Disney and News

Due to crazy circumstances which I will mention further down in this post I have not been able to blog about wonderful Disney World.... well until now, but still I'm going to have to do a slightly abbreviated favorite things version.

Nina
(the baby always goes first right:))
- She loved hiding in the coat closet at the condo we shared with my parents down in Florida - we seriously could not get her to stay out of that closet!

- The Bear Country Jamboree - Nina loves bears (when she makes the sign for "bear" it is so cute!) so this was the perfect little show for her and she laughed and clapped through the whole thing.

- The Nemo Musical show at Animal Kingdom - we heard this took a long time to get into, but do to wonderful drizzly weather the Animal Kingdom wasn't near as crowded as it usually is and we walked right into this show 5 minutes before it started. Nina loved it, especially the bubbles at the end!


Ben

- Seriously I think just spending a week with Grandpa made him the happiest - those 2 have a special bond and Ben always wanted to ride the rides with or sit next to "Papa".

- Ben's top rides - 1. Star Tours (of course that's a given), 2. Buzz Lightyear Ride, 3. Toy Story Ride. Ben also rode on the Tower of Terror and Big Thunder Railroad though neither of those were his favorites!:) Oh, I should mention that Ben's souvenir from our trip was a Yoda backpack. It is so cute - it actually looks like Yoda is riding around on your back.

- Ben also totally loved the character breakfast that we went to on our first day at Disney. It was called the "Supercalifragilistic Breakfast" with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Mary Poppins, Alice, and the Mad Hatter. He smiled through the whole breakfast and had a very cute picture taken with Tigger.


Sophie

- Sophie loved loved all the fast rides - like Space Mountain, the Tower of Terror, Everest, Big Thunder Railroad, and most of all the Rockin Roller Coaster. It was so fun to go on all these rides with her and since Adrian and I had to do switch passes so one of us could stay with the 2 younger kids, Sophie got to go with each of us on the roller-coasters. On our first day at Animal Kingdom she went on Everest 4 times!

- Sophie really enjoyed going to the Kennedy Space Center. We actually got to see a satellite launch which was awesome (Adrian was really excited to see that too) and after that we went to Coco beach. Sophie loved wading in the ocean and especially the snow cones that we got to cool every one down (man that was a hot day at the beach)!

- Collecting/trading pins - Sophie picked for her souvenir to get a pin lanyard necklace and some Disney pins, including 3 from her favorite rides (Rockin Rollercoaster, Everest, and Tower of Terror). It wasn't until our last day at Disney that she realized she could trade pins with all the Disney workers who walk around with big collections of pins - so before we left (like in the last 15 minutes) she traded 3 pins. It was very fun to see how excited she was about the whole thing.


Adrian and Jenni

- It was so fun to see the magic of Disney through our kids eyes - that really was the best part and also being able to spend such fun times with my parents and grandma was so neat. We made wonderful memories that we will always treasure.

- We both loved all the roller coasters - Adrian's favorite was the Rockin Roller Coaster and mine was Everest. I also loved many of the shows like the Nemo show - it was so well done!

- Our "Date" at the Magic Kingdom sans children. Thanks to my wonderful parents Adrian and I were able to spend a wonderful evening riding all the rides and hanging out in Disney by ourselves. It was SO fun!! We rode all our favorites like the Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain. Adrian even went on It's a Small World with me that night - I was feeling nostalgic... It's a Small World was one of my favorites as a child (I grew up right near Disneyland). That evening though I seriously had tears in my eyes when we found out the Pirates of the Caribbean was closed during our whole vacation. We hadn't taken the kids to Magic Kingdom yet at that point so we decided just not to mention Pirates to them so they wouldn't be so sad that we couldn't ride it, but I think I took it the hardest. That along with the Haunted Mansion are my FAVES!! It was so sad... But really that did not ruin our date at all, I had so much fun riding all the rides with my hubby and I'm so glad we got to do it!

(Our footprints in the Coco beach sand.)

Okay now that I've done the Disney part of the post I must mention our CRAZY NEWS. We are moving to Colorado!!! Adrian is transferring within his company to a team out there and he is so excited about the work he will be doing and we are all excited to move West closer to our families. Of course it is so bittersweet because it's going to be horribly hard to leave our wonderful friends here. We've been blessed to be friends with some amazing people and I know I'm going to miss them all so much.

