What I've been up to lately

Here's a few random pictures:

Look how cute my doggie is. He's got a smile on his face because Chris is holding food in front of him.

This was after Teo's bday a while ago. This is what usually happens when we get together. Someone falls asleep. Usually it's Rachel. She sleeps more than Kalia. She fell asleep when she came over for Memorial day too.

I don't know why kids like to go into closets. Maybe to hide the naughty things they are doing. Teo likes to hide in my pantry every time he comes over and rearrage all my food. Benjamin used to do that too. Here he is playing with keys in the coat closet at mom's apartment.

Here are some more pictures of Kalia after Teo's bday party.

For Memorial day Chris and I went to Ikea and bought some stuff. It was the one year birthday of the store in Draper so we had to go celebrate it by spending money. We visited Chris' sister and her husband for a while and then went to lunch with his mom at the Chili's.

Later, Mom, Nephi, Steffanie, the kids and Rachel all came over and had Strawberry Shortcake which I made out of the sponge cake recipe I talked about in the past. I just didn't put in the raspberries. It was yummy! Kalia has her ears pierced now. I should have taken a better picture of her. She kept turning her head. I think Teo might be picking his nose here. Whenever he comes over he opens the garage door to look at the 4 wheelers. He only saw the big one in there this time and asked where the little one was. He is looking outside because I told him the little 4 wheeler was in the shed out back and he was trying to see it. That kid LOVES his 4wheelers! Even when he was just a little baby who could barely walk!

I've been trying to do a little decorating. I bought a bunch of home decor a while ago that has been sitting around for a year. These are pieces of Tapa cloth that I had cut and put into frames. We decided to do this on our D.C. trip last May and I just got around to doing it. The frames are from Ikea. I love that store! They actually look better in person. I had to show that I too had some Poly pride.

This is Hugo sleeping on top of his house. He is a strange dog and likes to put his water bucket inside his house too. He doesn't sleep inside it very often. Imagine that.

Looks like I was caught spying. My favorite story of Hugo was when we tried to tie a tarp over his kennel for shade. We only had a small one that wouldn't even cover the whole kennel so the strings would stretch from corner to corner of the kennel. I was afraid that Hugo would find a way to hang himself with the string if he got caught in it. The next morning I looked out the window and saw that the tarp was hanging pretty low. I looked closer and guess who was using the tarp as a hammock?!!! That's right! That crazy dog had one leg hanging over the side of the tarp just relaxing! Sadly the hammock didn't last long, Hugo was too big and busted it! The strings weren't meant to hold a 100 pound dog! I wish I took a picture of it, it was the funniest thing I had ever seen.

Here is the view behind our house. It's really pretty this time of year with the mountains. It'll be a sad day when they get rid of the field behind our house. Supposedly it will eventually be a soccer field. As long as they don't put houses behind us, I'm happy.

The Kingdom Rated R

I rented this because Chris wanted to see it bad when it was in theaters. I didn't want to see it because I can't stand Jamie Fox and his beady little eyes and enormous teeth. Come to find out, I forgot that Chris had seen it with some friends a long time ago! Drats! It actually turned out to be a pretty good movie. It's about a group of FBI investigators that go to Saudi Arabia after a terrorist attack kills a bunch of Americans living there in a community of oil company workers. It follows them as they deal with the difficulties of the investigation. Probably the scariest thing is that these terrorists actually exist and when you kill one, another one is there to replace them. Probably my favorite thing about the movie is the way the Saudi character Farris talks. At one point when someone is saying the F word he says "why you say this bad word?". There is language and violence.

The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau

I discovered this book while we were discussing books that are being made into movies at work. This one is coming out in the Fall. It's about a city that is built under the ground because the world is nearing destruction and the fate of the human race might be in jeopardy. 50 couples of men and women over 60 years old are taken to the underground city and given infants to raise. They are forbidden to talk about the world they left so that when the children grow up, they know nothing different than the City of Ember. The city is made to sustain life for 200 years, the builders of the city decide that they will leave instructions in a locked box to tell the citizens how to get out of the city. The box is on a time lock that is set to open in 200 years. They give the box to the mayor of the city, only telling him it is very important and not to tell anyone about the box. The mayor doesn't know what is inside the box. The box is to be passed from mayor to mayor. What happens is that several years down the line a mayor gets sick and thinks that the cure for his illness is locked in the box. He takes the box home and tries to get inside but fails and dies before telling the next mayor about the box. The box gets put in a closet and is left buried and forgotten until the time comes when it opens. Meanwhile the city is left running dangerously low on resources past the time it was meant to actually sustain life. Nobody is even aware there is even a world outside the city. This book is actually made for children ages 7-13 but is pretty good and a lot of people at work have read it and enjoyed it. I liked it a lot and am now reading the sequel.

House at Riverton by Kate Morton

This is a new book that just came out last month. I've had it for months and never got around to reading it. I had an advance reader copy. It's pretty good. The story takes place around the time of WWI and continues until present day. It's about a woman, Grace, who was a servant for a wealthy family in England. She is present when a talented young poet commits suicide while the two daughters of the family are also present. One is rumored to be his fiance while the other one is rumored to be his lover. As you read along through the book you find that the main character Grace is now very old and is about to die. She is brought back to her past when a film maker approaches her while doing a film about the family and what happened the night of the suicide. You start to learn that things didn't happen the way everyone thinks the events happened that night and that Grace is the only person still alive that knows the truth. The book follows her as she bounces back and forth from the present to the past as she recalls the secret she has kept for most of her life.

The Strangers Rated R

Chris had been wanting to see this movie since he saw the trailers. So we went to see it on Saturday. It was okay. I have a love/hate relationship with scary movies. I like them but I have an overactive imagination afterwards and freak myself out. The plot of this movie is basically a couple is terrorized by some strangers that try to kill them while they are in a house in a secluded area. Chris got impatient for this movie to be over because the strangers play around for a long time before they even get around to actually trying to kill the couple. Of course there are the typical scary movie scenarios where they stupidly decide to separate, or someone comes in completely oblivious to the obvious signs that something is seriously wrong and you should probably call the cops before walking in and sneaking up on someone while they are trying to fight for their lives. If you come across a house where a there is a car bashed to pieces and the front door has been cut down with an axe, why would you just walk right in? Foolishness! This happens twice in the movie when people did this. After the movie we were talking about it when Chris started quoting Dave Chappelle. He points out the fact that white people feel the need to investigate what is going on. "What the sam h--- is going on here?" "Let me get to the bottom of this". While black people run for their lives. And also why do people look out the window when they hear gun shots? That happened in The Kingdom, and a bunch of white people got killed. It was too funny we were laughing hard about it. I tried to find a clip of it on youtube but didn't have any luck. You Dave Chappelle fans probably know what I'm talking about.