Great news

My older brother is now officially engaged. Tom and Mary are getting married November 1st in the Provo temple. I'm way excited to go to Utah for....2 days maybe. I'm very very very excited to have a new sister in-law on my side of the family. I'll no longer be the only married child!! And thus ends my short stint at pretending to be the "oldest" child. With him married, I'll no longer be a step ahead of him.


I first met Mary last thanksgiving. My whole family flew in to San Antonio, and Tom brought Mary. She was so much fun to hang out with. We froze together watching the guys play football Thanksgiving morning. She fit right in. She was here for her birthday, so we bought her one of those big balloon towers at HEB. It was interesting getting that home in a truck full of people. It only fit with the window open. She also flew out to Washington with the rest of us for new years. She's been tons of fun to hang out with and get to know. I'm excited for the years ahead of family get togethers to get to know her even more.

A break from the Texas pride in a place that truely is better!

The title is purely for the purpose of rubbing Texas proud people the wrong way... like my husband.

But really, what could be better than a vacation away from the Texas heat and humidity? A vacation that takes you to California and home to visit parents, family, and friends of course! And thats just what I got. The break was much needed and much too short.

I flew in on August 18th, my mom's birthday. My parents and my brother and sister, Tom and Anna, picked me up from the San Fransisco airport around 4:30ish. We picked up Highway 1, the pacific coast highway, and drove down to Half Moon Bay. My mom is a marine biologist. She did a lot of snorkeling and tide pool research while in school at BYU Hawaii. Half Moon Bay has some great tide pools, and our timing was perfect with the low tide. It was so much fun exploring the pools, checking out hermit crabs, star fish, crabs, California muscles (not to be confused with dudes on the beach), rocks, snails, poking at sea anemones, and watching the see lions out of the furthest rocks. I really love the ocean. There are so many different, interesting, and beautiful things in it.


















































































































































These were my favorite hermit crab shells there. They were vibrantly orange in and out of the water.















My sister spotted this cool purple crab crawling around. It looked pink in the water. But once you pulled it out, it was purple. Pretty nifty. We kept telling Tom that it as long as he grabbed it from behind, it couldn't pinch his fingers off. He was very brave. Once we pulled it out of the water though, we found that someone or something had already pulled the crabs pinchers off, so Tom really had nothing to be brave about!




























After leaving the tide pools, we continued on highway one, just enjoying the view of the drive, and looking for a place for dinner. We ended up at a restaurant right on the cliff. We ate outside looking out over a beautiful ocean view. The food was great, lots of fish, seafood, and chowder of course. It was fun to just sit and talk to my family. We're really silly when we're together, laughing over old things we used to do and teasing each other. We talked over ways to convince Russell to move out there after medical school.
For my mom's birthday, my older brother, Tom, compiled pictures of our family and created a slide show. My brother's goal for this slide show was to "make mom cry". He did an amazing job and was able to accomplish the mom crying goal. It was the perfect mix of humor and serious. It was fun to watch the pictures of us kids growing up together, as well as pictures from old family vacations. The night was nearly perfect. The only thing that could have made it better was if my younger brother, Scott, was there. But thats ok, he's on his mission like he should be.



Two more things I will really miss about home: eating perfectly ripe peaches (my favorite fruit) right off the tree and cool crisp-air nights wrapped tightly in blankets.

A Favorite Dessert

Thai Coconut Sticky Rice with Mango.


Oh it makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Since I'm currently in the processes of making some, I thought I'd share the deliciousness. I feel like I grew up on this stuff. My mom served her mission for our church in Thailand. Growing up we didn't eat out much, pretty much never, but when and if we did we always ALWAYS went to Thai food. It's just that good! And after eating such good food, you can't pass up such a great finish! I really don't like mango, but I love it on sticky rice.

Sticky rice, also called glutinous rice, is a special rice from Thailand. Grocery stores rarely ever carry it, so I have to go to the Asian market to find it. When it's all cooked, it is, true to its name, very sticky. Here is a link to what Wikipedia has to say about it.

I've been trying out various recipes but I couldn't find one that quite tasted as rich. My mom recently found this one, and it's really quite good. http://whatscookingamerica.net/Fruit/MangoStickyRice.htm

If you plan to make it, you need to plan ahead since the rice is best when soaked over night. The recipe lists mint leaves and sesame seeds as a garnish. It's plenty good without them. I don't think i've ever really had it served to me with mint leaved before.

my stumbling block: Pride

My family and maybe some close friends know this about me. It's kinda been on my mind lately, so I'd thought I would share it.

