waking up about 30 minutes earlier than you normally do to drive 45 minutes up to campus to take a test. You know what makes it worse? When you get to campus only to find out that the testing lab doesn't actually open until 7:30.
Man. 30 minutes of waiting...

And after that 30 minutes of waiting, I actually have a class to attend. That means I don't have time to take my test and have to figure out a different time to deal with it all.

Oy!

Achievement: Handy Husband

I have to tell the world that I love my husband. Seriously, the past two weeks have been SO stressful. (I know none of you know why. Let me enlighten you.)

Fielding and I bought a house that was originally built about 1935 or something like that. I love that it's a cute small house with the coolest (church) door ever, but there are a few things we are finding that we're not such fans of.

Currently only the top floor is finished which means we live in about 700 square feet. Not to bad, but we're hoping to one day get around to finishing the basement. In the meantime, we're finding little things that are driving us crazy. Some of the plugs are sporadic in functionality and plumbing drips.

About two weeks ago, the plumbing got really bad though. After taking a shower, we found that the water did NOT want to get properly turned off. There was literally enough water leaking out to fill the tub within and hour. And to make things better, the water was HOT. (Seriously, I never heard of hot water leaking before.) We made due and a couple of days later the water leakage was back to normal. That week it got worse again. I looked up a few fixes and emailed them to Fielding to see if he thought we should try any of them.

Finally, the weekend got there and I couldn't take it anymore. Whoever thought running water is peaceful has never had to listen to a leaking faucet. It was driving me crazy. I asked Fielding if we could fix it on Monday (Labor Day) because otherwise I was going to lose it. He agreed and Monday morning (okay, afternoon) we turned off the water to the house and got to work. Fielding got to be an artist and a plumber in one day because the last people to remodel the bathroom put the tile OVER the sockets and didn't cut the holes big enough to access them. So he chiseled at the tile and got the valves out. Then off we went to Lowe's to find a replacement. We couldn't find the exact size we needed, but we found and good fit and Fielding got them installed without too much fuss.

Seriously, I love him. I can't tell you how nice it is to have a tub that no longer leaks. Great job babe! You have now earned the Handy Husband achievement.

Brain overload

So for most people school doesn't start for another week or so, but I had a seminar that started this last week. It consisted of 3 days (8 hours each day) of lectures. I signed up for the seminar at the advice of one of my favorite professors.

Overall the seminar was really interesting, but it was packed full of information and required A LOT of thinking. The seminar was titled 20th Century U.S. Leaders (sounds interesting, right?). I wasn't really certain what to expect because this if the first seminar class I've ever attended. I figured lots of lecture, movies, and a bit of Q&A. I was wrong. The majority of the class consisted of a dialogue between the presenter and the class. Lots of deep thinking analysis about the foreign aid policy following the Cold War (1945-1989).

I seriously left the class each day thinking about all of the stuff we learned in class that day and how ill informed I am about the state of America and our government. Did you know that we have a National Security Plan (essentially a strategy plan) that is available online to the public?

I didn't. I thought that that was part of the reason why we voted on the President. (I know this is just showing how ignorant I've been.) I figured they decided these things and we'd only find out about them after the fact.

Also, do you know why we're at war? (Yes, this was covered extensively in the seminar and yes, the presenter is a hard core Democrat.) My only point in this is how many of us have really thought about this and looked into finding out an answer to this or do we ignore it and let others worry about it. (Wow, can I tell you how...political I feel right now?)

(SOAPBOX below, but hopefully it's short and to the point)
I guess overall what I got out of the class is how much more I need to do as an American citizen. I need to learn more about where we're at, what the government is doing, and MAKE DECISIONS about where I want to go. We should become more educated about our country. We can't hope others will keep our interest at heart if we're not willing to take the time to tell them what we think. That's the other part. THINK. We need to start thinking. Use our minds to find out what we think. Even if we don't all agree (cause we know that rarely happens). Learn to speak with people of differing opinions without belittling them or their ideas. Instead learn. Learn why they think what they do. Maybe they are aware of something you aren't.

Okay, I think the soapbox is over. lol. I guess I can go now that my brain is once again hurting. Overall, I'm going to read more political books and articles. I'm going to learn more about policy and start thinking more about it too. (Maybe then, I'll feel better about having political conversations.)

(And as a side note, women in the early church were VERY active in politics.)