We've been in a mad craze to get our house ready to sell and as of today it is on the market, so please wish us luck and maybe say a prayer for us!! We so hope it sells quickly!!

Laughing and Laocoon

I have been meaning and meaning to write up a post about our vacation, but just haven't done it and I'm gonna even put it off a little longer because I just had an inspiration for my art history pic this month. I was just cleaning our main floor bathroom (so nasty with mold that grew during our vacation - sorry for the TMI) and listening to my i-Pod when a favorite REM song came on, "Laughing". I have long thought the lyrics to that song mentioned the Greek Sculpture Laocoon, but after hearing it again for the umpteenth time I just had to go to the internet and look it up. Well it does say "Laocoon"!! Michael Stipe of REM actually studied art and art history in college (I've already added him to my cool art history lover list right below Prince William) and it made me happy to have it confirmed that he threw in a nice little Greek Hellenistic art shout-out for geeks like me!:) And here's a picture of said sculpture:

Laocoon and His Sons sculpture group, by the ancient Greek sculptors Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydoros (don't those name rock??!), from the Greek Hellenistic Period (that's the 3rd century BC)

The background on Laocoon the person is kind of sketchy. Honestly, who knows if he really existed - we are talking this was thousands of years ago, but Pliny the Younger (an ancient Greek Historical writer from the 1st century AD) believed Laocoon existed so I guess I'll trust him. (And I trust my good friend Deb who knows tons more about history than me and wrote a great couple of comments on this post about who Laocoon was.:)) Anywho, Laocoon was a Trojan priest of Poseidon who is credited with trying to warn the Trojans not to accept the Trojan Horse from the Greeks - reportedly or anecdotally he coined the phrase, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." (I guess Greeks have Laocoon to thank for that one...) Well, after a series of events (I need to read the Aeneid so I know what the series of event are:)) he died along with his 2 sons - they were apparently strangled by snakes... Nice, hu?! It's quite a horrible story and just the perfect type of subject matter for the Hellenistic Greeks who loved capturing high drama in their works of art.

Now for the art history side of the story... To start off I have to say I am a huge fan of the Greek Hellenistic Period! Oh lots of historians will tell you that the Classical Period is the best, but I beg to differ - Hellenistic is where it's at!! So many of the really famous Greek sculptures like The Dying Gaul, The Venus de Milo, and the Nike of Samothrace are all from this period. Honestly The Dying Gaul is one of my all-time favorite works of art. It makes me cry if I look at it too long, which I think is the point. The Hellenists liked to stir the viewer up and I love art that really evokes strong emotion. I mean just look at Laocoon and His Sons - it's over the top. Laocoon is super human with all the muscling and unnatural position. It's pretty hard to make it seem like hair is flying around with marble, but it really seems like it. One thing of note is that Michelangelo was hugely influenced by the Hellenists - you can really see it in th his amazing Sistine Chapel frescoes. Every time I look at a sculpture like Laocoon in a book and especially when I've seen other Hellenistic works in person at the Louvre and the Vatican I marvel that human hands really created them. What a priviledge it is for us to have these amazing things created by people who have long passed. I hope I get to see Laocoon in person some day and I'm sure I'll be even more amazed when I'm standing up close to it.

Isn't is crazy how a little thing like a word in a song can get your curiosity flowing. I'm glad I finally looked up those lyrics and got to remember how much I love Greek art.

We're Back

We got back late last night from our fun filled Disney World vacation! Oh we had such a good time and it was especially neat to spend the week with my parents and grandma who met us down in Florida. I'm still trying to unpack and recover from the trip, especially the long drive home yesterday, but I thought I'd post a few favorite preliminary pics.

Another Graduation!!!

Yay for Nina!! Today she graduated out of speech therapy!! Here's what her speech therapist put on her final "home visit" sheet:

"Nina has acheived all of her IFSP goals and is scoring at the 24 month level in cognition and communication! Yay! She no longer qualifies for services at this time."

I can't even tell you how happy I am about this! It's just so amazing the progress that Nina made in the last 6 months. She went from 1 word to 30+ words and signs and has begun to use 2 word phrases like " movie please" and "more milk". Her therapists Ms. Diane and Ms. Kelly told me they are so happy with her progress, but that they are going to miss visiting her. They are very sweet ladies and I credit them with much of Nina's progress. So today is a happy day! I think I am going to take the kids to the grocery store to get a little cake or something for us to celebrate tonight. We're gonna have another graduation party - this time for little Nina!

