More Playlists

While I'm on the subject of playlists I think I'll share a couple more playlists (for posterity's sake:)).

First, I've gone ahead and made myself an alternate Twilight soundtrack... I really like the movie's soundtrack a lot, but I've also had songs that I've connected with the book series for a while. So I made a Twilightish playlist with a combination of real soundtrack songs, songs I've been liking lately, and songs I connect with the Twilight books. Here goes:

Twilightish Soundtrack

• Let Me Sign - Cedric Diggory (I know, I know, what is a British boy sounding all bluesy and folky for?? But when I gave the songs on the soundtrack by Robert Pattinson a chance I actually started really liking them... a lot. Quirky and very sensitive.)
• The Garden - Mirah (LOVE this song lately - MAAARRRRKKKK!!!!)
• Bella's Lullaby - Carter Burwell
• Colorblind - Counting Crows
• Eyes on Fire - Blue Foundation
• The Dance - Charlotte Martin (from Mia Michael's bizare and Burtonesque SYTYCD group dance)
• Falling Away With You - Muse
• Clair de Lune - Debussy
• Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths
• Flightless Bird American Mouth - Iron and Wine (from the prom scene and I really like it)
• The Very Thought of You - Billy Holiday (beautiful)
• Full Moon - Black Ghosts
• The Teardrop Collector - Love and Rockets (this is more of a New Moon song to me)
• Hamburg Song - Keane (and this one is a Eclipse song for me)
• Infra-Red - Placebo (my James song)
• Let Me Love You - Peter Murphy (what would a playlist be without Peter??)
• Never Think - Cedric Diggory
• Ode to Boy - Yaz
• Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
• One More Time - The Cure (yep, there must also be a Cure tune on every Jenni playlist)
• Time is Running Out - Muse

And the playlist I'm finally changing out now with Christmas music is my Halloween '08 playlist. I love Halloween music, much like I love Halloween. So here's the playlist I subjected my whole family to for the last 3 months.:)

Halloween '08

• This is Halloween - Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack
• Funeral March of the Marionette - Mannheim Steamroller
• Double Trouble - Harry Potter 3 Soundtrack
• Anything Can Happen on Halloween - Tim Curry from Worst Witch
• Vampire Song - Concrete Blonde
• What Falls in the Fall - Laurie Berkner
• Defying Gravity - Wicked Soundtrack
• Narnia Lullaby - Narnia Soundtrack (Mr. Tumnus!!)
• I'm Going Home - Tim Curry RHPS soundtrack
• Ramalama Bang Bang - Roisin Murphy
• Love Cats - The Cure
• Harvest Dance - Mannheim Steamroller
• The Garden - Mirah
• Monster Mash - from some Halloween party mix CD
• Science Fiction Double Feature - RHPS soundtrack
• Night of the Dancing Flame - Roisin Murphy
• Thriller - Michael Jackson
• Time Warp - RHPS again
• Peek a Boo - Siouxsie and the Banshees
• Hunters Prelude - Bram Stoker's Dracula Soundtrack
  

It's Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas

For the last couple of years we have been making Christmas CD's with our favorite songs. Some songs are givens - it wouldn't be Christmas without Sting's "Gabriel's Message" or Elvis' "Blue Christmas", but this year I bought a couple new songs off itunes that sounded especially nice. So here's the Christmas '08 Playlist:

• Away in a Manger (Celtic Woman)
• Blue Christmas (Elvis)
• Carol of the Bells (Celtic Woman - I love their Christmas CD)
• Caroling Caroling (Nat King Cole - lovely classic)
  
• Childrens Winter (Barra MacNeils)
• It's Christmas/Baby Please Come Home (U2)
• Christmas in Kilarney (Barra MacNeils)
• Christmas Pipes (Celtic Woman)
• The Coventry Carol (Allison Moyet - I LOVE this song)
• Ding Dong Merrily on High (Celtic Woman, again, this one reminds me of Little Women)
• Do You Hear What I Hear (Bing - classic and wonderful)
• Elf's Lament (BNL - so funny)
• Gabriel's Message (Sting at his finest)
• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (BNL and Sarah McLachlan)
• I Believe in Father Christmas (Vertical Horizon)
• I Saw Three Ships (Sting)
• Little Road to Bethlehem (Shawn Colvin)
• A Long December (Counting Crows - this song totally reminds me and Adrian of when we started dating Christmas of '96, it was all over the radio and we spent a lot of time in the car... That sounded bad didn't it. I just meant going to and from dates... Geeze get your head out of the gutter! Though admittedly we did do our fair share of making out too!! Hee hee.;))
• O Holy Night (Michael Crawford - fantastic version)
• Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy (Bing and Bowie - awesome)
• Silent Night (Sarah McLachlan)
• The Wexford Carol (Celtic Woman)
• What Child is This (Kristin Chenoweth)
• Winter Wonderland (Eurythmics - another one I can not do without at Christmas)
  

