Christmas and Les Miserable

Christmas I went home to Ohio; almost all of my family went to my parents house even though they weren't there. It was a weird Christmas to not have my parents there; but they are doing something so good where they are at. We definitely missed Mom's cooing and attention and Dad's laughter. It was weird to go home this time; as i was running doing errands it was the first time i felt like i was an honest visitor. That is my home town; but that isn't where I live; I have moved away for a long enough period of time that where i am at is my "home", kind of a weird realization.

For Christmas I bought Shawn and I tickets to go see Les Miserable on Broadway this past weekend (I thought it would be fun to go see something on Broadway and then i found out that Les Miz was leaving Broadway so I hurried up and just bought great seats for that show instead of consulting :) ) it turned out to be so great. The seats were great, the theatre was so fun (really small and very intimate); the actors voices were absolutely AMAZING the Jean Val Jean and Eponie were my favorites; but they were all wonderful!!! So i have finally lived that dream too; seeing Les Miserables on Broadway, check! Oh and Shawn liked it too (since it was actually "his" Christmas present) so that was fun. ;)

New York was absolutely crazy! Last time i went down there i thought there were a lot of people, but that was nothing compared to this trip; as we were walking around it seemed like we were being herded like cattle; I don't know if I could ever live in that city, but I guess I would get use to it. It was fun to go to Rockefeller Center and see the tree and to walk along 5th Ave and see the window displays and see time square getting all decked out for New Year's Eve...glad I am not going to be there tonight for it all, but fun to see it before the absolute craziness takes place.



Well Happy New Year and hope you had a Happy Christmas!!!!

weekly update

So this week has been another roller coaster...Here are a few tid bits :)

Ok so this was last week; but I just wanted to share some pictures of the cute kids i got to play with at my brother's house; Abby and Peter are growing up so fast; they are both such people and defiantly have their own personalities!


Sunday was my roommate's birthday!!! Happy Birthday Day Nickers!!!! She is so FABULOUS!!!

Work is crazy with getting ready for the big change over next Wednesday! I don't know if i have mentioned, the hotel i work at has been sold and well it is a bit of an ugly turnover. Not sure if this is normal or if the new company really is that "ify"; I guess we will see.

Tuesday I watched The Hills; I can't help but watch this show, for some reason i just love it; i call it my guilty pleasure; it is pretty much a reality soap opera. Good thing it is only 30mins and since i usually watch it the next day (it is a monday night show)i can fast forward through commercials and have it work with my schedule and it ends up only being 15mins of actual show. But one of the great things about this show is the music, this past week they played an artist i didn't know so i looked her up on ITUNES and now i love her (A Fine Frenzy) the song that caught my attention is 'Almost Lover'; check her out.

Wednesday we went to dinner at a fun little Asian noddle restaurant and then frozen yogurt shoppe (literally frozen yogurt); it was pretty YUMMY and great company!!! I love good friends!

Also on Wednesday i found out some very sad news; my cat that i have had for almost 20years died; her old body just couldn't take another cold winter. I loved Frisky; she was/is the reason why i love cats so much - even if they do make me break out in hives, my throat swells close and my eyes uncontrollably water. She was such a good cat. My sister and niece saw her Tuesday and played/loved with her a little; and then they found her on Wed. so i am really glad she didn't suffer a long time; considering last week she caught a mouse and seemed healthy.

Decided on Thursday that i want to learn how to quilt! The problem is the quilt i want to make is about as difficult as it gets; i saw it in the Pottery Barn catalog
Isn't that so pretty!

Tonight i am going to the Havard-Radcliffe Chorous 'The King Shall Rejoice'; my other roommate Christel is singing in the choir; it should be wonderful; I am going to say it again (i can't promise i won't say it again after this either) I love Christmas music and season.

So what is happening in your world?

