California vacay (cont.)

Check out my beach sunburn on my forehead!

Joy, right? But anyway...On our next day in the Bay Area, Tae + Rye + I joined up with Yuki + Toshi + Rena for a walking tour of San Francisco. Our tour guide explained how these work: people who love the city with a deep and abiding love volunteer (through the library, I believe) to give free historical tours to tourists and natives. Isn't that awesome?? 

The tour lasted for about two hours and we walked about one mile of distance, stopping frequently to hear stories related to the sights we saw. Here's our tour guide Spencer telling a story about newspaper rivalries and a sight to go with it:

And I mostly took pictures of plants like fuchsia and overgrown succulents. Cuz California grows cool plants.

We wrapped up our own tour by walking ourselves back to the car so that we could drive to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream. However, although that day had been incredibly warm--our tour guide called it the one warm day that San Francisco gets each year--it cooled off early, and I was freezing by the time we arrived for our treat. Yuki was so kind to treat us to whatever we chose, so I chose me the best hot chocolate I have ever had. If you are ever cold in San Francisco (which is typical), get yo'self some sea salt caramel Ghirardelli hot chocolate. Mmmmmmm.

Moving right along now to Sunday, which was the whole reason we even went on this trip. Cousin Tanya got married!! And it was one of the most scenic weddings ever, probably. I mean, look:

Beautiful people, beautiful venue, beautiful weather, and especially beautiful bride. Everything was beautiful! Have I said it enough yet? We loved celebrating with Tanya and Ashton, and--I'mma be honest here--I could not have been happier to try my first taste of Bluebell ice cream. Truly a momentous day.

We returned to the hotel after the wedding celebrations pretty tired but also super excited because the next day would bring the wonder of Google. Did you hear me?? GOOGLE, guys, like google.com! I have a fetish with Google about which I have blogged before, and fortunately I also have a cool cousin Caleb (alliteration unintended but neat) who works there. It's probably fate.

But we actually started the day with a visit to the Academy of Sciences, which was also pretty awesome, so I'll share some pics from there first. They have lots of science-y displays and toys + a planetarium show + an aquarium + an indoor rain forest + happiness. So you can see why it's awesome. 

I kind of obsessed over the rain forest because I was in plant heaven (+ butterflies, everywhere). I mean, who wouldn't want that display growing on their wall?! I know what you're thinking--did you only go to California to look at plants?--and I'm afraid that the answer is closer to yes than we would all like to admit. But most indoor plants grow naturally in tropical climates, so rain forest plants = house plants. It makes sense when you consider that indoor temperatures vary much less than outdoor temperatures for most of the world, excluding where? Well the equator, of course! So tropical plants just feel right at home inside in places where they would shrivel and die outside. Anyway. Back to the Academy.

The aquarium was a hit with the kiddos:

Look at Emerson finding Nemo and Dory! Adorable. I also taught him to say "anemone" and if I can ever figure out a good way to get a vertical video from phone to blog, I'll let you hear how adorable that was. 

And we went to the planetarium show, where we basically experienced a watered down version of my astronomy class last semester. I was underwhelmed and others were overwhelmed so that's weird. But we also heard a great joke:

Why is a moon rock tastier than an Earth rock?
It's a little meteor. 

[Except to make the joke truly accurate, you have to mumble "oid" at the end. Meteors have to still be flying through the atmosphere to be meteors, since once they hit Earth they become meteoroids. OH THE THINGS YOU LEARN.]

Anyway. Clearly I'm a little distracted by the science facts that want need to be expressed here, so since I've rambled about the Academy longer than planned, I'm going to go ahead and give Google + anything else I want to add about this trip the love they deserve in an upcoming post. Just you wait!


To be continued...(again)...

ALS + Ogden temple open house + other stuff

I made the grossest dinner in the world tonight. 

Well, I mean, it probably wasn't the very grossest. But it was inedible in its original form. I took one bite and promptly dumped half of it in the trash, telling myself that those ingredients were cheap and that I wouldn't miss them. Note to self: Next time you accidentally quadruple the dijon mustard, start over.


In other news, I got tagged for the ALS ice bucket challenge and I think I'm gonna skip it. As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong here), I can either donate $100 to the ALS foundation to help fund research, or I can dump a bucket of cold water on my head to raise awareness. I can't donate $100 if I want to buy groceries in the month of September, and I feel like awareness is rather raised without my help because this challenge has gone viral. I'm thinking of a compromise wherein I donate less and call it good? 