In the Twilight Zone

Yesterday was my day of TWILIGHT starting with the fun filled 12:01am showing with Jenny and Ashlee and ending with a second viewing with my supportive hubby. It was a GREAT day!!:)

Before the midnight showing Jenny, Ashlee, and I went out to dinner at fabulous Claim Jumper and then to a Twilight party hosted by Superfan Tracy (that really should be her title) in Jenny's ward. We got fun fake apples with "Twilight 11-21-08" written on them as party favors. Isn't that awesome??!!! The actual waiting for the movie was tons-o-fun too!! I love love chatting with Jenny and Ashlee and Jenny took fun pics to commemorate the event:

After getting as much sleep as I could after the midnight show and taking a 1/2 hour nap in the afternoon I was more than ready to go again with Adrian. We had a total Twilight date and went to an Italian restaurant just like Edward and Bella. We had ravioli, but sadly Adrian refused to not eat and give me his Coke... Oh well what can I expect, it was merely a suggestion and I guess he's not really a vampire. :) While we ate we perused the "Complete Illustrated Movie Companion" which I of course had to buy for myself. Our waiter (a thirty-something man) saw the movie book and struck up a Twilight conversation with us - he seriously knew all about the movie soundtrack (which I also now own:))! So funny. So since we got to know our waiter a little we asked him to take a picture of us on our Twilight date:

I'm so thankful for my hubby who kindly goes along with my obsessive personality and even admitted to a fun time doing it. He liked the movie!! Now I told him he has to finish the book.

About the movie - I love it! So at first I was a little put off by Edward not sounding at all like the Edward from my mind, but cute Cedric Diggory won me over (I think Cedric Diggory is so much easier to say then Robert Pattinson!). I just let all my expectations go and went along for the ride and absolutely loved it - even more the second time!! Oh and Jasper totally won the show for me - the look on his face in every single shot of him was priceless!! Ashlee commented that he looked like Edward Scissor-hands with that look on his face all the time and it was so true!!! Ha!! "The kiss" was awesome and I really liked Kristen Stewart as Bella. She was less whiny and more nervy than my book version Bella and that made the character better to me for some reason. So hey, it was GREAT and I totally look forward to that day when I can hold the DVD in my hands and have it all to myself - forever!!!:) Till then I'll have drag people to go with me multiple times - any one who wants to go again seriously give me a call!!

Flashback Friday

This morning I woke up to REAL SNOW - the stick on the roads kind of snow! If we were back in MD I know school would have been cancelled.:) It stayed cold all day, but the snow melted on the roads quite quickly so it actually ended up being a lovely day and made me feel all Christmasy - I even did some Christmas shopping with Ben and Nina this morning. Anywho, I think the snow insprired me to remember this picture of Sophie for flashback Friday:

Lest anyone think Ben has been our only hilarious 4 year I have to tell you about this! Sophie made this toddler-crafted nativity scene with a bunch of random toys the Christmas of 2003 right before Ben was born. I remember her working on something on the table, not knowing quite what it was until she had me come see. It made me laugh so hard!! I think the Monsters Inc. guys standing in as Mary and Joseph are the best part!! I had to take a picture! Notice there really are 3 wise men too! So I guess 4 is just a funny funny age. I can't wait to see what Nina has in store for us in the next couple of years!

Another Ben Funny

I don't know if it's Ben's age or personality, but he cracks me up so often lately and this morning was no exception. For this to make sense I must let you know that the kids watch Sleeping Beauty pretty much nonstop in the car. Nina loves that movie and Ben and Sophie happily tolerate it. Okay, so this morning I had some errands to run after dropping Sophie off at school and as we were driving along and of course Sleeping Beauty was playing. So Ben, obviously inspired by the "Once Upon a Dream Song" said, "Nina I'm going to sing you a love song because I love you." And then off he went into his own made-up love song which went something like this (I'm paraphrasing):

"Nina I love you because you love POP TARTS* and I sing you a love song in the car. We're going to King Sooper and I LOVE YOU SO MUCH because you are my sister and you like Star Wars and we are happy in the car. You are so sweet and I LOVE YOU SO MUCH."

