New Camera

This itty-bitty post is just to inform the world of my excitement over purchasing a new camera! Now we can take pictures of everything! Here are a few pics from the first night we got it, and one from today when I was  looking and feeling all cute and domestic!

Wonderful Weekend

This could be several posts, but -excepting the last day- I'm going to quickly smoosh them all together just 'cuz I feel like it! Anywho...

So this last weekend was pretty wonderful.

It began on Friday, where, for work, I got to work a short shift and  help take the kids to the BYU planetarium. I'd never been to their planetarium, but the presenter did a good job and more importantly, my class was soooo good! They were the best behaved children in there! Granted, there were not good parts (poor Jessica had to deal with a puker and a child who literally peed on her) but overall, getting to go with to the planetarium was pretty exciting! Then I got to clean up and get stuff done as quickly as I could, then go home! I got to hang out at home, get in some web surfing, facebook, pinterest time and then went to chill at my sisters' to go to the mall with J. It was good I took her with me due to the whole 'I'm color deficient' and almost brought home blue pants when the whole reason I went was to get a pair of black and a pair of red!
I then came home to my darling hubby and got to watch some tv before we went to meet up with Brett and Jessa for some Heavy Gear!

Saturday was awesome. Chris and I slept in, got ready for the day, and went to pick up some new pretty orange dice for me! Yay new dice! Then we went and got his niece Chelsea and painted nails with my exciting new del sol color changing nail polish that Chris got for me during our trip to Moab! (I'll post about this later today when I can get the pics from my mommy.) Then we went to THE OREM SUMMERFEST! Now, you need to know that I love love love the summerfest. It's one of my absolute favorite summer things! I love the booths, the food, the carnival, the parade, and most importantly the fireworks. Last year, my wedding was on summerfest and it was a huge scheduling bummer, but Chris still took me to the fireworks! Well, this year we went and enjoyed the booths and food, then went to my friend Tyler's welcome-home-from-his-mission-open-house-party until we had to boogie back to the parade. Which was a blast. Chris got to see why parades are fun with me: I'm LOUD. (A trait I definitely got from my father!) We got to meet Dan (who it appears we may be voting for after all.) and have some fun interactions with people on floats and in the parade. Then we went back to the carnival (So I could get my airbrush tattoo :) and some hot chocolate) and then we watched fireworks!!!

Sunday we went to church at our home ward, which is always fun. We get to see people we know and people who know us. hehe. Then we had smoothie sunday and played with family and friends (I love running into Callie Jo!) and then we headed up to Salt Lake to begin our Anniversary Adventure at the Anniversary Inn. We had an amazing anniversary....that you'll get to hear about in the next post! hehehe.

May

May has been a fun adventure. We had preschool graduation and I found out that I had and took meds to get over bronchitis and a sinus infection. But mostly the things in my brain have been:

1. RPGs: Chris is a game master of legend. He taught me that even though it's not just 'let's play pretend' (which I love), role-playing is a lot of fun! Making a character and playing through a story is....fabulous. We have two campaigns right now:


