do you like pina coladas?

and getting caught in the rain?
well, i don't like either.
but we went on a walk to the grocery store in some very lovely weather.
warm night. light breeze.
then we walked home. and got drenched.
seriously folks, flash flood drenched.
soaked all the way through and dripping from our noses and hair.
but we laughed the whole way home.
i love my husby...who makes torrential downpours a little more fun.

just because

i love my lamp.

also, i'm feeling down today. which happens once in a while. and I think it's ok to talk about. (sometimes i find myself thinking that so many other people have better lives than i do, because their blogs make their lives look amaaaaazing. and that's not real life.)
we've had a string of bad luck lately. and it's just that. bad luck. I think I try to find blame for everything that ever happens. It's because in my mind, their has to be a reason. It's just how I make sense of things. It's logical to me. Actions have consequences. One thing causes another. BUT, when I can't find a logical reason for the bad things that happen to us, I tend to wonder what it is that we did to deserve this. For example, remember when I was having a bad day? You should know it was because of the following reasons:
*we got towed, yet again, in the same week. TWO TIMES in one week, people. When we were trying so hard...it couldn't be avoided. What more can you do when you read the street signs seventeen times and debate for a half an hour whether it is ok to park there?
*along with the towing, we got THREE tickets that same week...for parking. (is there a criminal record for street parking? because we probably have one by now.)
*miscommunications between wade's school and wells fargo caused our loan money to get rejected. then we fought them and got it back. then the money still never came. more miscommunications and wells fargo took the money back as a payment. so we fought again. and now we're still waiting...and it's very unsettling.
*and the one that is bothering me the most happened today and I just can't get over it. I'm the ward chorister. I lead the music in sacrament meeting. It might not seem like a big deal, but I cried for a week when I got this calling. I'm deathly afraid of standing in front of people! It took me 3 months to get to the point where I could lead the music without my hand shaking and feeling like I was going to pass out. (those who know me well, know this is a VERY big deal to me.) It was just something I finally had to overcome. And I'm not going to say that there aren't times when this still happens to me. Well, someone at church today felt it necessary to come up to me and tell me that I was "making the whole congregation uncomfortable" by where I was standing and by my "lack of communication" with the pianist. He continued on for a long time, telling me everything that I should do differently, and I just stared at him in awe. SERIOUSLY? and then I walked away from him without saying a word, and burst into tears. Never mind that I have never met this man in my life and never spoken a word to him. But apparently this has been going on for weeks now, and he just couldn't keep quiet any longer. There are so many things I could say to defend myself right now. But it's pointless. I don't need to defend myself or justify my actions or the way I do things. It's what works best for me and the pianist and he doesn't know me or my situation or how hard it is for me to do. So I'm choosing to ignore it. But that doesn't mean that I'm not deeply offended and embarrassed.

and so, I'm feeling down. but I'm also learning that there doesn't have to be a reason for everything. I'm not being punished. There are trials we must go through to learn lessons and become better people. But I also think that it's not always like that. I think there are people who offend us, parking tickets that make us mad, and miscommunications that mess everything up. and it's not anyone's fault. Life just...happens.

"...our Heavenly Father and the Savior live and that They love all humanity. The very opportunity for us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of Their infinite love. God gave us the gift of living in mortality so that we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, which is eternal life. Then our spirits will be changed. We will become able to want what God wants, to think as He thinks, and thus be prepared for the trust of an endless posterity to teach and to lead through tests to be raised up to qualify to live forever in eternal life." -Henry B. Eyring

hope

red sox

is it bad if i only like red sox games because of the kettle corn and singing "Sweet Caroline" during the seventh inning stretch? if it is...then pretend I went to this game because I LOVE BASEBALL! Wade is a bigger fan than I am...he already bought the baby a Wally the Green Monster stuffed animal. really though, I find these games to be quite entertaining. The fans here are ridiculously obsessed and its fun to be part of the madness (sometimes). We decked out in our red sox gear and had a great date night at Fenway Park.

oh the joys

today I walked out to the curb where we parked our car last night.

only...our car wasn't there.
I thought to myself, "Am I losing my mind? I swear we parked here."
and then I saw what we apparently missed last night:

$202 dollars later...
and some investigation as to where exactly they take your car

we had our car back.
remember yesterday when i said, "we looooooove it!"? i lied.
we do love having a car. but on days like this, we basically hate it.
oh the joys of city living and street (parallel) parking.

crane beach

once upon a time, before we had a car (we looooooooove it! more to come...), we took the commuter rail to Ipswich. This involved running to catch a train (i feel like you should know that I am smacking a mosquito that keeps landing on the computer screen and i am very distracted) and much people watching. Wade has long been obsessed with Ipswich. Why? I have no clue. I think he just likes to say, "Ipswich." So it was a dream come true to finally travel here. Until he got there and his poor world was shattered. Ipswich was not everything he dreamed it would be. And now I don't have to listen to him beg to move there anymore. ANYWAY the real reason we went was not for the town, but for the beach. Crane Beach. We layed in the sun all day. and even got in the water like twice. for 3 second intervals. It's cold, people. Try as we might, we cannot find a beach to meet our california beach expectations. But this one got close, in that it had sand. We're finding that these beaches have their own beauty though and we were quite fond of this one.

(this is wade's beard that he grew for a loooong time. to make his "man trip" across the country with his friend official. i will never understand boys. never. more about that to come as well. I'll let him tell it though.)

bad day

and this song keeps running through my head:

"You said, 'I know that this will hurt.'
But if I don't break your heart, things will just get worse.
If the burden seems too much to bear,
remember the end will justify the pain it took to get us there."
-relient k

ice cream gone wrong

once upon a time, we went to a place called Smolak Farms. Wade wanted ice cream. It was a sweltering hot day. It was fitting that we should get ice cream. They piled it high. 3 scoops high. Too bad the cone was very small. Too small for 3 scoops of ice cream. Too bad it was very hot. Too hot for ice cream to stay solid. It melted quickly, and so did Wade's temper. He was very unhappy about his messy predicament. And I just laughed at him, the whole time he ate it. Because I got my ice cream in a cup.

washington dc

The White House
(there were snipers on the roof! yikes!)

remember that time jetblue messed up my flight? Well we got a good deal on some flights and decided to go to dc. lucky for us, we have some great friends who were living there for the summer and who were kind enough to let us stay with them and be our personal tour guides around the city. (love you, brooke and heather!) I've never quite been a history person... I must confess that it bores me just a little. I'm sure many of you could say the same about english literature, so we're even. Anyway, it was so awesome to see all the sites and museums and Wade quite enjoyed himself. He could spend DAYS in one museum. Me? I'm done in 10 minutes. My highlight of the trip was meeting up with my long lost friends.

(fyi...I have a horrible memory. please do not mock me if I don't know the
proper names of these buildings ok?)

The Capitol


Heather and Wade...doing what they do best. Being smart.
and talking about smart things. such as presidents engraved in stone.


Library of Congress


The lovely Heather and I, sitting on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial


Does this man look familiar? (not the one in green) Well, he should. and he's famous.
because he's in the museum of portraiture.


The Jefferson Memorial (my favorite, I might add, even if I did have to trek
across the entire city to see it)


World War II Memorial. Proud to be a Utahn, in case you can't tell.

Wade at the World War II Memorial. He is also proud to be a Utahn. He just
doesn't show it as well.


We took a long walk. And saw the Potomac river...

and somehow ended up in Virginia.

California Tortilla

We failed miserably at documenting that Brooke was with us (that...and every picture
I have with her is hideous). So here is proof.
It seems that she likes riding escalators.