Extra! Part II

Here is a like to yet another article that features Tony. He was interviewed by the local paper while walking across campus this week.

MSU raises tuition 3.9%

His picture is on the far right side.

Extra!

Anthony is in the news. Check out this article from today's Salt Lake Tribune.

Colorado incident: A few bad seeds or a need for more missionary training?

"Um...my sister's in love with your husband."

That is what one of my primary kids told me in class last week. This girl (younger sister of my primary kid) may be too young to really know what love is--she's 5--but it cannot be denied that she has an affinity for Anthony. Today during Sacrament Meeting she tapped him on the shoulder to give him a hug. I think this happened about three times. Previously she has played with his hair and smiled and batted her eyelashes at him. Looks like I've got some competition.

Tony is making LOTS of friends in our ward's primary. Last weekend both of us baby-sat for two boys in the ward, ages five and six. They both LOVED any attention they got from Tony while I was just 'the girl.' One of the boys has a bit of a problem going to primary--he hates it--so while I was teaching my class Tony went with him to Junior Primary. He clearly made a big impression because this week kids all over the place were saying hi to him. When we walked down the hall by the Primary Room/Nursery after church it was like walking with a rock star. Not really, but there were a few kids who waved and made sure he saw them too.

Anyways, I'm just glad I've got nearly two decades on most of these kids. But who can blame them, what's not to love?

My 100

Our lives have been fairly boring recently and we don't have much to blog with. But want to update our blog, so I copied this idea from my cousin's blog. Here are 100 things about me:

1. I enjoy bowling.


2. I have never dyed my hair.


3. I hate paying full price for anything.


4. I like to read celebrity gossip magazines like US Weekly or People at the checkout stand, so sometimes I look for the longest line so I can peruse the magazines for longer.


5. I watch Law and Order almost every day of the week.


6. I don't like milk.


7. I have a hard time sleeping without a fan.


8. I have never broken a bone.


9. I loved going to college at BYU.


10. My favorite colors are red and green, but not together.


11. I am not as patient as I would like to be.


12. I check our bank account everyday.


13. I love candy, however I go through phases as to what is my favorite. Right now I really like nerds and snickers.
14. I am monumentally bad a video games.


15. I'm not a cat person.


16. I love to read.


17. My sister Melanie makes me laugh really, really hard.


18. Even though I sometimes complain about it, I really like my calling as Wolf Den Leader.


19. I like to run when it is nice and cool outside, at like 6 in the morning or 8:30 at night in the summer.


20. I love to feel the sun on my skin.


21. I am a pool rat.


22. I don't like merging onto the highway.
    
23. Tony is nicer to me than I am to him.


24. He is the perfect husband for me.


25. I couldn't ask for better parents. I love my family.


26. I couldn't ask for better in-laws. I love Tony's family.


27. I have the four best sisters ever.


28. I have the four best sisters-in-law ever.


29. I have the best three brothers-in-law ever.


30. I feel so blessed to be part of such wonderful extended families.


31. I love tomatoes and cheese. Almost every meal I make has one or both of these things in it.


32. I don't like being cold.


33. I am better at making lists than I am at checking things off of them.


34. I love the smell of clean laundry.


35. I wish I had longern (thinner) legs.


36. I wish I could dance as well as my sister Laura. All of my sister's think I dance weird. To them I say, "Whatever!"


37. I used to think I could lay down on the Y and cover it up.


38. I love flowers, especially tulips.


39. I miss getting candy--especially chocolate covered cinnamon bears--from the BYU Bookstore.


40. My favorite job was working at the BYU Bookstore, such great friends and co-workers.


41. I love Papa Murphy's.


42. I love Tony and am grateful for how hard he works for our family.


43. I love the feeling you get in your stomach when you descend on a roller-coaster.


44. I really like the movie 13 Going on 30.


45. I love getting emails or real letters/packages in the mail.


46. I think I have adult ADD.


47. Sometimes I tell Tony I think A-Rod or Jeter are hot because it bugs him. Sometimes I say random things to check and see if he is really listening to me.


48. I love taking my family's dog, Brandi for walks around the neighborhood.


49. Sometimes I am sneaky.


50. When I was younger sometimes I would suggest things to my sister Emily. You know, things I thought could be interesting, but didn't want to get in trouble for doing them myself.