*Note: Every time there's caps just imagine that in falsetto.:)

Oh. My. Goodness. I was cracking up, but trying to hold it in because I knew he would stop singing if I laughed too hard. It was so great and I seriously had tears. After he was done singing he reprized the song a couple more times, but they were all pretty similar sometimes mentioning Star Wars and sometimes mentioning Polly Pockets. Then he asked Nina if she liked his song, but she was ignoring him and completely absorbed in the movie, so I told him I loved his love song and was so happy he was singing to Nina. Man, I love that kid!!

My Fabulous Four Day Weekend!!

Last Friday I left my children in my husband's capable hands and flew to Maryland to see my wonderful friends out there who I have missed dearly and of course to also go to the So You Think You Can Dance concert in Baltimore with many of them. It was seriously the funnest weekend I've ever had! Thank you thank you to everyone who made it so special for me - all the talking, game playing, yummy food eating, fabulous concert watching, screaming guts out at said concert, hilarious show watching, shopping fun, everything!! It was a BLAST and I have so many fond memories now! I'll post some pictures on here as soon as I nab them off other people's posts, but I just had to do a quick post now to say what an awesome weekend it was! Woohoo!!

Here's the pics I nabbed:

"MAAAARRRRRKKKKK!!!!!"(I love that wack-a-doodle dancer!) This picture was taken by my fellow Mark enthusiast friend, Tracy, at the concert - isn't it awesome!! Seeing the briefcase dance in person was uber cool!!! Oh, and also his Bohemian Rhapsody solo - he's a rock star!

Halloween Festivities

I can't even believe how quickly October went by! We had a fun filled Halloween. Here the list of our festivities:

- Ben and Nina had a playgroup Halloween party with a bunch of kids from the neighborhood. It's nice that our neighborhood has this organized playgroup so I get to know the ladies around here better and the kids get to know the other kids too.

- We went to the ward trunk or treat which is always fun, but we certainly realized just how huge our ward is and how few people we know - it's going to take some time to get to know everyone.

- Last Monday we were invited over by the very kind Miner family to have FHE with them and carve pumpkins. We all had a great time!

- Sophie had her school party, which by her account was very fun.

- Sophie had a daddy daughter activity days Halloween party were they carved pumpkins and had yummy treats.

- Ben had his preschool party which was attended by Nina and me too. Thank goodness for kind preschool teachers who let Nina completely destroy their very organized building block storage system. (They seriously have a picture of the type of block in front of every place on the shelves and Nina pulled all those blocks down unbeknownst to me while I was helping Ben do a mask project. I tried to clean them up, but they told me not to worry... Very sweet teachers!)

- On Halloween we did all our traditional things - chili and hot dog dinner, trick-or-treating, and serious candy munching while watching a pumpkin carving contest on the Food Network. Our kids love the "Challenges" on Food Network! After the kids went to bed Adrian and I continued munching and watched spooky shows on TV.

I love Halloween! The only disappointing thing this year was that we did not get one trick-or-treater at our house due to the fact our lame builder tore up and re-laid cement on our sidewalk and the house next to us the day before Halloween. The caution tapes all around our sidewalk kept all the cute little trick-or-treaters away. Big bummer for me because that is my absolute favorite part of Halloween - passing out candy. Oh well, hopefully next year we'll have a bunch of trick-or-treaters. However, since I didn't need to stick around our house to pass out candy we all got to go trick-or-treating as a family and hearing Nina's sweet little voice say, "Twi a Tweet" was priceless! Ben and Nina went home with Adrian after about a block and I stayed out to canvass more of the neighborhood with Sophie who was all into the quantity of candy she got this year!

Oh my goodness, I completely forgot to even say what the kids dressed up as - Sophie was a witch, Ben was Anakin Skywalker, and Nina was Cinderella. Everyone was very adamant about their costume choices this year and I could not sway them towards any kind of family themed costumes. So at the trunk or treat Adrian wore his Cat in the Hat hat and I wore my cropped bright blue wig. It probably did not help out my getting to know people in the ward wearing blue hair to the trunk-or-treat, I don't think anyone recognized me except the sweet sister I team teach with in primary. Oh well, as the years go by I'm sure the ward will recognize me as the Halloween freak I am.:)

Here's some pics from our Halloween: