drip drip drop little april showers

Anyone recognize that song from Bambi? Well.. I do, and I could sing you the entire song if you'd like. Never mind, I retract that offer.

This week has been beautiful. Perfectly warm with a cool breeze, some times it's sunny, some times it's rainy and perfectly grey and calm. I love rain clouds.. let me hear ya say "yea!"

"YEA!"

little slice of heaven

Why do I love chocolate so much? I don't know why so many do, but it's crazy. Mine and Mark's cravings are usually so different; I say sometimes that we switched food roles; I crave salty, he craves sweet. Normally it's the man who is at the ball game with a hot dog and the girl with a candy box and a soda. But when I do crave sweet, it's typically chocolate.

About once a year I will splurge on the "All-American Chocolate Cake" from this place. It is the yummiest,  richest, but yet, oh so perfect. Sometimes rich can be too much; but this cake has the yummy part down. Just like their pecan pies; the best ever!

I dare you to try it. I triple dog dare you!

midnight madness

Last night Mont was having another toss-and-turn sort of night. We decided to just get him out of bed at 10:00 because we just wanted to play with him; it was still light then. Around 11, when it was good and dark, and while we were tickling him and laughing with him, I had the thought, "what would we be doing if it were just Mark and I?" .. We'd probably be out driving around looking for bears!!!

So that's what we did (but this time, we took our new little adventurer with us). It was unsuccessful, but a lot of fun. Mont was jabbering the whole time in the back seat; probably trying to convince the bears to get their pictures taken.

Two days ago my neighbor a few houses down was cleaning her back porch windows when she saw two big grizzlies just right on the river! She has a better view of the river than we do from her house. She told me this when I was just beginning to walk, and it was only 2 hours after she saw them, but I couldn't find them... I was both relieved and disappointed. I still haven't seen a grizzly in the wild. Don't you worry about me, either. I had Buckwheat.

...and one big can of bear spray.

...off to Neverland!

At our Relief Society's service auction this past March, my friend Marlana bid and won my 10x10 canvas offer. She said her daughter wanted "Tinkerbell." I decided to do old school Peter Pan's Tinkerbell, from the same movie I did my last two canvases.

I'm not so sure I'll do "people" again unless it's on a similar background. What I did for this, was I looked at the opening credits of Disney's Peter Pan, and did one of the background stills. For the Tinkerbell, I used the shot of Tinkerbell flying away from Peter as he was about to grab her in order to sprinkle Wendy, John and Michael. The colors and design of the two different pictures were so different, but I didn't realize until I had combined the two... so the Tinkerbell looks too cartoon-y for this background!!! It was frustrating for me to realize this after I put the background around her.

Though I don't love it as much as I had hoped, I do like the details still. Let me indulge:

"2nd star to the right and straight on till morning": 

Over London (you can see the sparkly pixie dust):

Close-up of 'Tink (her medium - 

chalk, then acrylic, then more chalk 

- I couldn't get it right!):

I like her shoes.. big white pom-poms and a little bit of green:

And like the other ones, I did the sides of the canvas in case she didn't want to frame it: 

And that is numero tres!!

bear bait

Baiting bears is illegal here in the wild north. So I think my neighbors should be fined - ha ha! Seriously though! They leave this poor little fluffy thing tied up outside (with the garage door open) all day (if it's not snowing or raining). The reasons I have to be concerned are as following:

1. bears
2. barking
3. more bears!

These new renters are not military, so I'm not sure how much they have been briefed on bear safety. Maybe they have been briefed, and just didn't take it seriously? Maybe someone needs to either tell them in person, or send them an anonymous letter informing them of the unavoidable bears in the neighborhood + a brochure on bear safety. I'd be happy to be that letter-writer... : )

In my professed letter I will tell them about my run-ins, mentioned here, here, here and here.

SERIOUSLY... I'd rather not come home and find something awfully sad on your driveway, or you to walk out into your garage only to find a bear stuck inside like my bishop has done. Bathe your dog, and take it inside like the rest of your neighborhood... there's a reason there are no other out-door dogs here!

