family, woodworking, photography, K-pop
The kids and I took a break from normal life and stole away to Western Washington to visit family. There are a lot of things I enjoy about living in Utah but I loved growing up in WA and I love coming back to visit.
I’ve been sharing a lot of photos on Instagram (@thenearestfuture) but will post here once I get home.
I’m still trying to figure out where June went! E went to two weeks of a coding camp to learn how to use Scratch, a programing language invented for kids; I took Mimi to the annual princess party at our rec center; and I went to Zion National Park with our church girls group.
It was HOT (upper nineties) so our hike up The Narrows was a lot of fun. The water was pleasantly cool and it was fun to pick our way along the river bed. In some places the water was up to my hips! We just had about a hour to hike up and back, but I’d love to come back with N and the kids and spent a few hours going further up the river.
The girls had a great time swimming in the river. I really enjoyed spending time with them. I just got called to work with them at church a few months ago so it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know them better individually. After spending a few days away from normal life tromping around in nature (and in the heat!) with them I’m happy to say I’m now rock-solid on all of their names 😉
The women’s weight training class I’m taking only has a few more weeks left which is too bad. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Last week we did yoga for our workout. It was my very first try at yoga. I hadn’t done videos at home or anything.
In case you couldn’t guess, it basically went like this.
(Video may be mildly NSFW, um, depending on where you work.)
Just in case you were worrying about us, N and I are doing fine.
We fit a lot of fun things into our trip before New York shut down for Hurricane Sandy and now we’re holed up in our 6th floor hotel room (they’re turning off the elevators so no one gets stuck if the power goes off).
We have some bagels and caviar cream cheese, a banana, cookies, water, and a 12-pack of diet coke so I think we’re set for at least the next 18 hours. Stay safe, everyone!
N’s talented cousin Travis worked on this animated piece for our church. I thought it was really lovely.
In general I’m pretty laid-back but every once in a great while I get a burst of manic energy and I shift into high gear and get all “must-do-everything-NOW!”-ish. And then poor N gets stuck in the cloud of chaos and is left wondering what happened to his mellow wife and his relaxing weekends 🙂
Along with my kitchen and hair I recently got a hankering to update my blog template. And this is what I ended up with–the same basic idea but hopefully with more of an emphasis on woodworking and photography.
HTML/CSS has changed a lot in the past 10 (gulp!) years since I minored in web design in college. As I was working on the new design I fell under the delusions that 1) I could quickly figured out CSS sprites and 2) that I was going to be graded for how clean my code was. (Nerd!)
There are still a lot of tweaks I’d like to make but I figured if I didn’t go live with the design now then I’d just continue to spend hours messing around with it instead of you know, actually posting.
I owe a HUGE debt to Katrina over at Pugly Pixel. This designed is based on her Strawberry Shortcake template and I used a lot of her resources (like the washi tape strips and photo frames) and tutorials. I signed up for her $5/30-day membership and it was fantastic–the only negative was that I feel kind of guilty that I got such a good deal 🙂 I highly recommend her site if you’re interested in design or want to jazz up your blog.
Yo Gabba Gabba Live is back in town today. Last year N and I tried to take E to the show but it was an unqualified disaster. But this time around 1) E’s a whole year older 2) we’ve talked about the show with him and he really wants to go 3) he’s been to a few movies in the theater and did well and 4) I got him some ear protectors.
This time around we only bought two tickets so N is taking him which I feel slightly jealous about but also vaguely relieved. It’s sweet how excited E is to go someone on his own with his dad.
I think it will go well. But I also thought it would go well last year so we shall see, my friends.
We shall see.
I didn’t find my ring but we still have a lovely weekend complete with three (!) birthday dinners.
They sent me a coupon for a free birthday meal so on Friday night we took the kids to Tucano’s. It’s a Brazilian steakhouse where the servers walk around with skewers of various grilled meats and they bang on bongo drums and sing “Happy Birthday” to you in Portuguese. It was kind of crazy but E loved all the spectacle and stuffed himself silly and even ate a grilled chicken heart. I was so proud!
On Saturday night N and I went to The Copper Onion, one of my favorite places in Salt Lake. And then on Sunday we went up to my in-laws’ house for steaks and cake and ice cream.
As a treat I ordered a birthday cake from City Cakes, our favorite local vegan bakery. It was lemon with raspberry filling and “cream cheese” frosting and DELICIOUS. It was super moist and tasty and didn’t taste “off” at all.
E really got a kick out of the weekend’s festivities. When he got up on Friday N prompted him to wish me a happy birthday which he did by saying, “Happy birthday, Mama! I got you an umbrella!” It’s probably a good thing that N kept E out of the loop on the other presents he got me. N was so thoughtful that I felt a bit spoiled. And fortunately none of his gifts is small enough to be lost in the shag carpeting 🙂
Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway for a copy of Maphead! The prize goes to Elaine who was lucky #1.
I hope that everyone has a great weekend. I’m still a bit under the weather so my weekend plans are absurdly couch-centric. Tonight N and I will probably watch the next few parts of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and then on Saturday and Sunday I’m going to watch my church’s general conference, bestirring myself from the couch only when strictly necessary.
Here’s to the weekend!
Here’s a photo I took from the Ferris Wheel and ran through a tilt-shift effects generator. This year I had a plastic Diana lens on my DSLR so the starting photo wasn’t tack-sharp to begin with and so the overall effect isn’t as strong as last year’s photos (here). But it’s still fun to play around like this 🙂