I'm awkward...

I just have to get this off my chest. I have been thinking about this for a while, and I have come to a conclusion that I'm just awkward. Let me explain.

I went to a ward party today without Jonathan, because he is Minnesota. At one point, I was talking to two married men, their wives were somewhere else so it was just us three. It was outside, and there were lots of people around, and it was just a friendly conversation. I found myself, when I realized that I was the only female in the conversation that I got super uncomfortable. I don't know what it is, but I feel that way whenever I try to have a normal conversation with a man when I'm alone, and it isn't in a group conversation.

There is one particular guy in our ward who we have become pretty good friends with (along with his wife, and three kids). He is a very friendly, excitable, and welcoming person. He has a wonderful relationship with his wife, and he also isn't afraid to make conversation with anyone, including women in the ward.

*Side note* I'm probably over sensitive because almost my entire married life I have been in a ward where I'm surrounded by people who have also been married for less than a few years, and who are also probably trying to figure out this new way of making relationships... as a married person.

Anyway... Like I said, he is very welcoming, and wants to make sure I feel at home in the ward, and wants to make sure we're on friendly terms. He's one of those people that his personal bubble is a bit smaller than everyone else, and he lights up when he catches someone's eye and he can get a chance to talk to them. (Have I painted a good picture of him? He's very great, and not awkward at all, just very friendly.)

but... he makes me feel uncomfortable! Every time he walks over I feel like I need to grab Jonathan's hand, and make sure he's part of the conversation too... I don't know why! Probably because almost any male interaction I had (from the time I was about 12, until I started dating Jonathan) all I did was flirt. Especially when I got out of high school, it didn't matter if he was a few years younger than me or ten years older than me, if he was single (and decent), I was flirting with him. I did that even with my guy friends, that I didn't have any interest in.

So my conclusion? When I was 12, and starting to try to flirt with boys, I was awkward. I didn't really get comfortable with flirting till I was probably around 18. Since it took me about 6 years to get the hang of flirting, I'm sure I can expect it to take at least that long to not be awkward when talking to men as a married woman. So I have been in this new phase of life (married, and no longer flirting) for two years, I can expect in about four more years that I can be comfortable and confidant when I talk to men, single or otherwise.

That's all. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Washington DC and Family

This last weekend we went to DC and spent some time with my family. We had a really good time, and everything worked out better than expected! My favorite part was just being with my family, I just love them. We saw most of what there is to see on the Mall that we could in one day. We saw the Air and Space Museum, Native American Museum, Museum of Natural History, and American History Museum. We also ate at We the Pizza (very good, I highly recommend it!) saw the Library of Congress, The Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, and the WWII, Korean, and Vietnam war monuments.

It was a full day of walking, talking, eating and having fun! Some of my favorite things were the Library of Congress, that building is probably one of the most ornate, and decked out buildings I have ever seen! They don't make buildings like that anymore. It was so beautifully thought out, and executed! I really loved it. I also enjoyed the precious stones exhibit in the Natural History Museum (what girl wouldn't). I saw one of the largest (and rarest) diamonds in the world. It is a blue diamond and it's ridiculous. There was a ton of people at that particular exhibit, so I didn't get to admire it as long as I would have liked (actually I probably got to look at it for less than 5 seconds). Some of the other gems they had there were incredibly beautiful as well.

Since there were so many people there, it was cramped, we were all going around in a line, kind of like a herd of cattle, and at one point I felt someone trying to push their way through to see some of the Gems. I look behind me and there was an Asian girl pushing her way through, then she continued to extend her arms, and snap some photos. She had no personal bubble, and was pretty aggressive in how she was getting her pictures. We all looked at each other and tried not to laugh. It was pretty funny. It's just interesting to me how there are some people from different parts of the world that don't understand the concept of a line. I have come across a few different ethnicities that just don't understand that... I find it kind of humorous, and try to remember that they aren't trying to be rude, that's just how they do it in their culture.

I also really loved the section in the American History Museum that had all of the First Lady's dresses from each Inauguration Ball. It was fun to see that the dresses either embodied the style of the time, or the personality of the First Lady. I loved seeing all of the beautiful gowns (of course I did). Also in the same museum they had a touching exhibit on all of the wars that were fought by the U.S. and they had the Star Spangled Banner, I also loved those two!

My favorite memorial was probably the WWII (of the war memorials), and either the Lincoln or the FDR (of the presidents). I just love the quotes they used, and the feeling of these memorials.

Anyway... the moral of the story is, we had a great time! I was so grateful that Matt and Ash, and Jeff could make it. I was also super bummed that Dave and Jenny couldn't come.

