Sunday will come.

I got back from Utah on Thursday. I was listening to the radio and heard, as I was driving down my street, that Michael Jackson died. Sadness. I still wasn't feeling well but figured I'd rest all Thursday evening and then hopefully would start feeling better the next day and could get back to normal.

I was surprised to find I actually felt worse, not better on Friday. This lovely scene at the side of my bed pretty much sums up my day:
I was given these tablets a few months ago (the last time I was sick-- what's up with my immune system lately?) that are like Airborne on steroids. These things fizz like nothing else! The writing on the container is mostly in German but I'm pretty sure it's just a power dose of Vitamin C and zinc. I was really wishing I had this stuff when I first started feeling sick but I was about 700 miles away from it. Bummer. I've been drinking it like crazy since I got back but that was probably a little too late.
While this was all going on, we were all hoping for a miracle in Texas. This potential miracle had a lot of forces working against it, and I'm sad to say those forces won out. No miracle. Huge disappointment. Sadness.

In my mail yesterday, I got a newsletter from the BYU College of Health and Human Performance. I read that Dr. Keith Karren was retiring. Dr. Karren, who's undying optimism for life and never-ending perkiness I have not forgotten from my days as a Health Science major at BYU.... His big thing was the mind-body connection. He taught of the power of the mind to influence the health of the body.

Building off of what I learned from Dr. Karren, I have to believe that the reason I'm not getting any better is because I'm pretty much surrounded by sadness right now. And it isn't just the things I've written about here, it seems that amongst my friends there have been a never-ending string of disappointments and tragedies. Whenever we think the streak is being broken, we're disappointed once again. Tears, tears, and more tears. I've been putting too many names of people I love on the temple prayer roll recently. Too many.

So when I read this tag line on the new "Mormon Message" on Facebook, it seemed completely appropriate: "No matter how dark our Friday, Sunday will come." I watched the video and found comfort. Hope. Between laying around being sick all day and one huge disappointment, yesterday truly was a dark Friday. But thank you Elder Worthlin for reminding us that Sunday will come....

Maybe soon I can start to feel better.

Two new temples and concessions for free speech: "hooray for the First Amendment- now go stand by that trash can"

In lieu of actually going to church today because Roman wasn't feeling well, Wendy, Roman and I ended up going to see the two new temples in the Salt Lake valley: Draper and Orquirrh Mountain. We're going to the open house for the Orquirrh Mountain temple on Tuesday so I'll get to see the inside then.

First we went to the Draper temple, which was dedicated back in March. Gorgeous, as always.
We all wore our pajamas!

On the street right above the temple are some ridiculously ginormous houses (the picture really doesn't do them justice):
Some flowers:
Then across the valley we went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple. The tents are up because of the open house, which wasn't going on today because it's Sunday. But there were some security guys in white shirts there who must have been bored because they were zipping around the parking lot on their golf carts. I thought they were going to tell us we couldn't be there because the parking lot was all blocked off, but they completely ignored us.

This one is a darker color. It's pretty! I love that beam of light shining right on the angel Moroni in this first photo.

Speaking of the angel Moroni, it was struck by lightening not too long ago and you can see the black marks on it.
If you look between the trees you can see the Draper temple, can you see it? It looks far away but it really only took about 15 minutes to get from one to the other. (by freeway of course)
Then you can also see the Jordan River temple down the hill in the other direction. See it?
A nice view of the mountains:

Now the part about free speech....we thought these signs were kind of funny. There's a small lot over on one side of the temple and there were signs that said: "Free speech standing area". Why people would take their time to go protest the building of a temple in Utah I don't quite understand, but hey, who doesn't heart the first Amendment? I love that this sign was right next to a trash can. Good place for the protesters if you ask me!

Where am I again?

I arrived in Utah on Saturday to find it cold, windy, and rainy. The Wasatch mountains were covered in dark, stormy clouds....and I started to wonder, where the heck am I? Did I overshoot my drive and end up in Portland or something? This isn't normal June weather in the Utah valley.


I looked around for some confirmation that I was, in fact, in the right place...and...
























Yep I'm in Utah.

I finally scanned some old pictures.

This is probably my favorite of the bunch- my 3rd birthday with my favorite cousin "Big Katie". (of course I am "little Katie")
This blue dress is one of the ones I posted here...
Carol, you look just like Anthony here! Crazy:
Don't be jealous of my outfit:
Who wouldn't want to run wild through the Lincoln Memorial?
I never did update the teeny tiny clothing thread with pictures, and by now they would just be buried so....I'm posting them here.