And I'm also thinking of skipping it. I dunno, maybe I'm just a jerk. That's probably it. Guilted donations don't feel very charitable to me, though. Cuz I'm a jerk?


In other other news, I have no clue what classes I'll be taking this semester, and school starts next Tuesday. Intro to Women's Studies or Marriage Enhancement? Intro to Folklore or Literacy for Disciplines? World Religions or Web Publishing? The only thing that is certain is that I'll be taking Math Ed Practicum because it is the only credit of any in this paragraph which I actually need to be able to graduate. I guess I could take a 4 credit semester...but I'd never forgive myself.


In other other other news (this is getting out of hand), I got sucked into a common homeschooling hashtag on Instagram the other day and opted to follow some of its more popular users. Because the more I get involved with the public school system through my major, the more I want to keep my kids out of it. Yikes...


And now since everything I've written here has been a little cynical and grouchy (one of Alyssa's top 10 reasons to not blog late at night), I'm going to wrap up with something much more uplifting. We visited the Ogden temple today! I had my doubts as to whether this building actually existed in real life because it is so perfect that every picture I have seen thus far looked animated. Even the ones I took while we were there made it look too perfect to exist on this planet. I have no words.

And also, we went in the little display tent at the end and had this gem taken by the sister missionaries and a projector:

See? That one definitely looks animated. But it's not. It's just a picture within the picture. Maybe I'm the only one who sees this animation thing happening...

In any case, we loved our visit to the temple this morning. The doctrines and covenants that we study and learn about inside the temple are some of my favorite ones in the church. Families can be together forever! Our Heavenly Father has a plan for His children! We can return to live with him again through covenant-making and -keeping! What a blessing it is to have this knowledge. My life would not be as happy nor as hopeful without it. I love temples. If you have any chance to walk through this temple while it is open to the public, go! Go now! Go and see what it's all about!


This is a weird post. Oh well.


Now I feel hypocritical for being non-charitable with the ALS thing and then preaching about temples (where we learn about charity) in the same post. I'mma go donate something. You win, conscience.

Start of summer

Okay, I realize that everyone's actually gearing up for school to start again in the next couple weeks, but Joseph was taking classes all summer long, and last week he finished them up, so we're now officially on our summer break! We don't have much planned since our work schedules are not conducive to nice long day trips, but we did party pretty hardy last week.

On Tuesday night (Joe's reading day), I got off of work a little bit early and we headed to Salt Lake for an outdoor concert featuring Toto and Michael McDonald. Toto recently became Joe's second favorite band (you haven't heard of his first favorite, probably), so when he saw that they were coming to SLC, he asked if we could splurge on tickets. And we did! Happy reading day to us, basically.

Quick side note: I have blogged about Toto before. Remember this post, when I fell in love with "Hold the Line"?? I think it's hilariously ironic that I was, like, really excited for this concert with these guys I once laughed at for their hair. 

So anyway, we drove toward some stormy looking skies, listening to Toto all the way, stood in a long line to get into Red Butte Gardens (I love the word butte), and snagged a nice grassy spot with our trashy car blankets. And then 10 minutes before showtime, it mega-rained. Ugh. We were pretty wet and cold, even though some really nice people near us shared their umbrella with us. But the rain passed and we enjoyed the concert mucho mucho! Plus, GUESS WHAT. You know how Toto sings that song "Africa" that blesses the rains? WE BLESSED THE RAINS and it was downright magical. Hilariously, the rain stopped right after they sang that song. Rain voodoo...

Pics or it didn't happen.

Laughing because we don't know how cold and wet we're about to be + Joe's wearing a Toto shirt:

Stormy skies + the venue:

One of the best sunsets in the world + cold and wet me (Harry Potter blanket, of course):

So that was Tuesday. We got home really late, which meant Joe got about 3 hours of sleep before he had to go to his early morning job. But that didn't stop us from staying out late again! By about noon on Wednesday, Joe had finished all of his final exams, so we celebrated again, this time with an outdoor movie at the Scera Shell. Can you guess what movie?