Tag...6 I mean 7 random facts

Autumn tagged me to give 6 random tid bits; and Trina tagged me for 7, sorry for the slow response; things are a little crazy go nuts but here we go (although i don't know how much more random i can get :))

1. Dreams; who knows what they mean, but recently i have been having my reoccuring dreams and I was sharing them with some people at work where i found that most don't have dreams about animals. I almost always have a crazy dream about a shark, bear, wolf or the recent addition Alligator. In most the past most of my dreams were me being chased or attacked by the above animals where recently i am finally able to conquer them. hehe Yeah for dream victories!!!

2. Have you noticed certain stages when you pick up on a word and you can't seem to not use it; well i have been like that most of my life (at least what i can remember) right now it is crazy go nuts, boom baby, and lovely. But a few words went through this phase and have stuck and become quite an intimate part of my language namely blast and no touchy.

3. Can i just say i love going to the movies; there is something so fun about getting tickets and sitting a big theater to watch with a couple hundred other people or 10 depending on how long you wait after it is released. Either way i just love movies, last weekend i went to Dan in Real lifeI really liked it cute and funny; but more of a chick flick than i expected.

4. How much do i love my bed in the fall/winter months. It is just so so so nice to have a warm and comfy bed to sleep in. In the morning who wants to leave this

to venture into this !!!NOT ME, but such is life!








5. I love things that

sparkle...I just can't help it. I notice other people's sparkle it is one of the first things i notice on a person, does that make me shallow; i don't know... and i don't really care.

6. If you haven't watched Man vs Wild you are missing out!!!! Bear Grylls is AMAZING!!! I love him and the new season started up last friday; look for the new and old episodes on the Discover Channel.

7. The education conference went so well back in October and I never posted anything about it. Let me just say how blessed I feel having had the opportunity to work so closely with such wonderful people and seeing first handed how much the General Authorities love not only the members of the church; but all. Elder Holland couldn't have been kinder or more loving. It was a marvelous thing to witness.

Halloween videos!

Sorry i am still in love with Halloween, and we took these videos, enjoy! You might say we got a little silly...just a little!

In the first one the background laughing is almost as good as the confusion of the running!

The second makes me laugh so hard, can i just point out that he isn't chasing anything, all the cars are behind him, chasing him actually! Peer pressure is amazing...hehe

The third is just a classic example of what was going on throughout the entire night.

Last, i would like to point out the car, the lady thought there was a problem and started to stop to help but then realized that it was a viking running at her full speed ahead with some weapon, she then speeds up and zooms away leaving our friend in the dust... good times all night long!

Happy Halloween

This year for Halloween some of my friends and i went all out! We were joking a few weeks before about being Vikings, so well the joke moved forward and became a real costume. We bought some fabric to make dresses and some yards of fur to go all out with. As you can see it was pretty enjoyable! hehe









We even had a BOAT!!!! :)

Where do you come from?

Central Ohio supposedly has a neutral accent (that newscasters study), i guess it is right...according to this quiz!

What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

Neutral. Not Northern, Southern, or Western, just American. Your national American identity is more important to you than your local identity, because you don't really have a local identity to begin with.

Take this quiz now - it's easy!

We're going to start with "cot" and "caught." When you say those words do they sound the same or different?

Different Same Same, no wait I mean different, maybe, a little bit different...

Happy St. Patrick's Day?...Russian Boyfriends...ok

Here is another Russian story, but i will give an update on the Education conference from last weekend, sometime this week. Enjoy!


So this is pretty much the only picture I have for this story; but it is a good one so i think it deserves a full post all about it!