Maternity Temple Dress

This week, my major goal was to get the pattern made for my maternity temple dress. I had this brilliant idea (back when I was pregnant, over a year ago) to make a maternity temple dress. But as I sat on the floor, looking at my pattern pieces the other day, I thought, do I really want to make a temple dress? Why? And as I thought about it, all of my reasons didn't hold much water. 1) I wanted one because I didn't want a dress that 1/5 of every other woman in the temple was wearing. As I have thought about it, that's not the point of wearing a temple dress at all, the point is to wear something that covers your body and doesn't bring attention to yourself. 2) I wanted a maternity dress to wear that didn't look like a bag. Well, in Indiana, I'll only be going to the temple once a month, so I'll only really use it maybe 3 or 4 times, if that. Plus, I don't really have access to friends like I did in Provo to help me make sure the fit is good, and that I don't make it too big, or too small. The dress I have now really would work with a pregnant belly, so I think I'll just stick with it.

I'm also finding out that I may not love sewing as much as I thought I did. Well, sewing intricate projects, like clothing. I still plan on making a few things. I still plan on making curtains for my new apartment, and making a diaper bag, since cute and affordable ones don't exist (or they are ridiculously hard to find) among other things.

I bought the fabric already, which really made me wonder if I should just do it anyway, but I can just save it for blessing clothing for my future kids.

I did it! I did it!!!

I cut my hair today... and when I say that I mean I got my hair cut today! I really love it! The lady that did it didn't style it as I probably would have, so I'll have to take more pictures when I style it. This is definitely an option though, I like this, but it's not super spiky, like I thought it would be. I do love it though, and I can't wait to go to DC and spend a lot of time outside and see how much cooler it is :)







 

Is thinking about it for ten years long enough?

I have this friend (actually, she's the daughter of my previous bishop) who has the coolest hair in the world! I have wanted to cut my hair like hers ever since I met her. Here's a picture...



(isn't she just beautiful?)

I just love her hair! I always have. Well, I have had a stronger desire for a couple weeks to cut my hair off (correction... I have since I was 14, but now I am getting the guts to). Sadie (my sister in law) mentioned to me the other day that she wants to cut her hair in a pixi cut... SHUT UP! SO DO I! Her desire has really catapulted my desire as well (not like I am a copy cat, but if she can do it, I can do it... right?) Jonathan was on board till he realized how many hair cuts that would take to maintain. I agree, I really don't want to pay $20 or more every 4 to 6 weeks to cut it again.

but... I had a brilliant idea... What if I get a super long extension to my clippers and I could just cut it myself? I don't think the front would be too difficult with just scissors, but I would be afraid to go at the back without a guide. I have been asking just about every hair dresser friend I have and half of them say it would work as long as I texturize it afterwords. I want to SO BAD! So I just might. We'll see.

Fun Weekend!

We had a really fun weekend this weekend. On Friday we went to one of Jonathan's coworkers places for a barbecue, we didn't stay too late since everyone was drinking, and we were tired. But I really like how much of a camaraderie there is with all of his coworkers. They often spend a lot of time together, which never happened with Jonathan's last internship. I'm a fan.

Saturday we didn't have anything planned, so I finished my dress that I have been working on. I don't think I mentioned that I was working on one, the goal was to make a loosly fitting dress so that I could wear it during that awkward stage of pregnancy when I start showing but don't want people to know that I'm pregnant. Well, I finished it a couple of weeks ago, and put it on and I looked like a pioneer, or an Amish person... not really the look I was going for. I was trying to make it so that I didn't have to put a zipper in it, but it turns out that fabric that doesn't stretch made too loose looks like a pillow case when worn... who knew? I had some ideas of how to fix it, but after putting so much time and effort into the dress to not have it work is really discouraging; so I took a break. I picked it back up this week and started unpicking, yesterday I really got into it and I finished it (including putting a zipper in without a zipper foot! Not the easiest thing)! I'm still a little self concious, that it might look slightly pioneer-ish, but I wore it today anyway, and I got a few compliments. That boosted my confidence in it's cuteness. I needed those compliments especially since I don't have a full length mirror to self evaluate before I go out somewhere... (I'll post pictures, if I can figure it out)

Then last night we decided to make homemade pizza! We had a good time topping our pizzas. There are a few things that kids love to eat and usually grow out of when they get older. This was true for me except for a few things, Hawaiian Pizza, and double chocolate chip muffins from Costco. So, with that being said, I made Hawaiian, and Jonathan made pepperoni. (side note: They didn't have pineapple tidbits at Walmart so I got crushed, and I am now in love. I can have pineapple in every bite!) As we were waiting for our pizza to cook, Jonathan found some scraps from my dress and made himself a ninja head band. Naturally, he made me one... then the discovery hit, "we're ninjas and we're eating pizza? Let's be Ninja Turtles!" He was Michael-Angelo and I was Donatello because I was wearing purple. We had a good time wearing our head bands and trying to eat like turtles, (it didn't last long because the pizza was hot, and it was hard to hold).

I'm so glad that we have so much fun together, I kinda like it.

