2 Thoughts on Twilight

I keep getting asked to post on my thoughts of the Twilight movie, so even though its after midnight and I'm sick of my computer, here goes. Oh, in no way is this complete and I reserve the right to make adjustments after a second viewing or a good night's rest. And since I'm going out on a limb to proclaim my thoughts here, please comment and leave me yours.

Grade: B
About what I expected in most ways. Doesn't come even close to the books, but hey -how could it? I completely understand the limitations of movies in general, so this was to be expected. Still I liked it and want to see it again! I was a bit distracted the first time through since I was paying attention to all the ways it was different that the book.

Pros:

• As someone explained this to me (sorry can't remember who); there is a real transition in the film. At first Edward was weird, then he was intriguing, and finally I was liking him. I had watched ALL the video clips and trailers online many times for the past few months, since I was not sold on the actor playing Edward. Actually at first I was a bit ticked off. But then I saw bits of film where he was in character. SO MUCH BETTER than when he isn't in character (interviews, photo shoots, anything off camera). It so weird he was able to play Edward so well (although not perfect).
  
• They showed lots of Bella & Edward talking and laughing with their voices blocked by soundtrack, but it portrayed their relationship well I thought. Nate must not have caught this because he felt like one minute they didn't know each other/hated each other & then the next minute they were madly in love. I can't tell if it is a male/female thing or just a short fall of the movie cutting so much of the book out.
• The location was amazing! I love the scenery. Very true to the book.
• Soundtrack fit well.
  

Cons:

• The sparkling rainbow/diamond vamp skin was lame - not even close to my imagination.
• The meadow scene was hardly there and I missed it.
• The running UP trees was silly.
• Bella's acting was a bit uptight too much of the time.
  
• If the other 'bad' vamps were in the area killing towns folk, don't you think the Cullen's would have been more on top of it? And wouldn't have James picked up the Cullen's scent days or weeks before the baseball game?
  

Nate's take on it: "yeah, its okay," which translates to good.

SO, if anyone wants to go this weekend, let me know. I'm all for it. I'd prefer a 4pm showing so its cheaper, but really I just want to go again.

3 Basement is back

Since carpet is on hold for a while (I'm thinking at least a year), I moved back into our basement. I swept, vacuumed, & mopped the cement floor before moving all the toys and my 'office' back downstairs. Don't let the appearance fool you, we've got quite a ways to go before its all finished. BUT I'm just glad to have a bit more space for now. My dinning & living rooms feel double the size with all this stuff moved out. And best of all, I was got my Christmas tree set up last night (thanks Dirk for helping Nate get it moved). Hopefully tonight we can decorate as a family.

Don't you just love the wonderful shelves Nate built in my closets. They need to be caulked and have some paint touched up, but I was just itching to fill them up will all kinds of 'stuff'. Somehow during all the moving yesterday I tweaked something in my lower back. But tomorrow I start back on the treadmill. Yes, I'm starting my New Years resolution on Thanksgiving. silly me.

2 a 3 'T' week:Twilight, Tree, and Turkey

I guess I'm in a posting slump. It seemed like nothing happened for a stretch of time (days, weeks, months -who knows) and now that I actually have stuff to blog, I'm up to my elbows trying to catch up from doing all those blog-worthy things. So, here's a summary to remind myself of what I want to post more about later:

• Nate finished all the closet shelves and trim work in the basement
• Last Wed was my 31st Birthday
  
• Last Thur-Sun was our annual "Sister Retreat" (West Yellowstone this year)
  
• I've taken the plunge & am now converted to digital scrapbooking (thanks sisters)
• I completed a 4-month major project for work today, what a relief
  
• Tonight I saw 'Twilight' for the first time & Nate came too!
  
• Tomorrow I'm moving my 'office' and all the toys to the basement (again) so that...
• Tomorrow I will put up my fabulous Christmas Tree
• This is my 2nd 3-day work week in a row thanks to Turkey Day
• Saturday I'm going to see the Cache Valley Ballet's Nutcracker
• Next week I'll be substituting for a stat 1040 USU class (I've missed teaching)
  

I really want to go into more detail on all of those things...especially the movie (I just got home from it less than an hour ago and its all I'm thinking about now), but I've got to get 3 more hours of work done before I can go to bed.

2 Tagged: 4th picture in my 4th folder

Thanks Ellen for this fun tag.

I store my pictures chronologically (months within years) and last week I removed all my pre-2008 files from my computer after backing them up to disks for the billionth time. Even thought I've printed and scrapbook'ed them, it still made me feel like throwing up. But I needed the hard drive space.

Anyway, here is the 4th folder's 4th picture: Allie frosting Spring cookies with me last March. She looks so little!