51. I was lucky to have really great roommates in college.


52. I had a horrendous awkward phase. It was long and it was brutal.


53. Because of this I hope my children don't look too much like me.


54. I don't like looking at pictures taken of me circa '95-'00.


55. I love McDonald's french fries.


56. I like being tan.
57. I am sentimental.


58. I love reading the teachings of King Benjamin. It's my favorite part of the Book of Mormon.


59. I wish I could go out to lunch at Sweet Tomatoes with Jill tomorrow for some WonTon chicken happiness.


60. I love to laugh so hard my sides ache.


61. I am excited to teach personal finance and management classes one day.


62. I write everything down in my planner.


63. My favorite month of the year is May.


64. My mom is the kindest and most sensitive person I know.


65. I like watching sports with Tony.


66. My favorite church hymn is "In Humility Our Savior."


67. I really dislike the TV Show "Deal or No Deal."


68. I am a major procrastinator.


69. I don't like chocolate cake, or any cake really, but especially not chocolate.


70. I eat a bag of 100 calorie popcorn almost every day.


71. I love finding connections, between people and things.


72. Josh Groban music sooths my soul.


73. I always wanted an older sister or brother.


74. I am really interested in politics.


75. I like doing "horace and jasper" things with my dad.


76. I want to have a lot of kids, and after we have all our kids I want to get a dog.


77. I like doing crafty things.


78. I wish I was better at decorating our apartment.


79. When I was younger I wanted to be Stephanie Tanner.


80. I like having inside jokes with people.


81. My favorite drink is water. I never order drinks at restaurants.


82. I am happy to be living so close to two of my best friends from high school again.


83. I am often irrational.


84. Sometimes I have double-standards.
    
85. And I am really grateful Tony puts up with them so nicely.


86. I am pretty shy, I want to be friends with everyone, but I get scared and intimidated pretty easily.


87. I have always thought boys were cute.


88. I am glad I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I can't imagine my life any other way.


89. I don't like breaking bills, like I would rather spend four dollar bills than break a five. Weird.


90. I like to sew.


91. I feel anxious when our apartment is messy, I guess you could say I'm a clean freak.


92. I have a hard time falling back to sleep if I get woken up in the middle of the night.


93. I like songs with a strong and happy beat.


94. I miss going to BYU sporting events.


95. I love those AT&T commercials with the mom, daughter and grandma texting. I laugh so hard every time I see them and I try to use their abbreviations when I talk.


96. I like playing card games.


97. My favorite Disney movie is The Little Mermaid.


98. I wore braces for nearly four years.


99. I changed my major four times at BYU.
100. I am happy and content with my life today.

Ice, ice baby

Today started off so great for me. I've had a bad headache all weekend and was not in the mood to get up be ready to drop Anthony off at school by 8 a.m. When my alarm went off this morning I knew I needed another good hour of sleep to really recover from the weekend. I turned off my alarm and figured I would just stay in bed until Anthony came back to our room and in his kind yet slightly-anxious way ask me if I was planning on showering. He never did. I woke up about an hour later and found him sitting on our couch like an anxious school child with the Today show on watching the school closing ticker at the bottom of the screen. We had an ice storm last night and the whole town had frozen over. I couldn't have asked for better timing. Before I got out of bed my half-asleep half-awake brain was consumed with thoughts of calling in sick to work, but knowing if I did I would be mad at myself as soon as I did. I hate calling in sick, plus we need the money, so rarely miss work. Due to my extra hour of sleep I was feeling great, so we made good use of the day by taking care of stuff we should have done this weekend but didn't because my head hurt and Anthony was busy taking care of me. Starting this afternoon we heard loud crackling sounds--branches breaking off trees. Around 9 p.m. I thought we should maybe check on our car. We could see branches out our window covered in a thick layer of ice. We gingerly made our way across the parking lot and started hacking at our car, which was also encased in about an inch of ice. It was kind of fun kicking and hacking at our car. It took us about half an hour to get all the ice off. We've both lived in cold weather places, but have never experienced anything like this before.

And that is not snow on our car--it is ice, very hard ice. We karate kicked our car to crack the ice.

Trees are bending over and breaking because they can't support the weight of the ice.

Not so Super

I thought this week was suposed to be super. Super Bowl Sunday, Super Tuesday, etc. Well, things have just not been going our way this week. Things actually started being un-super last week when both of us were experiencing flu-like symptoms. Apparently there is a flu epidemic spreading across Missouri State and we both caught it. We spent the weekend eating saltines and drinking carbonated beverages. Sunday was the Super Bowl. It was an exciting game, but again, not such a super ending. Yesterday was Super Tuesday. In our own state, and across the country things didn't go the way we would have liked. It is exciting to vote in a battleground state and feel like your vote is important. Unfortunately, only 29% of our fellow Missourians felt the same way about the candidates. I would just like to point out that we were NOT part of the 42% of Greene County registered voters that voted for Mike Huckabee. I'm starting to wonder if there is any correlation between the lack of driving skill in Springfield and poor choice for President. On our trip to the polls and back we encountered MULTIPLE bad drivers.

