It was a sad day when we had to leave Spokane and all it's festivities to return to our normal life in Rexburg. We only stayed a week because my boss said it was soo pertinent that I return to work to do ALL these things before he left for a few months. Of course, there has been few things to do since I returned and his leaving date has been postponed. But, enough with my griping. We really had a blast and here are some pictures to prove it...(We should have taken a lot more, but we forget!)
Opening presents on Christmas day!
Being lazy...
My 4 year old niece snagged our camera and took a bunch of pics. This is one of them:
The shocking difference in personalities between these little siblings (my niece and nephew):
ALL my siblings/husbands went snowboarding/skiing the day after Christmas. There were a couple first timers, but it was a lot of fun having everyone there! These really are the only pics we took of the trip. I wish we would have gotten one of everyone all decked out in their gear...maybe next year ;)
This one isn't actually from our trip to the mountain, it's on the jump we built by our house. Whitney did pretty good for never going off any sort of jump before!
In summary, we played a ton in the snow, ate a lot of good food, played a lot of games, ate some more, and really enjoyed each others company!
As many of you I'm sure already know, Spokane was dumped on the week before and the week of Christmas. There were record amounts of snow, literally. My dad mentioned one of the first days we were there he saw some kids sledding on the perfect hill close to our house. Tyler and I went to go check it out and indeed it was perfect. A couple days later, Tyler, my lil sis Whitney, my brother-in-law Cory, and I went down with our snowboards and built a nice little jump. Here are a few of the results.
Whitters
Hard Cor Harker
Lil' Kim
T-Wizzle
I would like the mention that Tyler stuck almost all of his attempts, but we didn't get them on video so I posted the one that looked the coolest. Play it in reverse...it's quite entertaining.
Those were all from the first day we built the jump. When we came back the next day with more siblings and some sleds we found the hill packed with little children. Half of them were trying to take their sleds off our precious jump and did some damage to it. We tried to go off it a few more times, but we kept having to tell the kids that were hanging out right below it to get out of the way. None of us could stick it due to some indentation and its power to shoot you straight up into the air and land you on your butt.
We all had a really good time taking a tube down the hill. Wendy and I made the record of going the furthest, nearly running into someone's house a ways after the hill ended,(you can see the house in Tyler's video.) Allie and Kristin were a close second. I wish we had them on video. Wendy does have a video of my mom going down after we had to talk her into for 20 minutes! It's a pretty sweet video...Wendy, please post it! And whoever has the other videos of people going down, post them too.
Well, I will post pictures of our trip another time. I hope you enjoyed these videos in the meantime.
So, don't make fun of my new phone. It's the bomb. And I know what you're thinking, "Who says 'the bomb' anymore?" Well, I do.
Anyway, you may feel like this phone is ridiculous. It's short, chubby, and blue. But, what I haven't shown you yet is this:
It's like a smart phone, but without the $49.99 a month tacked onto it. I just pay $5/mo. to text. Which is really all I would use a smart phone for anyway. I'm in front of a computer ALL day. I don't need a mini one in my pocket, too. Not that those huge things would fit in my tiny pockets anyway.
I usually pick phones out by brand and looks. I'm an advocate of Samsung and I almost got the Sway, but I ventured out and tried this baby. Don't worry I read a bunch of reviews first. Honestly, I love it! I think it's adorable. It's taking some getting used to with the microscopic buttons, but I have small fingers. I charged the battery when I got it last Wednesday and haven't charged it since...it still has two of the four bars left! Granted, I don't talk on the phone a ton, but still. My last phone would die by the end of the second day, which I thought was pretty good.
Well, enough about my phone. We are heading to Spokompton on Saturday and I'm pretty excited. My boss said I could only stay a week and he wants me to bring my computer along in case I need to do stuff for them. I'm really trying to finish all my work before I leave though.
I probably won't post until we get back. I'm sure it will be filled with pictures though so get excited...
When I got my old job back at Hatch Marketing I was put back on the assignment of marketing for mobile marketing. When I came back the first day I was surprised to find out I was getting my own office, which used to be the production managers office. Apparently, Chad, the production manager got a job somewhere else and no longer worked for Hatch. A few days later a graphic designer for the REX moved into my office, but she is only here twice a week. I LOVE having my own office!
OK, onto what this post really is about. Instead of hiring a new production manager to make all the theater screen advertisements, they decided to use me. ME! I did not go to school to produce motion ads, cut and edit audio, or really anything in the process of making a screen ad. Well, time to learn, they say! So, we downloaded Final Cut Pro, quadrupled the ram on my computer and a week later here is what you have:
Don't be too critical. It is my first time making an ad that had any motion graphics. I made the entire thing from start to finish and I'm a little proud of myself. I hope that doesn't sound cocky, but I never thought that I would be doing anything like this for work. Now all I need is a raise...
