Sixth Anniversary

Eric and I celebrate our sixth anniversary today. I love being married to him and we've had a lot of fun together.
We went to Fleming's Restaurant, at the Gateway, for dinner and then stayed at the Anniversary Inn in the Egyptian Room, where it was really cold because of the tiles on the wall.

Our breakfast before....
and after:
Happy Anniversary to my amazing husband!

Friday Night Videos

Vids for the week:

This kids speaks several different languages so he can sell his wares:

Kind of cool study in movement to use in video games:

What the deuce!?!?

From the stuffed-cat-organ to a crazy goose:

And because I'm a huge fan of Vanessa Mae, I'll end with a video of her:

Mommy's Big Move

On January 15, my mom moved out of the house we moved into when I was 16 years old. Twenty one years we lived in that house (or at least had a presence of our family).

This is the house when we first moved in back in 1989:

We have had some really great memories while living there. Sandy and I had our first date; me with a guy named Jason Smith and she was with Rob Rueckert:

Here's a picture of the family back in 1991 - the year Sandy and I graduated from high school:

In 2007, Sandy and I took this long exposure, ghostly picture of us outside of the house:

Richard and I used to sneak out of the house through this window in what was the coal room back in the early 1900s, when the house was built. I can't even imagine trying to fit through that window now:

I am grateful for my family and Eric's family for helping with the move to the extent that they did.

My mom's fabulous ward (my old ward) was kind enough to show up on a Saturday morning and give us their time for an hour to pack the truck full of the items to take to my mom's new house and Richard, Elida and I helped relieve my mom of some of the items she no longer needs.

Richard, Luis (a friend from Uruguay) and Evan drove the moving truck:

Here's a picture of my old bedroom and a light fixture I fell in love with when we first moved in:

And this lovely little door was discovered after we'd lived there for about 6 months. Behind this door, was a hidden room.
While in high school, after discovering this secret room, I began to see things and hear whispers...the door would open on it's own. I thought I was crazy until, one night, my brother and I stayed up talking because I was too afraid to sleep. Our conversation led us to talk about what I was seeing and hearing and I discovered that we both had seen and heard similar things. We ended up having the missionaries come over to help us try and cast out what we believed was there.

In all the years we lived there, anybody who stayed there, would tell us about how creepy the house was: voices, footsteps when no one else was home, doors closing or opening, random breezes without windows nearby, etc.

So on the last night, Elida, Eric and I decided to go on a ghost hunt. I will have to find a way to load up the recordings because what we captured through recordings was pretty crazy stuff. I was stunned and didn't expect to get what we captured on 'tape' (digital recordings).

I do have one picture, though, that I was surprised by. I took it up stairs in April and Elida's old bedroom. It was a long exposure (30 seconds) facing east. The window faces over the back door toward the garage. Here's the original:

I recorded on my computer what I did to the picture to lighten it. I recorded this for my sisters, but this is the picture using photoshop:

Here's the same picture afterward:


If you know I can load up mp3 recording onto blogger, let me know.

Friday Night Videos

Posting it after Friday, but here they are:

Invasion!!!

Some serious talent!

I thought this was funny because there are so many Utah news bloopers on here:

A really fantastic, inspirational video:

Friday Night Videos

I've been sick for two weeks and would love to see the symptoms subside, for a change. Here are the videos I stumbled across:

From National Geographic:

I think this commercial is too funny!:

So, one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) story of 2010, was the oil spill; I found this great depiction:

I thought this was pretty interesting: harnessing the power of the sun:

And finally, I have to include this one from my sister Sandy:

100 Books in 2011?

Way back in July, I sent out an email posing this question: "If you had to clean out all the books, other than religious books, from your home and could continue through life with only five books, which five books would you keep?" I was surprised by the many responses I received.