1. Dirge of the Dragon: Chris' made this vampire the requiem story because J and I love vampires, and after watching vampire diaries of his own free will (I didn't even suggest it to him, just watch with my sisters) he was in a vampire mood. When J and I didn't hop on the rpg band-wagon fast enough he opened up the story to his brothers and friends which became Dave, Brett, Jessa, Dan, and Robbie. Got big fast. Then J and I started playing (from a very different place and time) and it's been interesting. Sadly, many players weren't able to come to sessions and it started to die... but some of us wanted to play all the time (I was so into it already, I bought new matching d10s, I made a binder to keep track of all the character sheets and copies (so we always have them) was taking notes of the campaign as it occured for the adventure log, found pics of all the npcs, kept track of all the pictures of each character as well as their backstory...etc etc) so Chris made a new game for me and Jessa (and Brett came along for the ride)
2. Not Yet Titled: This heavy gear game is still untitled, but I'm obsessed with it already! I get to play "Lil" short for Lilyanne, a 15 yr old engineer. I loved creating her! We're a band of badlander pirates? kinda? We're like...marauders? I'm not entirely sure how to describe us. hahaha. Jessa plays Dallas- the trigger happy, smoking hot, bada... 28 yr old (picture Milla Jovovich in the deserty Resident Evil...) and Brett's Winston, the jack of all trades who completes our little band.. We've only played 2 long sessions, but I love our characters. Here are my two favorite pics of my character: (I don't own these, just found them on the internets, yay deviantart)      and  
2. My Book!: Instead of blogging like I kept meaning to this past month, I wrote a 100 page book! It's a resource book of summer activities for kids! I called it (not super imaginative, but whatever) Emily's Epic Summer Book (subtitled: Fun Activities For Children). It's been a HUGE project, but now that it's done (minus proofreading and a few changes and edits here and there) I don't have to plan lessons for the summer ever again! YAY!
3. Web-shows!: Oh! I've fallen in love with geekandsundry.com and prettydarnfunny.com. When Felicia Day said she was 100 blacksmithing in Skyrim (just like me!) on the Flog, I practically exploded from happiness! "Do you have any ingots?" HAHAHA! And the Steampunk dress up day...I WANT!

Now I find myself in summer schedule for work(less hours woohoo, and in the afternoon so I get to see my hubby more), with free time due to not needing to plan lessons, and excited to use our pass of all passes, go to the pool, play with my honey, go on vacations, see my friend Tyler who's coming home from his mission next week, go to Moab, enjoy more web-shows, and play lots of stories (yay stories!)! Here we go summer! :D I'm just going to relax and enjoy all the... joy!!!

Decorating

So, if you've ever seen my mom's blog, or for that matter, her home, you know that I was raised to decorate for holidays! Now that I have my own home to make nice for my husband, it's exciting to decorate - especially because he gets so excited with the decorating ideas I put together. Mom has been really encouraging me to take pics, so!

Here we go! January's decorations!

   

     

   

 

Table, on top of tv was snowy, door, mantel, and on the back of the cupboards was decorated!

Here's February

Mantel and Table

Here's March

 

   

Here's the mantel, door, and table

And come April and now May... the camera hates me and crapped out! 

:( 

My Birthday!

   This year was probably my best birthday I can remember!
   First, Chris took me to Celtic Woman.
   The Sunday beforehand we got to have a 'joint birthday dinner' with Matt and Tam and the boys (Matt and I share a birthday) that was a lot of fun.
   Then work on my birthday was actually pretty good. Lots of 'friends' to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY. hehe. And of course I took treats and taught them to sign the happy birthday song, then also taught them to sing what they call 'Miss Emily's Special Birthday Song' - the Los Hermanos birthday song. That night, Chris got off work early (Thanks Russell for switching shifts!) and we got all pretty (Chris was handsome...) and went to eat at the Olive Garden, then he took me to see Hunger Games which was pretty good.
   Then, that Saturday we had a DISNEY DAY! We slept in. We listened to Disney music and watched Disney movies, and most importantly played DISNEY SCENE-IT! My favorite game that, so far, I've never lost! Of course, people don't usually play with me because of the whole 'never lose' thing, but my sisters (and now my darling husband as well) make a special effort to play (and not be upset when I cream them) on my birthday! Lots of people helped make it wonderful! Brett and Jessa, Callie Jo, Mom, Ken, My three wonderful sisters: J, B, and K, and of course Chris!
   Then, a week or so later, we got to go to Los Hermanos with the family for my birthday song and lunch! That was awesome. I also got more birthday presents! 4 elephant necklaces this birthday=very good birthday. Have I mentioned I love elephants? hehehe.
   So yeah...epic birthday win!

