Music Monday

Okay, last clip from the Ryan Shupe concert, I promise! But this is super awesome!

"Linus & Lucy," Ryan Shupe & The RubberBand

#8: Host a Themed Dinner Party

One of my closest friends and her husband turned 40 in June and so after everyone was done traveling for a bit we threw them a birthday party.

Well, actually, it was a birthday funeral.

There were funeral potatoes, eulogies, wills and testaments, and the ceremonial kicking of the bucket! As the honorees walked into the party Amazing Grace was playing, and then the music list included classic funeral tunes like "Another One Bites the Dust," "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead," "Wanted Dead or Alive." It was way fun!

Perhaps the highlight was that our guests of honor got a surprise hearse ride to the party. Awesome!

To see my entire list of 101 Things I want to do in 1001 Days, click here.

My Summer Vacation in 17,000 Words, and Then Some

(Title Explanation: a picture is a thousand words, and then the words I didn't bother counting. Oh, just read on!)

Every summer Nick's Dad's family goes up to a lake in Washington State for a week of boating, talking, and eating. It's absolutely our favorite vacation whenever we get to go, and this was Alexa's first time there. Going as parents was a new/challenging experience, but so wonderful! Enjoy!

Crossing the ferry to Twin Lakes!

 In the lake for the first time with Daddy!

 Driving the boat with Grandpa!

 Grandma, Grandpa, and all their grandkids!

 I'm actually wakeboarding!

 Wading in the water with Daddy!

 Enjoying Twin Lakes with Mommy!

 The family that tubes together stays together!

 Nick's sister Cassidy and her husband Jesse about 2 seconds before she flips the tube trying to get away from the water. Yeah, I know...

 Cool picture of lily pads.

 Playing in the water together!

Yeah, that's partially melted marshmallow in her hair. This was at week's end and she was so gross!

The next pictures were specifically taken to make Nick's siblings who wren't there jealous. Did it work?

Going home! We look happy, but our hearts are breaking a little.

Adoption Application Update

This morning Nick and I dropped Alexa off at a friend's house and headed down to LDS Family Services for our first home study interview. For those of you who haven't done this before, that just means we are really close to being all done with the approval process! Our case worker told us she's hoping to have everything complete by the end of August if not sooner!! We just couldn't be more excited about all of this!

See?

So excited!! At least Sharon the Rabbit is excited for a new playmate...

Music Monday: Concert in the Park

All I Need Is You, Ryan Shupe & The Rubberband

One of our favorite bands came to our town, a mile from our house, and put on a free concert in the park. It was incredible! Really perfect for a family with a toddler as there was a park right there! They were so entertaining and we all had a great time! Sorry about the sound and shakiness, but I hope you can hear what a great group Ryan Shupe and The Rubberband is!

Plus, what a great song, right?

#96: Donate Hair to Charity

Music Monday

Come Go With Me, The Beach Boys

This is how I'm feeling these days. Good. Blessed to be around such wonderful people, and sealed eternally to most of them. So happy.

Rory Gilmore's Reading List

Do you remember the show Gilmore Girls? Remember how Rory was a wicked awesome reader? Do you know that she read or referenced about 347 books throughout the course of the show? Did you know that I've helpfully provided that list below? Now you do! You're welcome!

There are a couple different versions of this list, but this is the most complete one that I know of. Again, you're welcome! And  even if Gilmore Girls isn't your favorite show ever, this is still a great reading list to work from. I have this list in Excel format including the episode of which about half the books came from. Let me know if you want either!

1984 by George Orwell
A Bolt From The Blue and Other Essay by Mary McCarthy
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Wolf
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, Richard Lingeman and Margaret E. Mitchell
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, Brooke Zimmer and John Fontana
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Otto H. Frank, Mirjam Pressler and Susan Massotty
Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie and Ina Rilke
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Anonymous
Bitch: in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Brigadoon by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe
Candide by Voltaire
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Charlotte’s Webb by E.B. White
Christine by Stephen King
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac and Katharine Prescott Wormeley
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Constance Garnett
Cujo by Stephen King
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Theodore Isaac Rubin
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry
The Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethics by Spinoza
Europe Through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Koner
Girl, Interrupted by Susan Kaysen
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
Henry IV, Part 1 by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornsby
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
I’m with the Band by Pamela Des Barres
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inferno by Dante
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
King Richard III by William Shakespeare
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anothy Bourdain
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Living History by Hillary Clinton
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Love Story by Erich Segal
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Marathon Man by William Goldman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Mencken's Chrestomathy by H.L. Mencken
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
Mrs. Dalloway by Virgina Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by  Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life As Author and Editor by H.L. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Myra Waldo's Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe, 1978 by Myra Waldo
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickenson by Emily Dickenson
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/ Angels on Toast/ A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by William Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Out of Africa by Isac Denison
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinnochio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T.J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rapunzel by Brothers Grimm
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphene du Maurier
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
Richard III by William Shakespeare
Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Holiday by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
S is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller by Henry James
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell : 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
Shane by Jack Shaefer
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
Songbook by Nick Hornby
Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Stuart Littleby E.B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Rheta Schreiber
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurty
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Bhagavad Gita  
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Woolf
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Blume by Judy Blume
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Group by Mary McCarthy
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Iliad by Homer
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Love Story by Erich Segal
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Manticore by Robertson Davis
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nancy Drew Series by Carolyn Keene
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan, Jeffrey L. Williams, Vincent B. Leitch
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maughm
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Return of the King: Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kid
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz
The Shining by Stephen King
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Story of My Life by Hellen Keller
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
The Vanishing Newspaper by Phillip Meyers
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Time and Again by Jack Finney
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Album
Ulysses by James Joyce
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Unless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney's Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing- Punk Planet: the Collected Interviews by Daniel Sinker
What Color is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
Wurthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Music Monday

