Wednesday, April 22, 2009

we've moved our blog!

find us now at mooneys.wordpress.com
make sure to change our address on your blog rolls :)

Saturday, April 4, 2009

a blank space.


So we've put up most of the pictures in frames that we own, and we're still lacking (as you can see by the huge empty space above the television). Because we were unable to decorate our apartment for so long, we didn't really collect any art or larger frames or anything. So I need ideas as to what we should put above the tv to not make it look so empty up there. I was thinking some kind of a large canvas art print to go above the tv, and then put something vertical to the left, but I'm not sure. And I'm not sure what art I want. I've been looking on eBay but so far have not had very much success. Does anyone have any other ideas? Suggestions for what we already have up there? I'm not totally sure yet I love the layout we have, but I AM totally open to ideas!

And yes, that is the Michigan St. vs UConn Final Four basketball game. Eric's obsessed...

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

this blog is long and contains a lot of pictures.

Ok, so I am going to try to undertake writing a blog that contains all the things that have happened in the last month and a half, with a lot of editing - because otherwise this entry would probably be a novel. No, actually, not that much has been going on, but there's been more than enough to write about. So here we go:

1. This last weekend, Eric and I went down to Arches/Goblin Valley with Eric's parents and had a really fun time. We hiked to Delicate Arch on Saturday morning (I'm surprised neither of us had ever done that before) and then I left to come back to Provo to see all the girls from Cafe Rio since Katherine was in town (why do we never get together unless she's here??). Eric stayed another night there and hiked with his family to Devil's Garden, which looks really pretty and like something I definitely want to do - maybe this summer? We took about 200 pictures down there, so here are a few. I'll probably make a Facebook album too in case you're dying to see more of them.

Goblin Valley:


Arches National Park:


Devil's Garden:


2. I got into grad school at BYU! I'll start taking classes again this fall, and if I get into the museum certificate program as well, I'll (ideally) be finished with the degree in about 3 years. I'm still not sure it's dawned on me that I'm going to be spending the next 3 years in school again, but what's another 3 when I've already spent the last 15 getting educated?

I've also had nothing to do since about January since I was never able to find a job and I graduated in December. But because I'm going to be a student again, I can get my job back at the museum! Yay! I'm excited. In "these rough economic times" it's been hard for pretty much everyone I know to find a job that isn't degree-specific.

3. St. Patrick's day, as everyone knows, was last week. Every year that I've been out in Utah, my siblings and I all get together to have corned beef and cabbage and listen to Irish music...and maybe try out our version of Irish dancing. Since Shannon is out here right now, we were able to have 5 people at our party instead of just 4. Yay! Megan and Shannon (I think) both posted on their blogs about the St. Patrick's day party, but I have a couple of things I'd like to add as well (sorry the video is sideways, I'm really not sure how to turn it):






4. A few weeks ago, during a basketball game, Lindsay and I "ghoulied" our friend Chris' car. We stayed up til about 1 in the morning making ghoulies to prank him (all while Eric and Mark sat on the couch playing Madden football and mentioning how stupid we were) and then strategically placed the ghoulies all over his car the next day. I'll let the pictures do the talking...fun times.


5. Shannon, Eric, and I have done some fun things together the last little bit. We went and played in the snow up near Sundance (flying bears??) and Eric trounced through the snow while Shannon and I tried not to fall in. A couple of weekends ago, we also went bowling at Miracle Bowl in Orem. Eric pretty much owned us, but we had a lot of fun.


And Shannon attempting to be fancy...




6. The last thing. I found a delicious recipe for spiced sweet roasted red pepper hummus and it is so delicious. It tastes almost exactly like the Athenos red pepper hummus that the sell for like $4 a grocery stores, and this is obviously way cheaper to make, plus you get twice as much. I'm hooked. I've already made it twice, which means a recipe must be pretty good...yum!

Before blending


Delicious!!


Hopefully this will be a lesson to me that I better not wait a month and a half to write a blog ever again. And hopefully that wasn't too unbearably long...

Thursday, February 12, 2009

it's zrath!

This last week, Megan, Shannon, Nathan, Rylie, and I went on a trip to California since we all managed to find a week where we didn't have anything going on and some of us hadn't been home in a while. We went to lunch with Mom at Ruby's on the Oceanside pier and saw lots of pelicans, we read Ian's book of stories and laughed so hard I think I died a little, we went to the beach at Leucadia (it was gorgeous and it rained), we went to a Rockola band thing at the high school, we went to church at our old ward, I spent the night at Maggie's and got to see Steven and Ronni (I will always spell it like that) as well, we went to the zoo and had an awesome adventure even though it was freezing and windy and rainy and empty, we went to Pedro's Tacos, the Mad Greek in Barstow, and even made it to In-N-Out in St. George on our way back. It was a great time.