On a more cheerful note, we feel very blessed to live in a country where we are able to vote peacefully and without fear. Even if we don't agree with the outcome, it is such a blessing to have agency. We are so blessed to be allowed to think for ourselves and believe whatever we want to.

Disclaimer: While we were engaged we watched the movie "I heart Huckabees" one evening. I didn't even make it through the whole thing. I thought it was the weirdest movie I had ever seen. Hopefully it was just because we saw the Clean Flix verison and un-edited the movie made more sense. Regardless, I thought it was funny that my least favorite candidate has the same name as the movie we make fun of for being the worst movie we have ever watched together.

Oops...I did it again

For what seems like the millionth time, I took another bad I.D picture yesterday. I'm not really sure what's the deal! Last week I started a new job that required me to get an employee name badge. Nothing too fancy, it has my picture on it and some sort of sensor that gives me access to the building. On Monday they told me they would be taking pictures yesterday. Yesterday morning I got up a little early, showered and actually spent time on my hair and make-up. I even decided to wear a new sweater I got over Christmas. Unfortunately all my preparations were in vain. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it was an occasional thing. But NO, not for me, it seems like EVERY identification photo that is taken of me is heinous. The lack of photogeneity--is that a word?--in I.D. photos dates back my days of awkward adolescence at Indian Woods Middle School. Next time I have to get an I.D. picture taken minimal effort will be made. That way if the picture turns out crappy I'll have an easy excuse.

Here are a few samples from my hall of shame:

Overland Park Pool Pass, photo taken Summer '99 but still valid: I don't even know what to say. I look like cyclops. This was actually my yearbook photo and my mom mailed it in. It was bad to begin with, but scanning it made it even worse. So if you look me up in the OPP database THIS unfortunate representation of me is what you see.

Provo Rec Center, Summer '06: Um...even my husband thinks I look weird in this one. I look special. What is going on with my hair? And my face? My nose?This one usually gets the biggest laugh. What is the most baffeling about this pic is that it was taken a few weeks before we got married and I look normal in those pictures. Whatev.

What gets me the most is the fact that I don't look this bad in regular pictures. I'm no model, but this is just ridiculous. There is something about I.D. cards that brings out the worst in me. In the next while I will be getting a Missouri Driver's License and Passport...hopefully I won't have anything new to add to my hall of shame.

Boston's reign of terror continues

It is a good time to be a sports fan from Boston. It was not all that long ago when all of the teams from Beantown were monumentally bad, so I know that sports success ebbs and flows, and that knowledge makes me appreciate recent triumphs. The Red Sox won the World Series. The Patriots won the AFC Championship and will play in the Super Bowl, and the Celtics have the best record in basketball about half-way through the season.
I appreciate Carrie and her willingness to watch sports with me. She has been wearing my Brady-Moss in'08 shirt the last couple of days, and she pulls the look off well.
Seeing my bliss from sports victories any social psychologist can tell you that I am "basking in reflected glory". I think that sort of tendency than the other half of the same sort of behavior, "cutting-off reflected failure". If you do both of these things with your teams a lot, you are what I call a fair-weather fan. For example, in 2003 after my mission there was a negative buzz around BYU campus about the football team. I bet this happens every time the team is not competing for the league championship, but there were lots of jabs by bitter professors, editorials and articles in the Daily Universe, and diatribes from the "soapbox" outside the Wilkinson Center. The team was not good and it seemed like BYU people wanted to cut their allegiances to the team. (By the way no tithing money is spent on the football team. That argument is tired and lame.) Now that the team is good again that sort of talk has totally stopped, or at least it was last year before I left. I love BYU sports, but it is easy to call their fans "fair weather fans" to a certain degree...not to the extent of the U fans, but to a certain extent. Maybe it is a Utah thing.
While everyone may be bugged with the Boston sports world, NOBODY can make the claim that Boston fans are fairweather. I would actually make the claim that Boston fans are the most loyal that I know. The reason that Fenway Park is the funnest place to see a baseball game is because the fans there appreciate the game, and they don't need a scoreboard to tell them to cheer.
oh boston you're my home