Kindly and affectionately,
your neighbor.

PS - Also, trash cans are kept inside your garage here, not on the side of your house next to my stairs.

my prom date: the chauffeur

My main squeeze went to prom last weekend as a chauffeur for one of the young men in our ward. He had a blast! And our car is spotless now, too; what a treat for an Alaskan driver!

While Mark was driving, he had a Harry Connick, Jr. concert playing on the DVD screen, and then he had a bucket of ice with some [non-alcoholic] bubbly and two glasses. Then, at the end of the night, he even helped the kid out by having a single long-stem rose ready for the door step. So much fun! Mark is great at following through with simple requests and turning them into something unexpected. What a romantic.

That's my man!

shake shake shake

In less than an hour I will be learning how to do THIS:

AH! How exciting!!

I have a Hula work-out DVD set that is called "Hula Abs and Buns" but that's not what I'm doing tonight. Tonight... I have a teacher. Our teacher, is a "wholynesian" as her family says (white girl + polynesian spirit is how I interpret it), who danced at the Polynesian Cultural Center. 

My roommates did use to say that my hips had a mind of their own at dances. I guess I was born to SHAKE IT. :)  ... we'll see if that still rings true tonight.

Update: it was SO fun. I knew it would be; how could it not with the girls in my ward?! Also, it was fun trying to keep up. Nelli would beat on her 'drum' and would say, "Koholo" or "Huli" or "Lele" or "Hela" or ... other things and it would be a quiz every time to see if we could remember what they all were! But the beat, and the swaying and the palm trees (haaaa) were all so beautiful. Maybe I can be like Nelli when we're all done; make it look as natural as breathing!

Now it's time to practice my "vocab words" for the week.

On a side note: her mother is my ever-famous quilting/sewing coach - I say coach because that's truly what she is, slash cheerleader. What a cool family! 

mug shot

While we were in Utah in February, Stacey (Mark's mom) had a couple extra photo sessions at a local studio called Fotogenix, so we took one! Thanks, Stacey! They turned out better than we had even expected with this little stud. He just wanted to stare at stuff rather than smile; but we still got a little one:

(sorry, picture of a picture)

My cute little drooler!!!

glitz

for some birthdays:

above for Tory

below for Tessa

Don't you love some shine?

secret:
for mom... can't show you yet!

cookie boy

Mark's younger brother (though, still older than me), Michael, was dubbed "Cookie Boy" when he was young, and he still does the routine that inspired the title. Every time Michael is handed a cookie, he stares at it intensely before taking the first bite. I witnessed it the last time we were all together as a family; everyone else was just used to it after all these years, but I was highly entertained. He was eating Oreos (as you may remember... Mont is also a fan), and would just look over every cookie before dunking/eating it. I had to call him out on it, and it had us all laughing.

Well it must have been passed through to our little boy because Mont sees a cookie and he stares... then LUNGES! While Mark's mom and sister were here, we made Stacey's family-famous Nilla wafer chocolate pudding (golly, that stuff is good). While Stacey and Molly were playing hostesses rather than guests, I was holding Mont while eating a few Nilla wafers while they cooked... I was not expecting my child to lunge at my cookie (he actually missed the cookie and commenced sucking on my thumb's knuckle as hard as he could). Apparently, the girls had slipped Mont a cookie before hand; he was hooked!!

Cookie boy. HA!

moose!

Isn't 'moose' one of the funnier words to look at? I know we all have our own lists of weird words, but goodness! I only just said it 4 times just now and it already feels weird on my mouth.

Two mornings ago, on Easter morn, we had two unexpected guests come to visit Stacey and Molly before they jet-set back to Utah:

moose 1:

moose 2:

They were only about 40 feet away from us, and if I had stood next to them, I think my head would've been mid-shoulder height and I'm 5'8"!

Los huge-os moose-os.