Sunday, we decided to head down to St. George to attend the baby blessing of the daughter of my good friend Annie. Annie and I go WAY back--I'll have to dig up an old picture.
Ah! Here we are looking hot (in more ways than one....baha) in our peach and black Paquita costumes that Annie's mom made. We were 17. She's the girl on my right. Also pictured are Ashley Graff, Summer Ballard and Katherine Dixon. I miss ballet!
She and Summer and I danced and carpooled together for a good 10 years. They are awesome girls.
Anyhoo, here's Annie's newest baby, her third, named Liesl Cosette Gubler. Isn't she a beaut?
Look at those cheeks! What a sweetie.
I'd told Madelyn we could stop by the St. George Temple grounds before we went home. Luke fell asleep, so Mark stayed with him in the car while we had a look around. She wanted to see everything.
The weather's pretty much always nice in St. George this time of year. A good 20 degrees warmer and sunnier than Cedar City. (I'm not sure why the flag was at half mast..)
The stairs had to be climbed two or three times, of course.
Beautiful fig tree on the south side of the temple
The west end
The front (east) end
Madelyn and her favorite new pair of shoes she got for Christmas. Fancy!
That girl and her sass... Two seasons of America's Next Top Model (like 2-3 years ago), and this is what happens!
Presh!
She wanted to see how the temple was built, so we went into one of the visitors' centers to check it out. There's the 1,000lb cannon that was used as a pile driver to compact lava rock into the swampy soil where the temple was built.
The architect Truman Angell originally designed the tower to have a steeple. (That looks so weird to me.) Brigham Young told him he wanted it to have an octagonal dome instead.
The building was constructed with local red sandstone
Then the whole thing was plastered from the top down with ground gypsum and hot lye. They built the octagonal dome, but made it too short for Brigham Young's liking, but in order to stay on schedule, they kept it that way.
Piece of gypsum they gave to Madelyn to keep. She said she'd look at it "to remember Jesus."
Brigham Young died four months after he dedicated the temple in 1877. Exactly one year after he died, lightning hit the tower and burned it. It had to be rebuilt, and that time they made it taller, like Brigham had wanted. It is the oldest operating temple that the church uses today.
St. George in the late 1800's. Now the temple is pretty much in the center of town.
If you've stood still long enough around Mark these past 5-6 months, he's probably told you about his ♥arcade♥. Even though it's not finished yet, I wanted to show you what he's done so far. This has been a huge project.
One day in July or August, he woke up and told me he'd had a dream. In this dream, someone offered to sell him a vintage arcade console, but it was really expensive, which led him to wonder if he could just build his own. He woke up with that thought in his head and started researching. Lo and behold, there are all sorts of guys out there with the same obsession with video games who have built their own arcades, using a system called MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) which recreates the hardware of arcade games, so you can play them all on a single console.
He originally told me that this was something he wanted to do sometime in the future, when we'll have a roomy basement and not to mention extra cash to be throwing around. BUT (as you can see) he didn't end up waiting. He got so excited that he started as soon as he could.
He bought a disc containing more than 1,000 vintage arcade games on it for $10 through MAME. They could all easily be run on one of our old computers (Golden Axe shown above). Mark bought a gigantic old monitor for it, too. He also bought an instruction manual on how to build the gaming cabinet.
After he finally finished working on the back yard, shed and garage, he got some wood and started cutting stuff out (in August, I think):
Careful not to saw your leg off there, Mark....
A nice coat of black paint
So really, this is just a fancy thing to play computer games on.
His brother David checking it out. It is a big source of bragging rights and must be shown to anyone who comes to our house.
Then, after a month or two of agonizing over alllll the choices of colors and types of buttons, joysticks and track balls, he decided on blue (which I knew he'd end up with--it's his favorite color). The stuff took forever to get here, which was very vexing to him.
Then he built a temporary cabinet to house the buttons and wiring
I don't know where he learned to do stuff like this. Maybe he's just really good at reading directions.
Basically, all this is hooked back into the computer and is then controlled by the buttons on top
Then he installed more buttons and a recessed track ball (round orb right in the center, which took him all day, he wants me to tell you) and a cup holder on the side.