2 Milestone

Today Kylie went to nursery during church for the first time without me. Sigh - she is growing up. Allie reported that nobody was mean to her sister and that she didn't cry at all. I think her smooth transition was facilitated by big sister being there. I'm so glad they will be in nursery together for a few weeks before Allie moves on to Sunbeams. Double sigh - both of my babies are growing up.

4 Warning - potty humor

Yesterday Allie called me into the bathroom for a little help. I will spare you all of the details, but here's the hilarious ending to her blow-by-blow post game commentary.

"Mom, I went pees, but then I was just tooting & tooting. And then I pooped.
Ya know mom, toots is just poops talking!"

0 Scraping backlog

Before we had kids I didn't take many pictures. It might have had more to do with expensive film than lack of cute subjects. Regardless, I took up scrapbooking after we got a digital camera and Allie was born, in an effort to deal with the hundreds of photos that suddenly started stacking up.

For a few years now I've been going to my friend Brandi's ward scrap night once a month (2nd Friday, 6pm-midnight) and getting together with my sisters a few times a year (visits and 2 now annual sister retreats) to work on our albums. Last winter I finally set up a scrap area set up in the basement and was able to work on it in small chunks of time here and there. Finally, I was almost "up to date."

But that only lasted 6 weeks before I increased my work load, Kylie became mobile, and the basement once again became a construction zone. So now that 2008 is nearly over, I'm just wrapping up our 2007 albums (yes that is plural). I also realized that when I got my laptop, I didn't print off the previous 5 months of pictures since they were downloaded on the old desktop that has just been gathering dust. Ugh, there just doesn't seem to be enough space and time to scrapbook. And now I'm realizing I want to have multiple copies of each book to give to my girls. Something has to give.

Drum roll please...after much debate, I have decided to give digital scrapbooking a whirl. (oh wait I think I've already made that decloration here, months ago) I love blogging (even if I am streaky) and a friend turned me on to BLURB. So I have purposely held off printing any pictures from 2008 so that I can try it out. When you ask? In two weeks during our 3rd annual sister retreat I will be attempting to scrapbook an entire year! Most of the pages will probably be direct duplicates of my blog posts here, but I will also try to include digital LOs made in Photoshop. I'm so excited about this new option. It should be cleaner and cheaper, plus I can order a separate book for each of my girls! That is probably the #1 reason I'm going the computerized route.

Digital is the future, but paper is the past.
Here are a few LOs I've been working on the past few weeks. They are those long forgotten late 2005/early 2006 photos stuck on the old computer. I finally printed them.
No, that's not Kylie but ALLIE as a baby!
(click on any photo to get a closer look)

0 Cheese for the Camera

Kylie is such a little pleaser.
"Smiley Kylie"
She is always getting things for us and trying to make everyone happy.
On Halloween she started saying "cheese" when ever I got the camera out.
So Cute!

Allie might have to make us work to see her smile, but she is a big helper.
Big Business helps me clean up.
She can pick up and put away ALL the toys faster than me.
Her 'chore' lately has been vacuuming all the crumbs under the bar, especially Kylie's stool.


Here are a few cute pics of the girls enjoying a mid-morning snack with their buddy Ray.
Nothing like chocolate milk, bananas, crackers, cheese, & bologna squares!

0 Last of October

Just some rambling bits to wrap up October:

We still got to our little neighborhood park when the weather permitted.


Both Allie and Kylie loved Trick-or-Treating.
Allie was an old pro, but refused to actually say "trick-or-treat" (no surprise really).
Kylie had the system all figured out after only one house, but those little legs just don't more faster that a snail's pace.

The girls collected more candy that they could eat in a year. This is a great thing since it makes it impossible for them to tell that Mom and Dad are sneaking bits out. All our candy got gobbled up by the kids knocking on our door. I think we lost count somewhere around 100 trick-or-treaters.

Today Allie had a Halloween party at preschool.
She was very excited to wear her costume.
They must have had a great time since she came home extra tired.

Here is a picture of the things she brought home in her backpack.
Check out her cool footprint ghost &
her writing the letters 'A' & 'L'.
Two more letters and she will be able to spell her name!

5 Haircut

My hair. What do I say...'the grass is always greener on the other side'.

Growing up I hated the curls since it was more like frizz. Somewhere in high school I stumbled across a defuser & Aussi sprunch spray, which made life easier, but still the curl has ruled my head. In college I grew out my bangs (remember the hair-to-heaven, you know the 80's ratted ball) and and grew out the back nearly to my waist. I bet I spent over an hour a day blow drying, straightening, and adding back in wavy curls. Hard to imagine I spent that kind of time on myself at any time.