(Oh that cheeser smile!!)

Hamlet and The Host

So I promise I haven't fallen off the face of the blogosphere!! I've been reading lots of posts, but just haven't found the time to post or comment on everyone else's lovely posts! I think I have something like 58 posts to comment on saved in my Bloglines. Crazy! I do want to do a little bit of a catch up post though to let you know 2 of the things I've been up to:

Hamlet
I went to an awesome production of Hamlet at an outdoor amphitheater with a group of women from my ward. It was such a fun time!! We had a picnic dinner before the play and then the play itself was very cool. I loved the set design (there were these huge glass boxes filled with smoke that would light up with different colors and moved around during the different scenes - you probably would have to see it to get the effect). I thought the whole thing was very creative. Hamlet was a wack-a-doodle from the very beginning. The guy who played him is named Jeffrey Carlson and he had the weirdest/wackiest voice - to me it was a cross between Laurence Olivier and Bobcat Goldthwait if you can imagine that! I had to wikipedia this guy when I got home to see what his country of origin was because his voice was that strange and I found out he grew up in Long Beach, CA which is about 5 minutes from where I grew up so there really is no logical reason for him to sound the way he does - other than the fact that he's a wack-a-doodle! I thought his crazy voice added to the psychology of the play and thought as an actor that he did a great job. Ophelia was very good too - her whole "gone crazy" scene actually brought tears to my eyes. I went to Loves Labors Lost last year by this same Shakespeare company and am amazed by how contemporary and creative they make all their productions. Impressive.

The Host (possible spoiler alert)
Okay, so I finally finished The Host by Stephenie Meyers and I'm not going to sugar coat it - it really wasn't stellar in my opinion. You must take into account that I am not a sci-fi fan and contrary to what anyone tells you it is oh-so-sci-fi. When I first started reading, say the first 20 pages or so, I thought I wasn't going to finish it... Then I got to the word "cryotank" and started laughing and put the book down. I seriously didn't read anymore for a couple of weeks. In that time Adrian read the whole thing and enjoyed it - he loves sci-fi. So at his urging that I would like it once I got "into it" I picked the book back up a few days ago and trudged through the first 100 pages... Then it got tolerable. By about page 250 I was actually interested and wanted to finish it and stayed up late on Friday night doing just that. So it did grab me in the last half. I don't want to give anything away, but I am a little concerned that Stephenie Meyers might have some sort of father-figure issue. I got creeped out by the ages of some of her romantic figures. With the whole Twilight series you don't think too much about Bella's age in comparison to Edward because he is technically 17 (and a gorgeous dreamy vampire) and it's also a book geared toward young adults. In this one I just wondered why in the world she couldn't just make every one's ages be socially acceptable. I mean it's not as if these are real people she is writing about; she could have made the ages anything she wanted to. Probably 'nuff said on that. Overall the writing was more story-tellingish to me and the world she created was not my favorite place to be. I love Forks and Edward and that's why I spend lots of time reading the Twilight series. I did not love The Host world - it reminded me of The Giver by Lois Lowry (another sci-fi non-favorite that I have read) with some lessons on food storage thrown in. Bottom line I guess is that it was not the book for me, but if you like sci-fi you just might enjoy it.

Our Graduate!!!!

Adrian officially graduated yesterday with his masters degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins University!! We are so proud of him! It has been 3 1/2 years of classes (a few that were REALLY hard) and homework all the while balancing family, work, church callings and everything else. He did a fantastic job!! Adrian you are awesome!! Congratulations!!His commencement ceremony last night was a very crazy and memorable event. It took place at the university's campus on Homewood Field (outside, with no kind of covering) and yes it rained!! And rained!! At 6pm it was just beginning to drizzle when Adrian went to check in and I went with our 3 kids to sit in the audience seats on field, but then about 10 minutes later there was a full on down-pour. A very sweet older couple sitting in front of me and kids gave us an umbrella (we didn't pack one because it sounded like the commencement would be held inside the field house if it rained, but we were very wrong). So we sat in the pouring rain under an umbrella for a few minutes and then because it was coming down so hard I took the kids and headed for the area under the bleachers where lots of other people were running too. It was very comical really all the friends and families of the graduates huddled together under the bleachers. The sad part was really that we weren't dressed at all for the rain. The girls both had on sweaters over their dresses and Ben had on a light fleece, but what we really needed was sweatshirts and rain-coats... I was feeling so bad for not preparing better. I had our activity bag or "commencement survival kit" stuffed with snacks, toys, quiz books for Sophie, and coloring/sticker books for Ben and Nina, but I hadn't brought any warm clothes or umbrellas.