**I've just been informed that the picture of me running is actually at the Jefferson Memorial. I should have known that since Lincoln is sitting in a giant chair, not standing...Boo on me!

Arson = bad

Dearest kids:

There are lots of mischievous* things you can do to occupy your time. But arson should not be one of them! I'm not advocating other crimes either but I'm just saying if you're going to break the law, don't set stuff on fire please. Why do I single out arson? Well, people have major trust issues with kids that set stuff on fire. No one will take you in residential placement if you're a known arsonist. And that is defined very broadly; you only need one conviction to be considered a full-blown arsonist apparently.

Sex offenders? No problem getting them treatment. But arsonists? Well, no one wants to sleep in the same building with you. Even the sex offenders.....SO DON'T DO IT!

Your's Truly,
Your Attorney



*Recently there was a rolicking debate on the correct pronunciation of mishchievous. So I'm curious, how do YOU pronounce it?

Days 5 and 6

It's been 6 days since shampoo touched my head and I'm loving it!
Here on Day 6, I was feeling the curly vibe so here you go: curly. Although I'm not feeling the loving karmic vibes from the universe because I got a freakin' speeding ticket on my way to FHE Monday night. Lame!! That's a real ticket from a real cop, not those stupid photo tickets that I don't pay. And I wouldn't have even gone that particular way had I not been going to Sunflower market first to get coconut oil. So I choose to blame my no-poo adventure for my ticket. (not myself for speeding.....allegedly)

Day 6 I washed with baking soda diluted in water and a couple drops of peppermint oil. Then I rinsed with diluted ACV with a few drops of sweet orange oil, which mostly took the icky vinegar smell away! I was in a hurry so I ended up scrunching more than I thought I would, but putting coconut oil on the ends helped to soften it up. (thanks for the tip, Kate!)

Day 7 I just rinsed with some chamomile tea and then used safe conditioner. I'll tell you what, my hair hasn't felt this soft since I was a kid!! Seriously! It's awesome. I round-brushed it and was pleased to see that my color seems to be holding up fine. (there was some fear that baking soda and/or vinegar would strip the color) But I think it looks okay so far.

I don't know how long to keep posting these pictures and updates....I wonder if this is interesting to anyone but me and my fellow no-poo'ers!

Sunday dinners are the best!

Sunday night I invited some friends over for dinner at la casa de Katie. Let me tell you what, I have some really fun friends! How did I get so lucky? I made spaghetti and meatballs and breadsticks courtesy of Our Best Bites, which never lets me down. I did however let myself down because something about the breadsticks just wasn't quite right. But the first time I made them they were completely inedible so this was an improvement. I will be trying again, I can promise you that!
We were very entertained by an old hymn book with some very strange songs in it! Some favorites were "Affection" (a song basically about making out at nighttime) and "I am a Mormon Boy". I wish I'd gotten James' and Paul's rendition of "I am a Mormon Boy" because it was truly epic, but luckily I did capture "The Bees of Deseret": (background buzzing courtesy of the lovely Cheya)




Click on that to enlarge it so you can see the words! This book is priceless. It says it was published in 1909, which leads me to believe it was really fun to live in 1909. It does have some regular hymns in it but I'm thinking (and hoping) this isn't an actual Hymn (big H) book because it's called "Deseret Songs". And if these songs were in the original Hymnal, then Emma Smith was a total whackjob.

Later we played a game where we drew song titles out of a bowl and tried to hum the tune until someone could guess the name of the song. You could resort to a taboo-style of describing the title if you didn't know the tune or if your humming skills were so poor that no one knew what on earth you were humming... I even did a charades-style act out of Thriller because it was just easier to do the zombie dance.

Josh was hilarious to play this game with because he kept getting songs that were total stumpers and he freaked out about it. Plus I think he thought wildly gesturing would somehow help his team guess correctly! :D I only caught the tail end of it the first time he took his turn, but as you can see I captured his other turns as well and it just kept getting funnier...


The song was "If You Feel Inclined to Censure"- that's not really that hard, is it? ;)






Josh, we seriously love you.

Not even sure what to title this one!

There's probably no way to say this without sounding snotty, but here goes... (after all this is my blog) :P

I need somewhere to say this: I HATE DEBATING WITH STUPID PEOPLE! And there's a LOT of stupid people out there. And for some reason they all congregate on the debate board on babycenter. Don't ask me to explain what/where that is because you'll be tempted to go there, and I care too much about my blog readers to let you do that!