March 17th one of my favorite days of the year, why i don't know; but St. Patrick's Day is just such a fun holiday; hello it is an excuse to wear green and pinch people who aren't, what more could you want from a holiday (and yes i know that isn't what st. patty's day is to everyone else in the world but it is to me). So St. Patty's day comes and us girls decide we are going to celebrate the holiday by making a green dinner. So we prepped to make Green bilinis (Russian creps), with green apples and broccoli and other green food or food we could dye green. Well I got home from school before most of the other teachers and was getting things set up to start making dinner. One of the other teachers, Jenny came home 10 mins or so later and is all in a huff telling me there is something crazy going on outside. She asks me if i heard any screaming or anything, I didn't and she continues to tell me the following story: "There is a guy crawling along the (snow/ice covered)road outside and is screaming like he is in pain or something like that." I then proceed to go outside b/c i have to see this for my own eyes...hello a guy crawling down the main street of sosny screaming and no one is helping this is kind of crazy and a little communist sounding; so i peek my head out the apt building door to find at the end of the street an "ambulance" pushing a couple of guys into the vehicle and 2 or 3 other guys trying to pull him out of the vehicle and there being a huge struggle back and forth so i continue staring trying to figure out what is happening. As i watch the guys pulling one of the people out of the vehicle and is successful and then seeing them try and get the other guy out of the vehicle (i will continue to call it a vehicle b/c it wasn't a car, truck, van or suv...it was a mix of all, very efficient :)) i think to myself this can't actually be an ambulance or why would they be trying to get them out of it?! Oh through out this whole struggle the guys are scream and there is one voice that squeals as high pitch as a mans voice can get; but i am the only one watching this...so i decide if the Russian's aren't watching; it obviously isn't anything worthy of watching or just not a big deal, so i head back inside to get back to preparing the fantastic green food.

Jenny then has to go catch a bus to go into Moscow. She leaves and gets back about 15 mins later, explaining that the babuskas pushed her to the back of the line and she didn't feel like standing for the whole 30 min ride and that she would catch the next bus in. But then she proceeds to ask me if i knew who the guy was lying outside our door. I of course didn't and didn't even know there was a man lying outside our door. So i go to the peep hole to check it out, to find not only a man lying on the floor, but 2 other guys as well (these ones are mobile). They must of heard me or seen my shadow under the door, or my eye in the peephole b/c almost immdietly there was a knock at the door. I wasn't quite sure what to do and i believe i shrilled (like any girl would do) and ran away from the door. Jenny went to the door and i followed, she opened it and they immediatly start going off in Russian; we of course use our most common Russian phrase "i don't speak Russian" and get our english russian dictionary to have him translate to us what he is trying to say. He pushes the book away (not sure if it is b/c of the complicated orders or if the wording was too small for his very bloodshot eyes to focus on). He keeps pointing at his friend on the floor and doing all these motions (no clue what he was trying to guesture at (if there is anything i learned about in russia it was that getures are not a universal language ) so i go for the phone to have our Russian contact to talk with him so she can tell us what they are asking us. I get Julia on the phone and explain the situation; her response is like don't open the door. I say too late we already did; will you talk with them and tell us what they are trying to say. We give him our oh so new phone (not, it was a rotary phone from like 1982)and it didn't quite reach to outside the front door so he had to kind of come into our apt a little.

I get the phone back and Julia is laughing on the other end, they were asking us not to call the police on their buddy; that he was just really drunk and needed a place to sleep for a little while and that they would be back for him in a couple of hours. We tell them we wont call the the police and then the bolder looks at me and (points at me) says, "you girl (points at himself) me boy" at this i push him out the door and close it as i am saying "nyet". So we monitor the peephole through out the rest of the night; finding an interesting show of him taking his pants off peeing in the corner (mind you it is about 10 degrees out), really sanatary don't you think.