I get really really stubborn and almost spiteful when people compel me to do stuff. Especially when it is something that I want to do, or feel I should be doing, or feel like I'm already an expert on how to do it. If someone brings it up and tells me to do it before I am able to do it myself, I can't do it any longer. (wow thats a lot of "do it" 's) Even when I know that the person is right, I have to find some other method or completely different way to do the same thing. Mostly I guess it's people telling me what to do, or how I should do things, when I feel pretty strongly about how to do it myself. For example, when I was a miamaid, all the young women went to stay at a ward member's cabin in Tahoe so that we could go sledding and tubing. For breakfast, I was given the task of cooking the bacon. I've always prided myself that my mom taught me how to cook. There was a lot of bacon to cook and we were at a high altitude. I knew that because of these factors, cooking the bacon in a griddle would take FOREVER! So I started to prepare to zap them in the microwave. Along came sister B. ( no clue how to spell her name) with "you need to cook it on the stove blah blah blah blah blah". I got very angry. I'm sure I told her my reasons for cooking it in the microwave. But she insisted, at which point, I became very angry. Since it was the Young Women's leader, I couldn't really argue with her. So I very spitefully cooked it her way, the whole time complaining to my friend how it was taking an hour to cook the bacon her way when I could have done it in a couple of minutes. This same type of story happened again as we were moving into our house. After describing how I wanted to arrange things in my kitchen, I was told by someone a "better" way to arrange the kitchen from a "home Ec.expert point of view". Instead of considering this point of view and kindly discussing it, I got so angry I broke down with tears and had to walk away really quick so that this person couldn't have another one-up on me by seeing me cry.
It's so bad, that it even happens with friendly advice.... Whats worse, is it happens with friendly advice that I've asked for. This is where I used to get frustrated with my parents when they would help me on my homework when I was younger. I would ask a simple question like, "how do you do this math problem" or if it was my mom "how should I finger this on the piano?" (now this part is just how I felt, not necessarily how the situation actually was) I would get sooo angry when they would give me the answer I wanted, and then explain it. I didn't ask for the explanation! I used to say a lot of "i'm not stupid Mom!".
I'd like to say that I've over come this, and maybe to some extent I have. But in a lot of ways I haven't. Mostly, this behavior is manifested toward my parents. But in reality, I think it's toward anyone I feel vulnerable to or who has some sort of imagined "power" over me. Good thing power is divided pretty equally between Russ and I in our marriage. And to all my friends, this really isn't something you should worry about since I don't feel i'm not in the middle of a power struggle with any of you. Part of overcoming you bad habits and problems is accepting that there is a problem in the first place. So by putting this out there for everyone, this is me accepting that this is something I need to work on, because you really can't scream "i'm not stupid" at everyone.

not at your beckon call

Yesterday something happened to my phone. It was fine all day. I left it home while we went to the lake, so it's not accidental water damage. I stuck it in my pocket before we went to dinner with friends at Rudy's. It was still working when we came home after dinner and picked up my organ gear. It worked when we drove over to the church to practice. When I finished practicing, I pushed lots of buttons, but the screen wouldn't light up. It works when I plug it in. But as soon as it is unplugged, it turns off. Russ figures it my battery since he traded our batteries and my phone worked fine while his stopped working. So there you have it. I am no longer taking phone calls. Just making calls. If you want to get a hold of me, leave a voice message or a text message. Otherwise I'll have no idea you called :)

Excuses

I thought maybe i'd list a lot of excuses for why I haven't been blogging lately. But then I decided not to. The biggest one is that I just haven't felt like it. I finally told Russell last Sunday that it was his job to do the next post. He said he tried yesterday then texted me with "i got nothin". So the task has fallen back into my lap.

So mostly this is a post just for the sake of posting. It's nothing exciting. No awesome news. No adventurous story. No travel documentary. Perhaps I'll do a list....

-I'm avoiding Breaking Dawn. I know that if I get started on it, I wont do anything else. And I have a few "anything elses" to do. Mostly the biggest thing standing in my way is that I have to trudge my way through The Fellowship of the Ring by Friday. Then I have a short 3-5 page paper due a week from today. Plus two finals next Tuesday and Wednesday. After that, my 2 week summer vacation will finally begin!!! I've found it really hard to motivate myself to do any schoolwork lately. It's just the end of summer school and I"m ready for a break. I just have to hold out for another week!! and then Breaking Dawn you are mine!!! .......i've developed a little guilty pleasure in sentence mapping. Who'd have ever thought I would enjoy a grammar class so much!!!!.....

I'm excited for my two week break in school. Hopefully it will be enough before I start another 18 credits in the fall. My first weekend off we're heading out to Austin to babysit our nieces and nephews for a few days. We're excited to spend time with those cute kids. We are kinda bummed about missing our stake conference with Russell M. Nelson (or is it M. Russell Ballard... it's Russell something!) coming to speak to us. We had to turn down our spots in the "special" stake choir. I think I'm a little more bummed about that than Russell is. But the kiddos will be fun too.

Next I'm flying out to Morgan Hill to visit my parents and sister. My older brother will be visiting too! I'm flying out on Aug. 18th, which is my mom's birthday. August is a fabulous month in California. I can't wait to hit up In-N-Out, Sunset Beach, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, maybe go scuba diving with my dad and visiting cousins, maybe do a quick trip to hike in Yosemite, and so much more. I'm super excited because my good friend/ old roommate/ sister in-law is coming with me. I'll also of course be visiting with old friend and spending time with my family that I miss more and more while I live out here in distant Texas. I can't wait until I graduate so that we can vacation at the same time.

I fly back from California the day before I start classes again. I'm sort of dreading the fall semester. While I did really well my last 18 credit house semester, I barely came out alive. But i'm determined to do it so that my last and final semester of school (when i'll be absolutely sick of school) will be a breeze.


So thats whats going on.

Update

Yes they're still in my garden. No I don't know what to do about it.


But on a happier note, I'm thankful for nice bus drivers who are willing to run you down a block away in order to give you your phone that you left on the bus.