Celtic Woman

Celtic Woman is a huge favorite of mine! I love their clear, beautiful, angelic voices! Their music is some of my favorites for naptime, sundays, St. Patties day, Christmas, and just for me time. Chris liked them ok, but knew that I LOVE them. On St. Patrick's Day he told me he'd gotten tickets to take me to see them the week before my birthday! Can I just say WAAAHOOO! BEST HUSBAND AWARD GRANTED! Come the day of the concert I was sick... but Chris said 'I'll carry you if I have to, you're going to see them sing!' (Did I get lucky or what?!) So we went and he helped me walk around, he got me a souvenir program, and we found our seats. In the first row of the stands. We were SO close. I wish the picture can do it justice. And boy did they sing! Sang like angels! It was so uplifting and fun. Chris was...enthralled. Now he understood how much I love them. The way they move in their fancy formal dresses, the way the musicians are part of the fun playing along, the way the violinist Mairead dances along, the lights the music...ah! I was...blown away. And anyone who knows me knows I'm not often blown away. Not a note off, not a bad vowel, not a icky sound, just...angelic perfection! (From the two who've been with celtic woman a while. The newest girl who's first tour this was [as she filled in for my favorite who stayed in Ireland] wasn't perfect, but she did well...she tried) At one point, I swear I could have touched Chloe Agnew (my favorite who did come) as she came off the stage and right by where we sat! It was...supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Here's the pic Chris took with his phone:

Easter!

This was our first Easter as a married couple. Oh I wish I had pics for you, but sadly, my camera has passed on. I love holidays, in case you haven't figured that out, and so this Easter we figured out how we like to do it. Mostly that meant 'this is how I like Easter' since he didn't really have a lot of things he wanted besides painting eggs (surprisingly, the thing I could do without. But we did it, he said he wanted to, we did it!) We almost made tomb cookies (but fell asleep before we did. haha). We did hide eggs for each other, got each other baskets and our Easter Outfits, and visited family. I made deviled eggs. It was good. We'll have to doll up again and post pics later of our Easter clothes. (don't hold your breath. we get cute and matchy a lot and we're more likely to take pics of new outfits!)

March!

Not quite so exciting... but not close to empty! In looking back I can only think of three quick things that happened in March. (well, besides jake's b-day, but that's for mom's blog. :)) First, I found that I absolutely love Skyrim. (that may have been earlier, I'm not quite 100% on when...) but here's me:

Yes, I'm playing Skyrim. I love stories, what do you expect? Plus... making armor and jewelry and potions is fun! Chris will go on the quests, and I sell the stuff he brings back, save money, make armor and other stuff to sell, trade, make more stuff, make sure he's all nice and unloaded for the next quest. hehe. But I love to veg and play...hehehe. 
Thing two was that I went on a work retreat that was fun, and...
Three: when I came back we got all greened up and went to fat cats for digi-date night. It was fun bowling and being all green. 
Then Chris told me that he had a surprise for me for my birthday, but that in the spirit of the holiday he wanted to tell me ahead of time so I could plan and be excited.
He had tickets to go see Celtic Woman! YAY!

Girls' Camp 2012

If you know me...you know I am one of the hugest fans of girls' camp in the whole world. It's the best experience a girl can have to go out into the wilderness with a big group of girls of similar faith and have time to play and think, read and write, get close to those around her, and get in touch with who she is and wants to be! I loved my years at Shalom and wouldn't trade them for anything! Plus, who doesn't love learning how to make a fire or tie a bowline? Singing as you hike? Coming home literally covered in a layer of dirt? hehehe. So! I was beyond thrilled when in our first family ward, after Chris and I were called to be joint youth sunday school teachers (our ward is teeny so all the youth ages 12-18 meet in one class that Chris and I teach) so I got to love these girls, I was called as ward camp director. Talk about dream calling! And it was a good year for 'first time camp director' because it was a winter camp. It was only one night up at mutual dell. We did snow shoeing and snow caves. We did our one on one time, they called it solo time. We made some cute vinyl tiles and decorated journals. We got to do skits and play and sing and listen to great speakers and share testimonies. It wasn't a usual camp, and no camp fire was very hard for me, but it was a good mini-camp. They'll be doing a pioneer trek this summer as well, so they'll get another great like-unto camp experience there. Here are a few pics from girls' camp!

First morning at breakfast. My ward: aren't we cute girlies?