A couple of hours later the guy in our group (who lived upstairs) came over and saw that we had a box of chocolates and a Bunny shaped key holder outside our door and the guy was gone. So we decided we had Russian boyfriends, i mean they did buy us presents. hehehe

Angry Sosny Bunnies

So here is a randomness from my time in Russia. And when I say randomness i mean it; it has very little to do with Russia, except to show how excited we got to be able to be outside without snow and freezing to death! Being trapped up in our little, funky smelling, russian apartments; which i was so greatful for despite the terrible bed that almost broke my back.
Anyway there was a badmitten (spelling) (the Russian kids loved badmitten and would beg me to play with them as i would walk home from school, so every once in awhile i would play with them, i must say i was a natural ;) but that is another story) net set up one building over from ours that we took our volleyball to and would play. We had two apartments one for the Sosny school teachers (me) and one for the Kaptain school teachers; so that is why we played Sosny vs Kaptain. We challenged them to the game and little did they know we were going to bring it, we picked gray as our color (mainly b/c that was the only color all of us had to wear), our name was the Angry Sosny Bunnies b/c we were given a bunny key holder by some strange Russian men (but again story to be told at a later time.) and decided to put our hair in high pigtails So here are some pictures from our little games we played! hehe Enjoy



of course we lost the ball under the cars and why I (with my short arms) was retrieving it I will never know; but how could you resist taking a picture of a butt sticking straight up in the air! boom baby! :)

This is the Kaptain team, they were just happy to get a point :) (hey it is my blog)

After the games we would do as any other sport teams would do; run along the center of the "court" and high five the other team...

And here are the CHAMPIONS...the Angry Sosny Bunnies... pretty angry if i do say so myself; oh and we won every match; so I guess you could say we were the best! ;)

Russia Love

I was looking at "friend's" pictures on facebook (they are friends it is just funny using that term in conjunction with facebook) today and found some pictures of our time in Russia on a girls profile and started to think about my being there and wanted to share some stories and pictures. So for the next few blogs i am going to be reminiscing of Russia and my time spent there with all the crazies, cute kids and mind opening experiences. Hopefully you enjoy!

The big E

So last weekend I got to relive a part of my childhood...well sort of! Growing up every august there was a carnival/fair. I always wanted to go and it was so the cool place to be; hello there were rides, food, and people from other schools that you could "meet". Well this past weekend I went to a bigger and better fair than our little town ever put together it is called the BIG E. I really didn't know what i was getting into; all i knew was it sounded like a fair/carnival and i was stoked. This "fair" was enormous! It is pretty much a fair for the entire New England area and it has replicas of the state houses from all the different states. Inside these replicas they have different things that represent their state; but i think it is still all about the food, part of the "things" that represent their state are the choice treats of desire! SO good; although i don't recommend starting off with the Claim cakes they sit a little heavy and well lets just say you need a little time to digest especially when they hit an empty stomach.

Aside from these very cool state house replicas and representation of state pride, they had are you ready for this.... SHARKS!!! Random, but oh so lovely! They had Lemon sharks and Nurse Sharks, it was really cool to see Nurse sharks considering they are one of the species marine biologist are still exploring and know very little, thanks to technology this is changing but it was really neat to see them. Yes it was incredibly bizzar to see them at a fair, but as far as i am concerned you can't see sharks in a wrong place (except maybe when you are injured and swimming in the middle of the deep blue ocean without any form of a boat and you're bleeding from at least 2 limbs and you see one next to you, ok so maybe that is a bad place to see a shark :))

They also had all sorts of farm animals, plants (namely giant pumkins (Dad)) and produce Ohio could be proud of, oh and 4H and FFA were both represented in case you are wondering ;). All in all it was really fun and some place kind of "new"; but the people are still really fun to watch -there are some serious crazy out there, but they only keep things exciting!

Fall is BEGINNING

This past weekend I went to one of the most beautiful places I have been to in a long time!! Quabbin Reservoir AAAMAZING!!!! It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny, long sleeve shirt day; perfect weather for walking around a ginormous reservoir. Luckily for Shawn and I we happened upon a ginormous reservoir where we ended up walking at least 7 miles and didn't even make it 1/2 way around, this was the view we turn around at...just breath taking.
When I see scenes like this I can't question the existence of God, His greatness and mercy.

Saturday was Shawn's birthday so the beautiful day can simply be Happy birthday to him and a glorious (as my mother would say) day for the rest of us! So even if these pictures aren't the greatest of me here ya go anyway, what can i say i forgot my sunglasses and as you can see it was crazy sunny!