Now that I'm a wife and working mom I've cut the hair time down to next to nothing by cutting it off. But life gets busy and hair grows. I was surprised to find that Monday I could braid my hair into 2 french braids. If I slicked it back, I could even get it into 2 tiny pigtails. Convenient as it was, I decided to sacrifice the length for a quicker style and got a trim yesterday. Thanks Hayley! Ponytails are great for a busy morning, but when my hair gets that long it just doesn't look good any other way. The top curls pull out and the bottom gets stringy. Sorry Nate, it just doesn't work. So, here are some pics I took of myself this morning to show my sisters.
What do ya think?

3 Ward Halloween Carnival

Fall is definitely good for one thing: taking lots of pictures to scrapbook. Just in October we have...

• football games
• Harvest pumpkins
• play in Grandma's leaves / pick their apples
• canning
• North Logan pumpkin walk
• Ward Halloween carnival
• Carving pumpkins (we haven't done this yet)
• Trick or treat

Well here we all are at the annual ward party put on by our awsome young women and men. The girls had a blast getting their faces painted and all the other booths. There was a cupcake walk, fishing booth, dart throwing, and eating donuts hanging on a string. Allie was ecstatic to get a little make-up on. Kylie loved the food.

0 North Logan Pumpkin Walk

This was out third year in a row going to the North Logan Pumpkin Walk, but in the past we've meandered through during the mid-afternoon. This year we headed down for FHE, Monday evening around 7:30pm. WOW! What a difference!!! Instead of parking directly in front of the entrance, we parked several blocks away. Instead of walking right in, we rode the free shuttles. Both girls were wide eyes as we rode a city transit bus on the way in and a school bus on the way home. Seriously, I think we could have skipped every pumpkin display and just rode the buses and the girls would have been just as happy. Well, Allie might have wanted to do one other thing to make her night complete.

Allie went to the pumpkin walk the week before with her pre-school class, but she was super excited to go back with us. She talked and talked about getting in the 'holes' and being Ariel. It took me a few days, but I finally figured out she wanted to talk photos in the painted boards. I guess it is our tradition now (along with about every other family in the valley -LOL).
Kylie - - Allie

3 Puzzle Mania

Allie has been loving her new puzzles. To earn each new puzzle, she has to keep her panties clean and dry for an entire day. In 3 days she has earned 2; two more to go. Today she completed the newest puzzle in about a half hour, first time. She is getting faster!

When we were at the dollar store, Kylie picked out a small purple bouncy ball. I love that this $1 toy is her favorite.

I was snapping shots of the girls playing when a catchy tune came on the radio. I don't know if you can hear it on the video clip, but Allie got her groove on. It was so hard not to laugh! I don't think she even knew I was sitting behind her until about halfway through this clip.

1 Games we have been playing

Remember that puzzle I got Allie last week. The one that she and Ray lost interest in after about 1 minute? Well, by the next day Allie was hooked. She will sit and work on it for 30, 40, even 50 minutes at a time. I do have to remind her to go to the bathroom, as she sometimes concentrates so hard she has an accident. She can now put all 63 pieces together in a flash. I think it is time to get her another one!



The other day our good buddy Jett came to play. Kylie squealed like a pig when he 'found' her ball, so I sat them both down and got them to roll it back and forth to each other. I don't know who had more fun, Kylie or Jet. It was so cute. Pretty soon Allie came to join in, too. When it finally dawned on me to take a picture, the moment was gone. This was the only shot I could get before they all went their separate ways.

1 Ray & "A"

Today I was going through some old digital photos that I never printed and came across one of Allie & Rayden nearly two years ago. I thought it would be fun to post since I've recently put up a few of the buddies. I'm so greatful that our girls have such good friend. It is something I'm sure I'll become even more greatful for in the future. So here's to a long friendship -Ray & 'A'

2 Leaves are Falling All Around

Allie, Mommy, & Kylie

Yesterday I had the girls in their sleeveless costumes posing in the pumpkin patch, but today there is a BITTER wind blowing. We tried to take some friends out to the farm today, so they could pick a few pumpkins, but the kids didn't want to be out of the cars and I don't blame them. On the way home Allie & Rayden were noticing the falling leaves and I made a comment about we should go plan in Grandma & Grandpa Schwartz's leaves soon, maybe after naps. Allie begged to go right now. I though, why not? We turned around and backtracked a block. I'm sure glad. The kids had a great time romping in the leaves and eating fresh apples.

It was definitely a fall day.

Allie
Kylie
Allie & Rayden
Allie
Allie & Rayden
Rayden, Kyile, & Allie
Kylie raking
Rayden