I wrote a blog post this summer about the Twilight books and promised a review on the fourth book. Today is your lucky day because not only am I going to tell you what I thought about Breaking Dawn, but the Twilight movie, as well. Ha, ha, I'm sure most of you don't care, but I feel like I have to say something!
Breaking Dawn was OK. Her writing was better than the first book, however it was still mediocre. While I was reading it I thought it was sooo Mormon for her to get married at 19 and then get pregnant on her honeymoon! Ha ha, awesome. It was also pretty ridiculous her getting pregnant and having a half human half vampire baby. The best part is Jacob "imprinting" on her baby. Give me a break! Too funny. I was sad at the end when their vampire war never actually turned into a full on fight. That would have been pretty sweet. Think about it, all those "super powers" fighting each other. If a man wrote the book you would be guaranteed a sweet fight in the end. Where of course good would triumph over evil! Overall, the book was entertaining.
I watch a lot of movies. I have only walked out of one because it was so bad. Not bad as in I was offended because of my moral standards (although I probably should walk out of those), but because it was made so poorly. I won't even walk out of a movie if I think it's cheesy, I don't like the story line, it's too scary, or because I am simply not entertained. I will only walk out of a movie if it is just plain terrible. I wanted to walk out of Twilight. BUT I did not. I endured the entire thing out of pure curiosity.
The acting was awful. The cinematography was bad. The special affects were worse than bad. The writing was cheesy, even more cheesy than the books. The directing was bad. I just felt awkward watching the whole movie. And more than a few times I couldn't help but laugh, rather loudly, in the theater...during serious scenes. I wasn't the only one doing that either. I heard a lot of laughing in the theater when the scene was not meant to be funny. The only time a really felt any emotion was when she was fleeing and she told her Dad she didn't want to be stuck in Forks anymore and her Dad seemed so sad.
I could go OFF about all the things that were so wrong about the movie, but you don't want to hear it. Tyler and I talked about it pretty much all night, listing all the horrible things we could remember.
I honestly went into this movie with optimism. I heard bad things and good. I was severely disappointed. I know that the budget was small so they couldn't afford good, well anything. If they make the next book into a movie I sure hope they get a much bigger budget. The worst part about the whole thing is, Twilight could have been a really great movie. Sad day.
I don't really know what to post about, but I'm sick of seeing that tag post...
We went to Boise for Thanksgiving. It was pretty fun. We stayed at Tyler's aunt and uncles cabin Wednesday and Thursday night. It was super cute, but not finished. There were only three bedrooms done. With five married couples there we were the lowest on the totem pole. So, we blew up our blow-up mattress and squeezed it into the laundry room. At least we had a little privacy.
Tyler has three brothers and one sister. I grew up with five sisters and one brother. When spending five days with a bunch of teenage boys, (ok two teenage boys and one that acts like one), I had a lot of adjusting to do. I'm really just not used to it. By Saturday I wanted to tie up his three brothers, put them all in separate rooms and tell them to quit ganging up on their sister. Instead I read two books.
Speaking of books. One of the ones I read in Boise was about population control. It was a fictional book about the US government making a population law, kind of like China. They were only allowed to have two children. After the second child they would perform surgery so the mother would be unable to get pregnant. If something happened and they did have a third child they were required to get rid of it, kill it. Isn't that terrible? The law was made because of food resources or rather the lack of food. Since every family had no more than four members they only had a certain amount of food they could purchase. The government controlled everything from what farmers could grow, what factories could make, and where people could live. It really got me thinking about how that could happen or if it could happen. I mean, right now there are several auto makers going under. The government has thought about, instead of just bailing them out, they could just buy out the companies. If they do that then they will have control over those companies. Well, what else could they buy out? Anything they buy, they control. Just a thought.
So, it hasn't really snowed in Rexburg yet. I mean REALLY snowed. I think about three times now we have gotten a tiny bit, but nothing has lasted any length of time. It's so weird. December has come and it got up to 47 degrees yesterday. Rexburg is supposed to be cold! I'm not complaining about the temperatures, don't get me wrong. But I wouldn't mind some snow to lighten the ground. It looks a little ugly out right now. I, also, wouldn't mind the snow to go snowboarding. Jackson and Targhee both only have two small lifts open. I'm getting impatient.
That's pretty much all that is going on in my/our lives right now. The kitchen is still not done, but we did get our new counter tops in. Now we just need to paint and put everything back together... Pictures to come!