Sorry for the lack of posting lately, but here ya go...ENJOY!

Blog Colors

In HONOR of the below team i have changed my blog color scheme to the beautiful and ever so heart wrenching Scarlet and Grey!

What more can i say than, GO BUCKEYES!!

GO BUCKEYES!!!!!

So I realized today that College Football Starts this weekend, Hooray!!! I get giddy just thinking about it!!! O-H ... I-O

Granted I probably wont get to watch Ohio State, but just to have the blessed events of football on tv again will be so great! So here is the schedule just in case...check your local listings to find the channel nearest you or if you're really lucky head over to your local stadium!!!!

Sat, Sep 01

Youngstown State (Alumni Band)

Columbus, Ohio

Sat, Sep 08

Akron (Hall of Fame)

Columbus, Ohio

Sat, Sep 15

Washington

at Seattle, Wash.

Sat, Sep 22

Northwestern *

Columbus, Ohio

Sat, Sep 29

Minnesota *

at Minneapolis, Minn.

Sat, Oct 06

Purdue *

at West Lafayette, Ind.

Sat, Oct 13

Kent State

Columbus, Ohio

Sat, Oct 20

Michigan State (Homecoming) *

Columbus, Ohio

Sat, Oct 27

Penn State *

at State College, Penn.

Sat, Nov 03

Wisconsin *

Columbus, Ohio

Sat, Nov 10

Illinois *

Columbus, Ohio

Sat, Nov 17

Michigan *

at Ann Arbor, Mich.

Seriously this is the last one....

I couldn't resist!!

Which Hogwarts House Would You Be In?
	The Sorting Hat would put you in Gryffindor. You are bold, passionate, and brave. You have a highly-defined sense of right and wrong, and you are not afraid to speak your mind or fight for what you want.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

What can I say, I am a total sucker for these things...

I don't know how true it is either, but nonetheless it is a fun quiz...enjoy!

Which Sex and the City Character Are You?
	You are Charlotte. Fairytales were made for you. You've had your share of heartbreak, but that doesn't stop you from opening your heart to others and searching for your happily-ever-after. To some, you may appear naive and your romantic ideals far-fetched, but you know that someday, your Prince will come.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

I'm BACK

So it has been awhile since I last contributed to the whole wide world of blogging. I check people's blogs and I get bugged when i find I'm already "caught up" on their lives...but look who is talking, seriously it has been like 2 weeks. So here is an update!

Went and saw borne ultimatum - laughed the whole time at how over the top it was and the silly love story they tried to slide in there; even though I recommend the movie!

Went to Carson's beach again, love that beach mainly b/c parking is so so so easy and it is close. I got burnt a little on my back but loved every minute of it!

One of the reasons, OK the main reason my back got burnt was Harry Potter 7 I know I am slow, but i was at the end and wanted to lay on my stomach so I could read--I ended up making excuses to stay home for the rest of the day so i could read, I finished it, cried and can I just say... LOVED IT!!














I went to my first Red Sox Game, they played Tampa Bay and the Red Sox won!!!! It was so fun to be inside of FENWAY and see the game and just be there!! So FUN!




















I finally did the freedom trail, I have heard of this walk around the city since i moved here and finally had a chance to do it. I didn't realize how long it was though, but still so fun to walk around the city talking with a friend and seeing a little bit of history!

Went and saw Becoming Jane - cute movie, sad, I totally cried even though i was trying to hold it in, so it must have been a great love story.














This past Sunday the love of SPAM was re encountered!!! I forgot how "good" it is; even if it is really really bad for you, at least it taste good! Since i haven't eaten any for over 2 years i think i am good. hehe

The Education Conference - here is the link for the conference, so good!!! I think it looks great; thanks to Seth, Robert, and Tim! The planning is getting exciting! http://www.ldseducationconference.org/

So there is a little update on things!