Shannon wrote a little on her blog and posted pictures on her facebook. I posted some more pictures on my facebook, which I think you can see here. Hopefully that works.

Basically it was an awesome week. I love going home!

Sunday, February 8, 2009

happy birthday lindsay!!!


Today is my best friend Lindsay's birthday. I am so glad we got put in the same dorm room in DT in 2004. She is the only one who shares my sick sense of humor and is as addicted to Cafe Rio as I am, and there are so many other things that make me soo glad we are friends. Happy 23rd birthday Lindsay!! Thanks for being my BFF and talking to me in that accent.

And now a present for Lindsay. I took this picture on my trip here in California. Enjoy!



A real update will be made when I get back to Utah.

Friday, January 30, 2009

a real update with pictures will come later

I know, I know. I promised I'd update more. I lied. So a quick update. We finally moved! We found a 2-bedroom apartment in Provo that would let us keep our cats, so we're really excited about that. Eric is still working and going to school full-time, and I am doing neither of those things. I am applying to grad school at BYU and sort of looking for a job though, so I promise I'm only wasting about 80% of my life right now.

Anyway, we brought over the rest of our stuff from the old apartment last night. A pretty good portion of this was bags full of papers and other things I'd had in my filing cabinet at home, so all of it is from my pre-college days. I am going through it currently and throwing away a lot of the stuff that I just don't need to keep. I came across almost every paper I've ever written in high school (most of which are not going to survive the purge), all kinds of drawings I did when I was a kid, birthday cards and other miscellaneous letters from relatives, all the awards I got for being a good student throughout school, and other random things that sparked my memory. I had fun going through everything.

I found a couple of poems that I wrote with my mom in high school for two different English classes that I had with Mrs. Critchley (probably my favorite high school teacher ever). I enlisted my mom's help on these projects because she's really clever and I think she has a way better grasp of how Chaucer and Shakespeare would have written than I ever will. My sophomore year, the project was to write a poem in the style of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and my senior year, we were to write a parody of Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquoy.

I'm glad I still I have these. Here they are.


Pilgrim: The Farrier

A farrier of Smithfield we did meet
Whose voice was so honey-tongued and sweet,
He was a young lad, maybe sixteen years,
And sounded like a woman to our ears.
He wore thick rough-spun clothes and woolen cape
Yet still appeared thin-shouldered in his shape.
His hair was blond, the color of ripe wheat
And, although thick, unusually neat.
As true mahogany his eyes were brown,
And as he walked he kept them both cast down.
For one who made his living shoeing mares,
I thought it strange his hands were clean and fair.
His nails were trim, not one of them was broke,
He often kept his hands hidden beneath his cloak.
His rosy cheek was smooth and soft as silk,
His complexion quite comparable to milk.
Quiet he was, averse to cpmany,
Unless among the women he could be.
He sat near them to eat his meat and drink,
He did not care for fellowship, I think.
Before the fire he joined the Wife of Bath,
Where they would sing duets, and talk and laugh.
We took delight in listening to their song.
Right glad I was that he would come along.


Soliloquoy

To wash, or not to wash - that is the question:
Whether it is better for the dishwasher to suffer
The stains and blotches of caked-on food
Or to take up soap against the dried-on mess
And by rinsing end them. To wash, to scour -
No more - and by scouring we say to end
The filth, and the thousand vile viscosities
That dishes are prone to. Sparkling dishes are the perfect finish
Devoutly to be wished. To wash, to scour -
To scour - perchance to clean; ay, there's the scrub,
For in that scouring wash what suds may come
When we have eliminated this mortal soil,
Must give us pause. There's the concept
That makes disaster of washing dishes by hand.
For who could stand the chapped and reddened hands,
The broken plates, the sharp forks stabbing,
The insolence of soap, and the little flecks of suds
That flick into the unguarded eyes,
When the vassal might be freed from all
With an automatic dishwasher? Who would cauldrons bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after washing,
The odious task of drying, from which chore
No one escapes, frustrates freedom,
And makes us rather do the chores we have
Than end up being punished beyond reason.
Thus lemony-fresh Joy makes dishwashers of us all.

Friday, January 2, 2009

happy new year

Hopefully I will be much better at updating this blog now that the holidays are officially over. Plenty happened over the last month or so. We went and saw Coldplay with Lindsay and Mark, I dyed my hair much darker, we had a Christmas party at our house (Chris-mas??), we spent a lot of time with family, we had a wonderful Christmas (and got to talk to Kelly in Italy...can't believe he's almost done!), and we went to Las Vegas for a couple of days for our anniversary. I just uploaded around 200 pictures from the camera onto the computer that we've taken over the last while, and there's no way I can put even half of them up here. Maybe I'll make a slideshow or something...

I don't know if this slideshow thing lets you copy pictures from it, so if anyone (family or anybody) wants any of these pictures for any reason (I know I'm always stealing pictures from people's blogs), just let me know.