This is the point where it stands today. All the buttons and stuff on the panel are functional and he can use them to play his games. Next he will get a piece of glass cut and painted for the front, add a marquee and a front cover, build a new housing for the buttons with thinner wood so he can put plexiglass over it, and then pimp the whole thing out with spacey art and LED lights, kind of like so:
Pretty dang exciting, huh.
PS. Aren't I a good wife for letting him build this? I think so...
I've let my geek flag fly before--so no surprise there. In fact, my new favorite pastime after the kids have gone to bed is to check out the latest Geek pins on Pinterest. (Go to the "Everything" tab at the top of the page, hover over it and then click on "Geek".) I'll be over in the corner laughing and snorting and Mark will look over at me like I'm nuts. The pins are even better when you're super tired because then everything is funnier.
This one isn't really geeky, but I made it for my nephew Nathan, who is super into military stuff. This Air Force shirt was part of his birthday present last August.
I made this for Mark after he saw the design on the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Looking back, I should have made the skull bigger and centered it higher. Live and learn! Also, when you're using light paint on a dark background, you have to use about a zillion coats.
A Star Wars AT-AT
A Canadian maple leaf, Harry Potter glasses and lightning scar and Star Trek insignia on little onesies for my nephew Jack (whose dad served a mission in Canada, mom is a Potterphile, and they are both Trekkies).
and an X-Men onesie for my great-nephew Logan
(who was named for Logan, aka Wolverine, on X-Men)
Then I had the Awesome Idea to send my bestie Nadia and her family an Avatar themed Christmas package. I got some help with some well chosen etsy purchases:
A clay Appa head/cell phone charm/keychain!!!
Avatar quote buttons! (I have some of these for myself) They make absolutely no sense unless you've seen all the episodes.
If you haven't watched this, it's a Nickelodeon series that originally aired from 2005-2008, but is available on Netflix through online streaming. Not to be confused with the live action movie by M. Night Shyamalan, which was supposed to be the same story but was complete rubbish.
source
We have watched the whole series several times and decided to watch it again over Christmas break. Over 24 hours of Avatar goodness!! Best animated series E V E R.
Anyhoo, I decided to use the symbols from Avatar to make some geeky t-shirts for Nadia, Jeremy, Beckham and Ravi.
Green: earth, blue: Water, black: Air, red: Fire (more or less the Avatar colors, except Air probably should have been white and silver)
Then Nadia sent me this picture of them wearing their shirts and bending, which TOTALLY made my day:
(sorry Nadia, I just had to share...it was just so stinking awesome)
That's the view of the Phillipine Sea from their balcony in Saipan, where Jeremy is the only psychiatrist on the whole island. We miss those guys! Glad someone's having fun in the sun, though. And fighting crime with the power of the four elements!
*ahem*
And now I want to make some more. That's the problem with these freezer paper stencils. You start getting so many ideas you don't know if there will ever be enough t-shirts to fulfill your desires.
One last thing....just had to show this Diablo II poster Mark's brother Paul manipulated so that the faces of his friends were in it. That's Paul being choked by the demon, and that's Mark lying on the floor bleeding. Look closely--it's him! I took a picture of him writhing on the kitchen floor and Paul cropped in his head. The talent that runs in this family..........
Sorry for the lack of posting lately--the last week and a half of the year always kicks my trash, this year more than usual! We party, party, party, party until we're practically begging to go back to school and work and normal life. Unless you're Madelyn, in which case you stall going to bed the last night of vacation and spend a full half hour lying on the floor in the morning arguing over whether she can wear her fancy New Year's dress and snow boots to school. So here's what we've been up to:
The last day of school, Mark went to Madelyn's class and helped her make this "gingerbread" house. She ate most of it as soon as she got home.
The night before her birthday, I snuck in and decorated her room with balloons, streamers and a happy birthday sign. Luckily, she sleeps like a log. If I'd tried this in Luke's room he'd have woken up after about .025 seconds...
Dec. 21st:
Happy 7th birthday, Little Miss! Since she'd already had her friend party the week before, this day was pretty low key. Mark had to work all day and also the night clinic, but while he was home for lunch she opened presents and had some homemade cheesecake. That night she wanted to go to McDonald's for dinner. Of course neither she nor Luke actually ate their happy meals--they just ran around on the play place for an hour. That place gives me the heebs. And probably for good reason! Three of us ended up with colds a few days later! :/
The next few days were spent frantically trying to get goodies made and delivered. I made two batches of English toffee, a batch of peppermint bark, some peanut butter fudge, two batches of peppermint fudge, and hand dipped 10 dozen oreos in white candy melts and crushed peppermint. Yum yum.