Einstein on the Beach, Counting Crows

From Nick: When I first heard this song I was on a boat at Twin Lakes and thought "This is Counting Crows, but I've never heard it. I must figure out what it is." So now whenever I hear it, I think of Twin Lakes, which is where we are right now.

Nelson-Topia, Our Ultimate Summer Getaway

Just in case you were born in a barn, the title of this post is an homage to one of the greatest movies ever!

As of today we will be spending the next week...

enjoying this:

 doing some of this:

and doing a lot of this:

all in the best place in the world! Catch ya on the flipside!

Failed Adoption, Remembered Blessings

I've written about our failed adoption before in very little detail here and here, but this is the first post in which I have used names or pictures, of course with pertinent party's permission. My guess is I have a couple more posts in regards to this experience up my sleeve in the future.

Every night, just before we read scriptures together and go to sleep for the night, Nick and I write in our Blessing Book, which is a joint daily journal where we record one way we've each seen the hand of the Lord in our lives that day. Tuesday night, just after writing in it about scheduling our first couple of home study interviews, a flood of memories of anxiety and anticipation came rushing back in my mind. I opened up our previous, completed book and it fell open to the following entry:

December 30, 2010

[Nick's Entry] Today we drove to Roseburg and met Hayley, Hannah, and their family. We were at their home for nearly 4.5 hours. We talked about our feelings about adoption and parenting, played with Hannah, ate lunch, and had a wonderful time. I got to hold Hannah while she slept for about 90 min. She is a beautiful little girl and if it's right we would love to have her as a part of our family. We were very impressed with Hayley's parents and siblings as well. The meeting generally went as well as we could have hoped. We are still waiting for Hayley to decide, but we already feel close to Hayley, Hannah, and the whole family.

[My Entry] There were some really tender moments today while talking about open adoption and what we really want for our children. We want them to know they are loved tremendously, which is why they were placed for adoption. It was clear that assertion gave Hayley and her mother, Jesse, a lot of peace. They are such a good family and I hope and pray that over the coming years we get to stay in contact with them no matter what. They are dear people and it would be an honor to have them in our family and us in theirs. It is comforting to know that whatever happens Hannah will have a wonderful life.

 Hannah and Hayley on the day we met.

I continued to read, and read, and read. I was captivated by my own story, like it was from another person in another time and place altogether. All those loving thoughts towards Hayley, Hannah, and their family came rushing back into my mind, and I sincerely missed them. I missed the connectedness I felt with them as we went through the crazy ups and downs of that particular adoption experience. And then, in an extremely familiar way, I longed for our next child, and then in a not so familiar way, I longed for the relationship we will have with their birth family. That was a new and exciting feeling!

We don't have a daughter named Hannah, but we do love a little girl named Hannah almost as if she was our own, because for about 24 hours in our hearts and minds, she was going to be. It was so easy to fall in love with her, Hayley, and their family. Hayley and I still exchange emails every couple of months (so grateful for those), we're friends on Facebook so we can see pictures of Hannah being amazing, and we follow each others' blogs to keep up on each others' lives.

As for Hannah, just as I said she would, she has such a wonderful life with her mom, aunt, uncles, and grandparents. Even though that experience was very hard, stressful, and caused a lot of intense work-out sessions (I guess that's not so bad), I wouldn't change that experience for the world. Hannah and Hayley continue to touch and change our lives for the better, and they are so loved and honored in our home, and will be forever.

Hayley and I have even talked about having a playdate with our girls, so I hope someday we can still pull that off. Trip to Alaska, anyone??

Happy 4th! Love, Captain Jack

Alexa got her face painted at our church 4th of July breakfast this morning. Her artist, KezLee, is pictured with her.

Happy 4th of July, everyone! Be safe and don't start anymore fires (Colorado and Utah have had plenty)!

Music Monday

Three; Elmo, Prairie Dawn, and Herry Monster

One of the best songs from one of Alexa's favorite movies, The Best of Elmo. I've actually thought about a Halloween costume based on this song.