The one thing I deliberately neglected to mention in my e-mail, was that the 'personal project' I was working on was to create a list of books to read in 2011. There are so many sites that have the "best 100" books of all time, or in the last century, or some other variation. I thought it would be interesting to see what my friends thought were the books they couldn't live without.

I have my share of religious books and really didn't want people to feel obligated to include the Bible or Book of Mormon...I wanted to know what other books people would keep, and therefore recommend. My five were the first to be added to the list, so as not to be influenced by what others suggested. (they are asterisked below)


The number one book people had on their list was To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

The second most mentioned book was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

The suggested book I am least likely to read: The Hymnal. It kind of fell into the religious category, anyway.

The response I was most surprised by: "I don't ever read." eeek!

I have compiled my list and here are the 100 books I want to read in 2011. (of course, I reserve the right to let this list spill over into 2012.) Here is the list in alphabetical order:

1. A Fool's Progress by Edward Abbey
2. A Lesson before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
3. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
4. A Room With a View by Edward Morgan Forster
5. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
6. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
7. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
8. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
9. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
10. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
*11. Blindness by Jose Saramago
12. Bonk by Mary Roach
13. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14. Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel
15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
16. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
19. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
*20. Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
21. Eragon by Christopher Paolini
22. Faces in Time by Lewis E Aleman
*23. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
24. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
25. Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
26. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
27. His Dark Materials - The Amber Spy Glass by Philip Pullman
28. His Dark Materials - The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
29. His Dark Materials - The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
30. House Rules by Jodi Picoult
31. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
32. L'Etranger(The Stranger) by Albert Camus
33. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
34. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
35. Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien
36. Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien
37. Lord of the Rings - Two Towers by JRR Tolkien
38. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
39. McTeague by Frank Morris
40. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
41. My Antonia by Willa Cather
42. My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira
43. Night by Elie Wiessel
44. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
45. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
46. Paradise Lost by John Milton
47. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
48. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
49. Tales from the Thousand and One Nights by anonymous
50. The Best of Times by Penny Vincenzi
51. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
52. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevesky
53. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
54. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
55. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
56. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
57. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
58. The Girl who Kicked Hornet's Nests by Stieg Larsson
59. The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
60. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
61. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
*62. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
63. The Handmaid's Tale Margaret by Atwood
64. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
65. The Host by Stephanie Meyer
66. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
67. The Iliad by Homer
68. The Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Pearson
69. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
70. The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott
71. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
72. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
73. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
74. The Odyssey by Homer
75. The Passage by Justin Cronin
76. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough
77. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
78. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
79. The Quest by Wilbur Smith
80. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
81. The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
82. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
*83. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn
84. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
85. The Stand by Stephen King
86. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
87. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
88. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
89. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
90. Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
91. This I Believe by Various
92. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
*93. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
94. Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson
95. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
96. Ulysses by James Joyce
97. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
98. Who Will Cry When you Die by Robin S. Sharma
99. Why we Buy by Paco Underhill
100. Women Race and Class by Angela Davis


If you have a suggestion, please let me know, because I've been debating on the trilogies: LOTR, the Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials - all of which I've read and liked, but am not sure I really want to include in this project.

Looking into 2011

This is that time of year when we look forward to the new year with hope and wonder at what we might, or would like to accomplish.

As is the custom, I have created my goals for 2011. I'm not a believer in New Years resolutions as much as I am in creating a goal to accomplish by the end of the time I give myself.

So here are my goals for 2011:

1. Lose 3 pounds a week.
I have created the 'how' and 'why' as part of this goal and will discuss it in a later entry.

2. Participate in photo-walks around the valley and meet other amateur photographers to learn from.


3. Read 100 books from a list I compiled from friends, coworkers and family.

4. Return to my studies in the Fall semester

5. Save money for a trip to Uruguay & Argentina next March (I will address the plan in a later entry)

6. Volunteer my time once a month - I will post more on this later, as well.

That is a quick little run down of what I'd like to accomplish this year.