About 30 bags had to be delivered to friends, family and church associates
And another 20 were passed out to everyone at Mark's work. Geesh.
Dec. 24th:
I spent a lovely, frantic morning Christmas Eve sewing mini stockings, rice heating pads (more posts on those later), making a red agate necklace and earrings set for my mom (didn't take a picture, because I made them in the car while traveling to Hurricane with a cake on my knee), and put the finishing touches on Madelyn's double layer devil's food cake with white chocolate peppermint mousse and chocolate peppermint ganache. (Which, by the way, was divine but it's my s-i-law's secret recipe.) Peppermint, peppermint, peppermint. There, now I've said it eight times in this post.
Had the traditional Mexican feast at my parent's house, followed by the Nativity play...
Madelyn had birthday celebration #3..........(spoiled). Let's pretend that instead of melting and oozing everywhere on the car ride over, the mousse layer of the cake had been given proper time to chill, shall we? Mhmmm..
And finally made it home and got ready for Santa to come!
Dec. 25th:
Santa really came through this year. Madelyn got a Nintendo DS Lite, Luke got several alphabet themed toys and they both got little pianos.
One of my favorite presents?
This Old Navy coat I gifted to myself. ♥♥♥ It's sold out now in the teal color but just wanted to show it to you. I got it for $15! It was a $60 coat, which I had my eye on for weeks, and when I found out that there was a 5-hour sale in the store in St. George, where all adult coats were 75% off, I hightailed it down there. I've only worn it one day out in public and already got at least five compliments. Isn't that a heartwarming story? ♥♥♥ :)
Anyway.....
Dec. 28th:
Our 10 year anniversary!! Sorry if my Christmas card/letter led you to believe that we spent the day lolling on a beach in Mexico....we are planning that trip but won't be leaving till probably the end of May. Mark had asked for the day off, but then his boss evidently "forgot" about it and decided to take that whole week off himself, so Mark did end up having to go into work. I was fuming mad for a while but eventually got over it.
Mark surprised me with a bouquet of red roses in the morning, and then when he went back to work after lunch, this other bouquet of roses, daisies and carnations was delivered by a local florist!! I was so surprised! ♥ Aww! ♥
That night, my dad came over and watched the kids while we went out for Japanese food at Ninja here in Cedar City. We had potstickers, soup and salad, sushi and teryaki beef. It was delish and very pricey.
The next day we went down to St. George for date #2. We dropped the kids off at Tyler and Monica's (thanks!) and while they played with their cousins, we went shoooopping. We went to Best Buy, TJ Maxx and Ross, and then capped it off with dinner at Larsen's Frostop. We had a gift card to Olive Garden, but hamburgers, french fries and milkshakes really hit the spot. Larsen's is THE BEST hamburger joint anywhere--I am telling you. I wish I was eating there right now.
So after our shopping spree, Mark ended up with a new Xbox game called Skyrim, which he claims he's only played 15 hours on so far, but I know it's more. He also scored and found an RC helicopter at Ross for $20. I got to pick out a new camera for myself! That's why the pics I have from my anniversary dates are from my cell phone. My old Nikon Coolpix has pretty much died. Luke's beat up on it repeatedly--it's been dropped, scratched, the batteries chewed on, the zoom stuck....it was time to replace it. I got this beaut on sale:
It takes video and shoots very snappy pictures. Can't wait to break it in! :D
Then on New Year's Eve, Mark and I (after spending about 10 hours cleaning the house and putting Christmas stuff away) stayed up till 1:30am watching this:
It was very philosophical and spacey...not quite what I expected but what did come out of it was a double album called LOVE Part I and II by Angels and Airwaves, which was pretty much the best thing that happened to us in 2011 aside from Harry Potter DH2.
I have more (a lot more) to wrap up the year, but that's all for now. I'm glad to have survived the holidays!!
The weather's pretty much always nice in St. George this time of year. A good 20 degrees warmer and sunnier than Cedar City. (I'm not sure why the flag was at half mast..)
Beautiful fig tree on the south side of the temple
The west end
St. George in the late 1800's. Now the temple is pretty much in the center of town.
St. George in the late 1800's. Now the temple is pretty much in the center of town.