Making our tiles. Cute, no?
Can you also see the star board on the wall?
We wrote down moments where people shone on stars!

Cleaning, but aren't we awesome?

I'm crawling in a snow cave!!!

Playing in the snow

The final group pic! Aren't we shiny and goofy?

Debi and I were the leaders, had to have the 'new besties' pic!

Concert

  As part two of my sweet husband's Valentine's gift to me, he surprised me by taking me to a concert! A band I've really enjoyed for a while is Hot Chelle Rae. Tonight, Tonight and I Like it Like That were huge favorites of mine. He knew this because I made him listen to them over and over! hehehe! It was a blast! Here are my 3 favorite pics from that night (it was hard to narrow down...but here they are:) If you can't tell we're wearing part two of my valentine's gift for him! Matching shirts... his says "Get Back Witch" and mine says "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!"

Valentine's Day

Ok, first thing first, you need to understand that Emily is not a fabulous gift giver. I try so hard...but I'm just...not. I always feel like my gifts are... sub-par. But I try. Well for valentine's day, I had flowers delivered to him at work. Additionally, he got me the cutest valentine's day dress! Then we went to The Roll-up, it's one of our favorite places, open late, and the atmosphere was perfect for valentines! I should have taken pics...but I didn't. hehehe.

Chris' B-Day!

Let me tell you a tale about a boy who's not used to a girl who loves birthdays! This boy loves surprises but knows that the girl can't keep a surprise to save her life. He also knows surprising her is usually a bad plan -- because she can't plan. hehe. He knew she loves birthdays, so he wasn't very surprised when he got to do everything he wanted on his birthday, specifically watch his favorite movie that is not her style. However, he was very surprised when they go to his favorite restaurant (not a surprise yet) and find...
A SURPRISE PARTY!

Yay for managing the first surprise of her life! (Hopefully the boy understands now that she knows she's able, the girl may not try to do this again... all month she was just trying not to tell him!) Balloons and colorful flame birthday candles, family and friends, and presents. So exciting!

February

So I'm cheating and post-dating so these will be in order. (buggins it will be if I don't!) February was a fun and busy month!
We had Chris' birthday, Valentines, a concert, and girls' camp!

My personalized 'sentiment' blocks!

So my mom has gotten me addicted to the cute 'crafty mommy' blogs. You know the kind. And it makes me want to be, you know, crafty! hehe. Well, as I've been decorating my 'mantel' (a shadow box) and around my apartment I've started decorating in 5 ways.

1. My 'mantel' shadowbox.
2. My door
3. My table centerpiece
4. Hanging something on the back of my cupboards
5. Window clings

Well, for the shadowbox, I saw some cute blocks at my aunt Dana's once, and then mom's cute 'title' blocks on her mantel, and talking to mom about sentiment blocks, I decided to make my own! Here's what I did!

First I purchased five cute little 2" blocks at hobby lobby. Then Chris painted them black for me. (Chris is artsy and was pretty excited when I asked him to paint to help me with a craft.)

Then I found different scrapbooking paper for each theme. I decided to do 5 different sheets (1 per block) that fit the theme. My themes are: Snow, XO<3XO, Lucky, Spring, Sun, and B-Day. Then I cut the paper into small squares, slightly smaller than the blocks.

Then I lined them up by theme and which block I wanted them on. (The order mattered to me.)

Next I mod-podged the paper squares onto the blocks.

Following this, I borrowed my mom's cricut and cut out the themes onto colored paper.

Then I mod-podged the letters/symbols of the theme onto the block, and covered with a layer of mod-podge. Because I used cut out scrapbooking cardstock for the letters, I had to double and sometimes triple layer the outside mod-podge to seal the letters on.

AREN'T THEY CUTE!?! I'm going to have to make some more sets!