[caption id="attachment_80" align="alignnone" width="225"] Before: You can tell on my face that I'm not happy with it[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_81" align="alignnone" width="225"] After: Much better![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_86" align="alignnone" width="300"] our Ninja Turtle high five (our fingers split apart at the last second[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_89" align="alignnone" width="300"] MMM... Full, happy bellies![/caption]

Well, July 4th came and went

Sometimes if I don't prepare myself mentally for something, it just comes and goes almost without me realizing it. That's how I feel the 4th went for me. It was also very different than my traditional July 4th.

We had a really good time though, in the morning we got up to go to the Athens County Parade. This parade was a bit different than I'm used to. If you took out all of the fire trucks and political campaigners ("Re-elect so-and-so for mayor!", or "elect so-and-so for police chief") there realistically might have been ten different entries, three of which were beauty queens, one was a "vote for Obama!" group, and another one was a "conserve water" group. Needless to say, I was quite underwhelmed. We did get a stick of fresh rosemary, so that's cool!

Later that day we had a family over who still doesn't have power. They brought a salad, and we made hamburgers, french fries, and apple crisp. We played lots of games, and had a good time. Since Jonathan had work the next morning, we decided not to go to the fireworks (they were about twenty minutes away) but we started walking to a concert in the park (they do that every Wednesday, and it's pretty fun) but it was so hot, and I was afraid of overheating, especially since I had already overheated earlier in the day. We went home, got ready for bed and went to sleep. That was our July 4th! We had fun, but it was really different, and it made me miss my family a lot!

Side note*

Today I have been on the computer for over 3 hours. It was kind of nice to not have the option of getting on the internet to waste time.

The power, the power... Who's got the Power?

Friday night as we were eating dinner our lights kept flickering on and off. Jonathan thought it was someone messing with their power, which was affecting ours. Then we realized it was really dark outside (around 7 or so) and to our surprise the sky was black and then it started raining... then lightning (and thunder of course) and then hail... Jonathan thought it was super cool and wanted to go outside to watch it, and I told him he couldn't. There was a tornado watch issued down in Wellston (about half hour away) and I wasn't about to have Jonathan be outside when something blew over. Surprisingly, I was quite nervous, I don't often get nervous in thunder storms. This one was the most intense one I have ever been through though. Thankfully the storm blew over fairly quickly, but it took our power with it (good thing that we already planned to play games that night). It was still light enough to play a few rounds of skip-bo (three to be exact, and I won two out of the three games... no biggy :) ) then we went to bed since it was too dark to do anything else. Side note: I got out our huge flash light only to realize that it was out of batteries... oops. The next morning we were expecting to wake up with power, nope. So we got the milk out of the fridge and hoped we could finish it off (but it was three quarters full, so needless to say we didn't finish it). We had planned to go up to Columbus anyway to go to the temple, it turned out to be perfect because Columbus had power, and food. We got food, then went to the temple. When we were driving home we decided that it would be better to stop at a fast food place and eat dinner and try to fill up (since we needed to start our fast) rather than try to scrounge around and eat cold, uncooked food. By the time we thought of this idea, all the restaurants were closed because there wasn't any power there either. So we ate at home, I ate enough food, and Jonathan said he did too.

The next morning we woke up and had power!! I don't think I have ever been so excited to see a light turn on with a flip of the switch! We got ready for church in luxury (with lights) and went to church to find that a good portion of the ward still didn't have power. As we were going to church we passed another church that had a sign up saying "Come cool off with us, we have the power". As I thought of that, I was grateful to know that we really do have "the power", the Power of God, and we don't need to fear.

When we got home our power was off again! That was disappointing. We did normal Sunday stuff, and then went to a friends house for dinner (we made half of it at their place), with two other families that were there without power as well. It was so nice to sit in an air conditioned home, and eat hot food! We played some games and had a good time.  As we were driving home, I was really hoping we had our power back on. I was starting to complain about how inconvenient it was to have to live without power. Then I rebuked myself and realized that of all the aftermath from a natural disaster (which this is) not having power is probably one of the best options to live without. We still had a safe place to live, with clean water (hot water even!), and we were protected from the elements. We weren't in need of any of the basic needs, we never even had to eat anything that was unpleasant. We also were protected during the storm, we didn't have a tree come through our window or crash into our walls.

As we have driven through Athens there are so many trees blown over, there's one that is super surprising, it's HUGE and it was pulled up from the roots, (just to give you an idea of how big it was, we saw some people taking pictures next to it, and the uprooted roots are taller than a full grown person, the trunk is probably around 4 feet thick).

Now we have power (obviously, since I'm on the internet) and we're so grateful! Our milk even stayed cold through all of this, and our frozen meat is still good. We are grateful for this wake-up call to get our 72 hour kits updated, and make sure we have enough food and supplies to be self reliant.