When I was in high school I took honors and AP classes. So I had classes with the same group of kids for the most part. I didn't turn 16 until my junior year and for some crazy reason I took Driver's Ed. the second half of that year. I'm not holding myself out to be a Mensa member or anything, but I didn't realize just how comfortable I was in my little zone of honors classes. So when I stepped outside my zone and took this Driver's Ed class with the 'general population' of my high school.....I hated it. I just had no idea how little I could relate to kids who were on a different intellectual level than me! Again that sounds so snotty but I'm just being honest about how I felt at the time.

What even brought back these memories from 12 years ago? I let boredom take me to the "Debate Team" board on babycenter and honestly, I want my brain cells back! Sadly I think several of them were irreparably harmed just from reading some of these so-called debates. You wouldn't believe the spin that has gone on in the world of abortion debates. There are all sorts of justifications for even elective, late-term abortions and it's really scary to realize people really think that way. But that can be a separate post all in itself.... I dared to post a few things on a few topics and quickly learned I was dealing with some real dipsticks. That's the nicest word I can come up with! Every now and then I will go there just to read all the posts and I seriously leave feeling much dumber than when I started.

Take, for instance, this lovely gem on a debate about the 'pregnant man' giving birth to a second child:

hes got girl parts down under. "he" wanted kids maybe so he only chopped his boobs and left the rest alone.

he had vag birth with no drugs for both births.

Oh, thank you for clearing that up...."he's got girl parts", great!

And more enlightening discussion from another nitwit:

its abnormal if its not considered "normal" by christian american standards then its wrong evil and the children will suffer. these children will not have body image issues because thats not what was wrong.. this person was born the wrong sex and in order to live sanely the did something about it. if anything these kids will learn that even god can make mistacks and that love and understanding everything will be ok.. these children will not judge people nor will they learn to hate what is different.. but what does that matter.. the only way to fit in is to be like normal hetero christians

Didn't you all know that God can make mistacks?? Didn't you know that? No, you must be evil hetero Christians.

But then how can you really take some of these people seriously when they have signatures like the following on all of their posts: (this one comes courtesy of a fellow named "ilovefairymen")

"One of Lifes Simple Joys is Playing With the Boys"

Straight? So is Spaghetti Till You Heat it Up!

I'm Gayer Then You!

SIGH.

Day 4

This photo is interesting for a few reasons:

1. I didn't realize how red my low-lights are! Maybe it's the lighting, or maybe my hair is really that red.

2. I might have overdone it a tad on the cornstarch because I can see it in the front of my hair from this angle....oh well. Maybe people just thought I've been rolling around in my attic and got some dust in my hair. No, I'd rather it just look like cornstarch. I'll be rinsing it tonight or tomorrow morning for sure.

3. SHINY! :D

Days 2 and 3....so far so good.

Saturday was my day 2. I just scrubbed my scalp and hair with the safe conditioner, though I didn't attempt to do my hair so I can't really say if it would have passed muster or not. I put it up while it was still wet so this is how it looked when I took it down:
That's mostly my natural wave with some weird kinks in it....but hey, it's pretty shiny! Shiny is good.

This is Sunday, day 3. The night before I spent way too much time reading online about all sorts of alternative washes/rinses. (alternative to apple cider vinegar, that is) I decided to try a chamomile tea rinse since it's a little kinder to the hair than vinegar and certainly smells nicer! I just happened to have 12 spare egg yolks (haha, weird but true! that's what happens when you make angel food cake and have to use 12 egg whites- now, any ideas for the other 11?) so I mixed an egg yolk with some baking soda and diluted it with some water. I felt like a crazy chemist, or maybe just a crazy person. Then I rinsed with chamomile-mint tea (and water, you still wash it all out before you're done) and round brushed my hair with a boar bristle brush. Here was the result:

I can honestly say my hair felt great today! It didn't feel greasy at all and smelled like, well, chamomile tea. I think diluting down the baking soda was good because that made it less abrasive. The abrasiveness is good for cleaning the scalp but is also quite harsh, especially on fine, color-treated hair. (a.k.a mine)

I was very happy with my hair today! So far this experiment is going well. But I shouldn't tempt fate by getting too excited just yet...




Here I'm either winking or having a seizure. You decide:

Once upon a time, I was teeny tiny.

And these were some teeny tiny things I wore. My mom sent me the best surprise a while ago- a box full of memories! (and some that even pre-date my memory) Clothes, shoes, and photographs from a time long, long ago. I cried. How could I not? Look at these, only a small sampling:




So, so precious.

I'll scan some of the photos too. (tomorrow--it's past my bed time) So check back for an updated post!

Two nieces.

I hate to say it but they don't make the best companions at a baseball game...due I'm sure to short attention spans. But they sure are cute!