(Us before the down-pour:))

Well we hung out in the area under the bleachers for about 45 minutes during which time I entertained the kids with lots of toys and snacks from our survival kit and they were really well behaved ( an answer to many prayers). I tell you, the tubes of little pirate and knight figures that I bought at JoAnns worked wonders for Ben and Nina. They played happily with those for a long time while Sophie worked on her Hannah Montana quiz book. Adrian called me on my cell phone to let me know that they were still planning on having the commencement ceremony and that the powers that be suspected the storm to pass in another 15 minutes. That was kind of hard news because I was still hoping that they would decide to hold the ceremony in the field house so we could all warm up... I looked out from under the bleachers and realized that all the seats were filling up with people sitting with umbrellas and since it was just drizzling again I ventured out with the kids to sit out on the field again. We found a spot much further back than our previous seats, but after using Nina's taggie blanket much to her chagrin to wipe off all the seats we were fine and there were big screens set up projecting the stage. Another man behind us took pity and gave us an umbrella so we all huddled together under one umbrella and all the graduates started walking out onto the field. As soon as the second speaker started speaking it did stop raining all together and the sun came out so we did get a little warmer. The kids again did great (with Dum Dum lollipops being consumed at an incredible rate) and before we knew it the graduates started walking across the stage. I saw Adrian lining up and got a few pictures of him in line. Then when he walked across the stage the kids and I yelled "Yay!!" as loud as we could and I took a picture of him projected on the big screen (I couldn't seem to get my camera to zoom in and take a picture of him actually shaking hands with the Dean so I guess we might be buying one of those "commencement photos" from the professional photographer there). It was such an amazing moment and I'm so glad we were there to share it with him and cheer him on. He worked so hard for that chance to walk across the stage and have his name read as a graduate with a masters degree!After most of the graduates had walked the kids and I headed to the field house. Nina's teeth were actually beginning to chatter and Sophie had written "I am very cold" on her magna-doodle a couple of times so I thought we should go indoors to get warm. I called Adrian on his cell to congratulate him and let him know where we would be and he joined us after the final commencement address about 20 minutes later. It was such a neat night and even though we got rained on and were cold we were so glad we could all go and celebrate this very special event together!! Congratulations to our graduate!!

Dishing at Let's Dish

About a week and a half ago I went to a wonderful place called Let's Dish and it was fantastic!! This is one of those places like My Girlfriends Kitchen and others like that were you go and put together freezer meals at a store. Honestly, I can't believe it took me so long to try it out because I love freezer meals and it made making freezer meals so easy!! I went with a friend and we shared a 12 meal package (so we each got 6 meals). I thought it was reasonably prices when you consider all the time it saved just going and dishing up the meals there rather then spending hours making freezer meals at home. So these are the meals I made:

- Chili Lime Marinated Pork Chops with Black Bean Salsa (we just had that tonight and it was yummy)

- Skewerless Chicken Satay and Cous Cous

- Pulled Pork (yes this is the pulled pork that Adrian mentioned in his mothers day post, so I'm coming clean and grudgingly giving credit to Let's Dish - hey I did put the freezer meal together though and everything so I can still say I cooked it right? ;))

- Calzones (these really didn't turn out very great, so I won't be getting them again - the calzone dough was almost rubbery after baking)

- Thai Marinated Flank Steak

- Apricot Chicken Tenders and Brown Rice

Don't those all sound yummy! We still haven't had the steak, apricot chicken, or chicken satay but so far I've been really happy. The calzones weren't great, but I'm not a huge fan of calzones in the first place (the kids liked them). Adrian said to me as I was leaving to go the Let's Dish, "Hey,this is like going to mecca for you isn't it?!" and I have to now say oh yes it was!! There is just something so satisfying about all the measuring and scooping and zipping up freezer bags!! I know I'm weird! I also love the feeling of having my freezer all full and my new 20 meal menu all planned out. A few days after my Let's Dish session I also made a few of our favorite freezer meals to top off the freezer (2 lazy lasagnas and 2 chicken tetrazzini). So I really enjoyed the whole dishing experience and I'm sure I'll be back to my freezer meal mecca again!