January Pictures
This is Jo with Nat’s dad. Jo’s surgery for her eyelid is scheduled for March 9th out in Utah. Please keep her (and us) in your prayers around that time! I’m terrified!
Good Stuff
Hi People… or should I say Carolyn (cuz I don’t think anyone else checks blogs much anymore). HA!
Since September… Nat and I moved to Folsom, CA. We are in a ward with my parents and two of my sisters. Another sister and my brother are within a half hour. I love it. I love the weather, I love the hills, and I love being able to take Jo to see her cousins whenever the heck we feel like it. Nat’s adjusting slowly, but he’s liking playing basketball and he’s been working like crazy, so he’s doing alright.
Jo talks a lot these days. I love it. She’s SO little, but today she said, “Look at this, mom.” with awesome pronunciation. So cute. She also says, “Oh cute” a lot. Here are some photos from the Sacramento Zoo.
We do miss the land at the cabin in Utah. It is really beautiful and Nat loves to fish there. Of course we also miss Nat’s parents too. They are so fun to be around. Speaking of, this Christmas visit has been fun. It’s been an adventure because it’s gotten down to like -5 degrees a few times and we lose power for a few hours every few days, and there have been two giant snow storms. We’ve played games by candlelight, drunk a lot of hot chocolate, and made creative snow people (snowmen, snow-women, and snow-children.) Jo likes the snow, but her boots hurt her so she’s conflicted about whether or not to go play in it. She has discovered how incredible Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses is, so that’s on her mind most of the time. She might be getting surgery on her eyelid soon, so I’m a little terrified, but also looking forward to having it over with. She’ll be able to see better and when she meets other kids, the first thing they say will no longer be “What happened to her eye?” So, that’ll be nice.
Anyway, life is good. I’m liking the winter wonderland around me, but I’m also looking forward to getting outside in California again. Happy New Year everybody!
Underwater Photos
It turns out underwater photo shoots are more difficult than I imagined. We got about 1 cool one of every 20 pictures. Maybe that’s true of most kinds of photo shoots though… especially when no one in the group is a real photographer.
The Latest… and cool photos
So, it’s been a busy month. Jo fell on the moving walkway at the Denver airport and cut both her pinkies pretty bad. We had to take an ambulance to the ER to get ’em cleaned and stitched up. It was horrible. I think I cried as much as she did. We were on our way to North Carolina for Nat’s brother’s wedding. It was a great week. We were in a house on a really warm lake. Nat’s parents rented wave runners and a speed boat. Oh, and the wedding was alright too. 🙂
This week Nat got surgery on his eye. He’s been in excruciating pain for the last several days. He’s turned a corner today though. He’s reading Jo a book, and seems to be feeling pretty good.
I’ve put house hunting on hold. Most of the houses I called about, I was told would be rented before October, and we definitely won’t make it out before then, and it might even be later than that. Oh well. When the time comes to move, it’s going to be awesome to pick a house and have all our stuff in one place that is kind of our own.
Here are the marvelous photos we’ve taken recently (or semi-recently).
- This was at Nat’s brother’s wedding.
- This was at Newport Beach (part of our Disneyland trip). 🙂
- We didn’t mean to do this. It was a great surprise photo.
- Who is that, right?
- North Carolina… that’s me… cool, eh?
- Nat and his dad on their Wind Rivers adventure in July
- Hong Kong (that’s me and Nat’s sister, Alison)
- Also Hong Kong. Such a rad place.
Josephine’s 1st Birthday
Our camera was out of batteries, so we didn’t get many photos, but it was a butterfly theme party, and I made an awesome butterfly cake (actually in the shape of a butterfly!). Josephine was happy the whole time even though she hadn’t slept in since a morning nap.
In other news, it snowed here last night… a lot. Where is spring, eh?
Movies and Shows I’ve been Watching…
Shutter Island… I liked this movie! It’s dark, creepy, and pretty action packed. Nat hated the ending, but I saw it coming and it didn’t bother me. I actually thought it was kind of cool. Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo were both excellent. The story was interesting all the way through, with some good twists.
Alice in Wonderland… I was afraid this movie was just going to be constant weirdness and Johnny Depp worship. It wasn’t! The actress that plays Alice was great, and the story is about her (not the mad hatter, as the posters might have you think). It’s not the same story as in the cartoon. She’s returning to Wonderland, and when she’s there the story moves along smoothly. The mad hatter is interesting and likable–rather than annoying and over the top. Same with Helena Bonham-Carter as the red queen. She’s funny in it. Overall, it’s much better than I expected.
TV-wise… We’ve been watching Friday Night Lights. We like it a lot! It’s about a small town in Texas where the high school football team is pretty much the center of the universe. It fallows the lives of the coaches family and a handful of the players, and it’s a little high school drama-y, but it’s also funny, suspenseful, and gets you caring about the people. If you have Netflix, seasons 1-3 are available on instant. Season 4 isn’t out yet.
I swear don’t watch TV and movies all day! I started taking karate again. I love it, but I have to drive 25 minutes to it through snow and deer galore… but my instructor (a woman whose about 5 feet tall and probably weighs 85 pounds) is a great teacher. There might be a tournament soon. If there is, I’ll throw some photos on here. So, look forward to that. 🙂
My Robert Pattinson Dream… don’t worry, it’s PG.
Last night I dreamt that Robert Pattinson and I were co-hosting SNL, and in one of the sketches, I was playing Bella. So… he decides to do a little improvisation and says, “Should we kiss?” I was caught off guard of course, as that was not in the script. I look over to Nat who’s sitting in the audience. He shrugs and says, “Yeah, go ahead,” as though it’s kind of not cool, but he’d want me to do the same if it were him and Jessica Alba up there. So Robert kisses me! Eeek, right? But the kiss was real bad. Overconfident, you know? I guess beauty equals ego, which equals less than marvelous kissing. Sigh.
A Whole Episode to Remind You…
So, I have a spare 20 minutes and I think, what show am I not caught up on? Let’s try The Office, eh? Big mistake. The last episode aired was just a brutal reminder of funnier days. Do people like those episodes that are just lazy compilations of old clips? Sad stuff. I didn’t even finish the episode. The good news is 30 Rock is rock solid in its greatness. There was an episode with James Franco recently that almost made me cry it was so great.
In other news, I started to take karate again. It’s as fun as ever. Almost. The studio’s not as awesome as the one I went to in high school, but I did win my first sparring match, and that was really exciting. I’ll get a picture up just as soon as I’m not wearing all white to the classes… you know, get some color on my belt yo.
Three Great Movies
Our trips to the theater lately have been surprisingly enjoyable. We saw…
Invictus (Matt Damon is a South African rugby player after aparteid ends, and Morgan Freeman is Nelson Mandela trying to unify the country, in part through rugby). It was very uplifting and I thought it was entertaining and interesting throughout. Mandela was so interesting to me I left wanting to learn more about him, and we left feeling psyched about rugby and South Africa as well. Over all, an extremely positive experience.
Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and Rachel McAdams). The style of this movie was very cool. They did a great job with the music, and making the action fun to watch… for example, they show Holmes in a fight and we hear what he thinks as he considers each move. The cast is awesome (obviously). I need to see it again because I was wrestling Josephine the whole time, but I think the story was great.
Avatar. This movie was visually the coolest movie I’ve seen for a really long time… possibly ever. The characters and story were interesting too. But you have to see it in 3D, and IMAX if you can. It will not be the same on a small screen.
The Latest… as 2010 begins…
Ummm… I don’t have a lot to say, but here’s a summary of the last few crazy weeks. We spent Thanksgiving in Yosemite with Nat’s family. We made movies that I edited (using three different laptops for each step of the process), ate Thanksgiving dinner in a huge, awesome log cabin, and did a few hikes in the valley. From there we went to Folsom to spend a few weeks with my family. We went rollerskating (where Nat was kind of challenged to a skate-off with some random stranger), bowling for my brother-in-law’s birthday, and watched a lot of Veronica Mars while Nat was sick. I learned how to make mosaics (from my sister), and my other sister took really cute pictures of Josephine… who by the way is probably going to be walking any week here.
Now we’re back in Utah, and the snow around our cottage/cabin is gorgeous. Christmas was great. We chopped down a lovely tree and dragged it through the snow to the cabin (that sounds like tree murder, but it was delightful). Nat got me a video camera that is little, and HD, and I love it with all my heart.
I made this mosaic on this little table on Christmas day.
My Two Cents about Scary Movies
Halloween is upon us, and it got me thinkin’ that I should write what I know about scary movies. And so, here I go…
I live in a strange pickle where I enjoy scary movies, but bad language bothers me. This cuts out a remarkable amount of the possibilities for what I’ll watch. If you have that problem, here’s what I do, and maybe it will help you too. When I find a movie I want to see, I check it out on imdb.com. You just search for the movie, and then in the left hand column there’s a link you can click on called “Parents Guide”. This will almost always have a very detailed list of the scandalous content in the movie. Often there will even be a count of how many f-words are in it. Very helpful, eh?
Anyhoo, (I wonder how many of my posts say “anyhoo”), here’s a list of the scary movies I like a lot and why… and they’re not in order.
-What Lies Beneath (PG13, Michelle Pfeifer and Harrison Ford, Michelle’s character is haunted by a young missing woman.) This movie has a great story, a few good spooks, and is overall creepy.
-1408 (PG13, John Cusak’s character is doing research to write a book about haunted hotel rooms around the country and finally finds one that is truly evil.) I was very impressed by the creativity of this one. The hauntings are not your typical shadowy ghosts and bumps in a creaky house, etc. In one room you get a wide variety of crazy stuff. (I know “stuff” is a terrible description, but I don’t want to give anything away). You should see it if you haven’t.
-The Ring (PG13, Naomi Watts’ character investigates the death of her niece after the niece and her friends watch a mysterious tape that people die seven days after watching.) This movie was really scary to me the first time I saw it, although I was a teenage girl, but still, I think it does a good job of keeping the story moving and setting a very eerie feel throughout.
-Drag Me to Hell (PG13, Alison Lohman and the Mac guy/Justin Long, Lohman’s character is cursed by an old gypsy lady and is haunted by a demon for three days while she tries to stop the curse before the demon is supposed to suck her into Hell on the third day.) When I saw the trailer for this movie I thought it looked so stupid and cheesy. It turns out this movie is actually pretty awesome. I wasn’t really scared during it, but it was definitely very disturbing, and extremely creative. Parts were even funny while still disturbing, which made it even more interesting.
-28 Days Later (R, Cillian Murphy whose name is pronounced Killian, did you know that? Murphy’s character wakes up from a coma to find that the people of London have become zombies from a virus that induces rage.) I watched this a long time ago, and I don’t remember much about it except that I did feel scared during it. I remember the language is pretty bad, but I remember thinking at the end that I liked the movie a lot. Cillian pronounced Killian. No wonder he’s almost always the bad guy.
-The Haunting in Connecticut (PG13, no big names, a family moves into a house where a boy undergoing cancer treatments sees visions of some of the creepy things that went down there.) I just watched this for the first time last night, and I had low expectations. It was pretty good though. I was creeped out quite a few times, and the story was interesting, and the acting was mostly very good.
-The Sixth Sense was good; everyone’s seen it. I actually liked The Happening (R for violence) even though the whole idea behind it is very stupid to a lot of people (Nat included), but I bought it just fine, and I thought Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel did a great job. In fact I’d watch it right now if I had it. Maybe I have horrible taste in movies… er…
And then of course there are the classics that freaked me out growing up: Poltergeist, It, Alien, The Shining (thanks Pete)… but oh man, the scariest movie of my youth (to me and Nat)… hands down, ET. I still never ever want to see it again. That dude freaks me out. I haven’t seen it in probably 18 years, and I still can see that white tunnel thing… eek.
I can’t believe I forgot Hitchcock (thanks Angie!). Psycho and The Birds are great although I feel like I know Psycho too well. My favorite Hitchcock movies are The Man Who Knew Too Much and Rear Window. Oh yeah and Strangers on a Train is a good one.
Now if you don’t want a scary movie, but are looking for a more thriller type deal, a couple that come to my mind are Disturbia (Shia LeBouf) and Deceived (Goldie Hawn). Nat will forever make fun of me, but I still recommend Taken (Liam Neeson). I also liked The Invasion (Nicole Kidman).
Okay to wrap it up, the only thing more frustrating to me about scary movies besides the potential for them to be soaked in f-bombs and having no plot but chopping people up, is when the characters constantly do the wrong thing. Oh yes, let’s walk down into this dark basement where the lights aren’t working and I think I see blood and hear something creepy. There are a million of those. Or how about Quarantine (which I had kind of high hopes for), where some people are infected with a deadly violent virus and instead of staying locked in a room where the infected couldn’t get you, everybody runs around the apartment building until everybody dies. Sorry spoiler alert, but seriously, if you haven’t seen it don’t. The people are stupid and deserve to die. I’m looking forward to The Fourth Kind and Daybreakers coming out. Check out the trailers.
If you guys have scary movie suggestions for me or comments on my poor movie choices, do tell. Happy Halloween everybody!
The Office
Is this new season not very funny to anyone else? The Gossip episode was pretty good I guess, but the other two… err… I’m afraid.
Update: The season has been pretty good over all. I just caught up on the last three (up to Koi Pond), and they were good. Yay!
The Informant! Review
In case you don’t know anything about the movie, here’s a little idea what it’s about…
A much-larger-than-usual Matt Damon is pretty high up in a company, but decides to kind of take the company down by working with the FBI to record conversations about price fixing, and other sketchy activities. It’s based on a true story, and it’s a comedy (kind of). It’s rated R for a few totally unnecessary F-bombs… but I suppose they wanted one of their white-collar big whigs to represent the foul-mouthed jerk that every office seems to have.
Anyhoo, this movie was VERY weird, but I thought it was actually really funny. Matt Damon did an amazing job in that role. 100% believable. Throughout the film, we often hear what he’s thinking, and it’s hilarious stuff. Most of the time his thoughts have nothing to do with what’s happening, and they sometimes cover up important conversations. The character is interesting and the story is pretty entertaining throughout. It’s not one I’ll run out and buy right away, but I didn’t feel bad paying matinee price to see it… (although in Utah matinee price is like $5.75.)
The Foster Family 