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

Quest for Fries

While eating ice cream with Jordan and Karli (who both came to visit, epic no?) we started talking about fries somehow. And I wanted to compare different fries! However, since it was 10 PM we could only try fries from places that were still open. We ended up going to Arby's, Carl's Jr, McDonalds, and Wendy's. It was a lot of fun. (sure, there are still tons of fry places to try: five guys, chick-fil-a, in-n-out, etc) I think we need to define a rating system still, because everyone likes something different in their fries. I like firm and thick, and not too spicy. Some like their a little more spicy or a little more squishy. Some even like 'em crunchy (curly fries). So yeah! What's your favorite kind of fries?

still posting!

guess what! my catch up is over and I'm POSTING AGAIN! (aren't you proud of me?!)

now we just have to wait until next month. (heads up. posting lazy. don't expect anything from me.)

I have three quick bits of news.

1- I've been called as our ward's girls' camp specialist! AH! (since this year our stake isn't calling any directors. crazy i know. so essentially- i'm ward director... woot!) Teaching the Sunday School class with Chris has been amazing. We love all these kids to death and have a blast with it! We're all great friends (even on facebook where they get their reading assignments for the week)! So to get to be involved with girls' camp again (besides the fact that I love girls' camp with a passion and it's always felt like... i dunno... my place to really shine and feel the spirit more than anywhere else) with these girls I already love to death is super exciting! It sounds like the stake girls' camp is only going to be a weekend in February, but I'm gonna see if I can convince the yw pres to let our ward do a little more later in the summer.

2- I bought my first blow dryer. that's right. For all this hair, I've never had my own blow dryer. When I was little I used the one mom put in the downstairs bathroom for guests- but only for the warm air to heat my bed....then mom found out when I singed my blankets... and I wasn't allowed to take it out of the bathroom. But I've just always been an air-dry kinda girl. put it up in a towel, then let it down to brush and dry straight and natural. I'd blow dry in specific situations where I ran out of time but I typically don't worry about it. But when my hair froze (still air drying) once this month, and having thought about it for a while, I picked one up. I didn't even have it on the list (which is surprising, because I'm usually a follow the list in the store kinda girl. Unless I go to 'go shopping' which is not a 'run to the store' which I usually do) and was at Macey's (grocery store) of all places and walked down the 'beauty' isle really quickly to get to the eggs and saw this cute little pink travel size blow dryer. I bought it. Chris just laughed when he saw it. Though I bet he was surprised considering I run a lot of random stuff past him before purchasing. Now I just have to make sure he makes me hold up to the rule of no blow dryers in bed. hehehe.

3- I was reading friend's blogs today (cuz it's what I do. and why i'm posting) and Chris' friend Carl (who I will most likely link to many times- his blog is really thought-provoking, nerdy, fun, and well written) posted this and I just had to link it up for all of you! I commented there, but I got to thinking and now I have to say: it really makes me think how many people's talents go into things that we love. How many writers', directors', composers', choreographers', costumers', illustrators', programmers', crafters', chefs', etc work I totally love and never even think to find out who did all the work for my enjoyment, amazement, etc! I love so many things in tv, music, movies, online, books, food, etc that I can't even begin to thank all these people! So I thought to myself- I want to look up a composer today. Who composed my favorite movie soundtrack? I don't know. Well now I do. My favorite score is to the movie Stardust.

I'm typically a gal who enjoys music with lyrics. I'm a singer, what can I say. But the first time I saw this movie (which I totally adore!) I actively took note of the score! (this was more unusual before knowing Christopher who notes score more often than remembering some character's names! -a trait he learned at the Space Center, he says.) So, when I thought about the talent behind this beautiful music, I looked up the composer. His name is Ilan Eshkeri and he's done several things I've also enjoyed and never known! Crazy, right? It made me happy. I officially know his name, even if I can't pronounce it.

Suddenly I wanted to look up all these talented people. But... well that would take me forever. So I'll just say really quickly.

Bob Fosse (who did a lot of amazing work) choreographed White Christmas uncredited.

Oscar Brodney and Cid Ricketts Sumner wrote the Tammy movies.

Robin Preiss Glasser illustrated the Fancy Nancy books (and a few other awesome children's books, I'd noticed her art and been excited, but now I know her name). And there I have to make myself stop so I can do my stuff for today!

Lots of Loves from the newest Call household!