Run for your life

One of my "New Year's Resolutions" is to run a half-marathon. I've been talking about it for awhile with both my friend Stephanie and sister Melanie. In early December Stephanie and I ran a 5K and were pleasantly suprised with our times. The past few weeks it has been harder to get in a good running schedule with the holidays and colder weather. However, the past few days it's been warmer--not to mention I've had more time on my hands--so I ventured out and did some jogging again. I don't know why it is always like this, it takes me forever to motivate myself to go, but I always feel better once I do. Anyways, I came across this website the other day where you can calculate your mileage. It's great. City blocks are not very uniform here, so it's hard for me to figure out how far I've gone. I was especially excited because I had underestimated how far I had been running and had been really disappointed in my time. Click here to check it out!

back to school blues

School just started for Carrie. She is taking three classes this semester instead of the single class she has taken per semester prior. My classes do not start until Monday, but I have had to return to work this week at the Center for Assessment. In fact, I am here at work now, but there is not very much to do, and so I thought I could use my time a little better and write another entry on our blog.

Christmas vacation was very fun. You do not appreciate all the things your parents do for you until you move out on your own. Visiting both of our parents made me re-realize all the blessings and comforts of home. We tried not to mooch too much from our parents and be somewhat responsible. It was nice to sleep in. It was easier to help out around the house. I have found that it is always easier to help with dishes or with chores when they are not your real responsibility and you do not have much else to do. Carrie and I went running in the middle of the day, walked the dog, raked leaves, and did dishes, trying to not be burdens to our parents, but we probably were. Melanie's birthday was fun. I like her. I also like a delicious steak dinner and a BYU bowl victory. I think J. Gilbert's is one of the if not the nicest restaurant I have ever been to. Christmas was also very fun, and the Cranes did an excellent job of shopping for me, which I hear can be tough. My birthday was also fun, and I can hardly believe that I have turned 27. As I get older I think I remember my father being my age, and that weirds me out a bit since we do not have children yet. We traveled to Boston for the final week of our vacation, which was also fun. My family surprised us with Celtics tickets, and Matthew shared with us his Christmas present from his Teacher's quorum president of sweet seets at the Garden. We also went to NYC and saw Curtains on Broadway, ate at the famous Carnegie Deli, and saw New York from the top of the Empire State Building. Both our families were very generous.

We also got to spend time with Carrie's and my best friends from home and see their new children. Both Carrie Diggins and Clarke Low had children join their families recently. I was impressed by both families and their cute babies. This is not an announcement of any kind, but Carrie and I talked about our future children and how excited we are. I can safely predict that we will have children some day. I am going out on a limb there, I know.

I was also reminded about a psychological phenomenon that I learned about in school which seems so applicable to family situations. Everyone thinks that how they think and do things is the best way to do it. Everyone thinks that how and where they grew up is a little better than it actually was. It is a human universal. It leads to things like stereotypes and ethnocentrism, and within families this tendency rears its ugly head also. Older children and younger children the world over have a constant battle over who had things better or worse. Everyone is reading this thinking, "yup." Older children often come home and see how their parents have "loosened up", the free weekends, the newer clothes, and the dinners at restaurants, etc. and all they can think about is their own stricter curfews, weekends of family babysitting, hand-me-down clothes, and how they never ate out. I struggle with this. I look at my younger siblings and quickly judge, "Boy, they are spoiled." I remember when I was in sixth grade and what I wanted more than anything in the world was a pair of Umbro shorts. I really thought that these shorts were the key to being cool. I do not think that my younger siblings have those sorts of experiences. If I remember right (and false, biased memory is another HUGE problem in these sorts of discussions) my mom made me earn half the money. Really, my bitterness is not about my siblings, but all about me and my selfishness. It is not like I grew up in the gall of depravity. So many in the world do not yearn for Umbro shorts. They want food or shelter. The truth is that within our family no one's situation is particularly better or more spoiled. The situations are just different. Usually comparisons lead to more hurt feelings, so it is not worth it. To all my siblings and siblings-in-law: I love you. You are great. I will try to not be such a jerk when I come home in the future.
In other news: Our car's yellow check engine light turned back on and stayed on the whole vacation. Our mechanic told us before the vacation that there is probably a problem with our oxygen level sensor, because the car is running better than it ever has. When we tell people about our light it seems like half of them have a story about how their car had a faulty dashboard light and they ignored it until their car died a long while later. We are not sure we want to take the risk of ignoring the light when our car has had so many problems already. We may have to take it in and get the sensor or its computer fixed.