If you guessed Catching Fire, you're correct. And for some reason, watching this movie in the wide open outdoors was creepy for me. I mean, I wasn't expecting to get stabbed, but I wouldn't have been surprised if cannons went off and I saw faces projected in the sky, you know? So that was an interesting side effect of the outdoor venue.

Of course, this gave us another really late night, so then we spent the rest of our week at our normal activities. Sleeping, eating, working, and Peaks for the two of us. Practicing for him. Blogging for me. You understand. Oh! and we did a puzzle at some point. Mmmm I love puzzles.

Okay I got a lil off track in that last paragraph so I'll just wrap it up now. We are enjoying our late summer nights! We'll worry about school starting when we reach Labor Day or something. 

"Atlas" by Coldplay

We went to see the second Hunger Games movie at the Scera Shell this week, and it reminded me that this song exists. When the song was first released, I fell in love hard and fast, but then we lost contact with each other (yes, me and the song). When it came on as background music for the credits, I almost freaked out about it cuz HELLO LOVE*, I've missed you.

On repeat ever since. 

The video is also my jam, which I rarely say about songs. So that's cool too.



*But Joseph is my real, true love. Lest there be any confusion.

California vacay!

As mentioned earlier, I recently went to California for a week with my fam bam bam (read: family). I really just wanna share some pics and maybe say some stuff, so here we go.

These first pics are from the best highway rest stop in the continental US. (I say continental because I would be willing to bet a few bucks that Hawaii may have some cool rest stops, too.) After driving hours through hot and monotonous Nevada, this part of the drive was very welcome.

I didn't take any other photos for the rest of our driving day, but we arrived safe and sound in the Bay Area to some seriously delicious BBQ'd food and plenty of laughs with family. My family is good people. 

The next morning, we went to the beach! I used to hate the beach. Then, we went to Mexico for Christmas one time, and I learned that beaches can be warm (something all those California and Oregon beaches had never bothered to mention), and I decided that I might could like the beach. This year, on this beach day, I liked the beach. It was warm, it was sunny, the guys played football, we all poked anemones and held snails, Mariah was bitten by a crab, the sand burned our feet as we hiked, etc. It was my favorite beach day yet!

This day was great because we also were able to meet up with our friends from Japan, which was a happy coincidence that has now happened two years in a row. We love spending time with Yuki and her family, but since we have yet to visit Japan, we sure appreciate their summer visits to the US!

And no beach day would be complete without jumping pictures. It's a Shirley family tradition! But I'm always far more entertained by the landing pictures than I am by the ones where we're all in the air. Here, you can see what I mean:

We're flying effortlessly...and then we're landing hard. Work it, Mariah!

Speaking of Mariah, look at these cute pictures where she's holding babies:

After the beach, we stopped by the It's-It factory store. My mom loveloveloves It's-It ice cream sandwiches (two oatmeal cookies + vanilla ice cream + chocolate coating) and the factory store was literally two minutes from our hotel, so a quick trip over there was inevitable. And of course, everyone needed ice cream, so we overwhelmed them with our large group right before closing time (oops). It was the perfect follow-up to the perfect beach day.

After that, we didn't have anything scheduled, but we didn't particularly want to retire to our hotel rooms while it was still light outside. We GPS'd our way over to the nearest city park and just chilled for a while (literally...we all were quite burned after the unexpectedly sunny day at the beach). It was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip! But I only took pictures of Ensley, and they all turned out blurry, so...just know that we had fun there.

Aaaand this is enough pictures for today, so.

To be continued...

Stuff I learn 6

:: Chickens can hold their heads perfectly still in space even if you wiggle their bodies around. This guy can explain why, but even if you don't care why, you should watch the video to see how hilarious it looks when this chicken performs her best trick:



Isn't that awesome?? Cousin Ashton told us about this and then informed us that apparently people have used chickens to film scenes that take place on boats in choppy water. Tie a camera to a chicken's head and they'll keep the camera steady for you! It's brilliant, really. And hilarious. (Okay, that last link is a joke, but searching "chicken stead..." brings up "chicken steadicam" automatically, so at least a few people have really played with this.)

:: Apparently you can rent state parks passes from many public libraries across Utah?? Except in my research on the topic I haven't found any mention of this feature later than 2011, so....maybe not. But you used to could! Either way, I am definitely calling my local library before I ever hike Stewart Falls again because I just hate paying to park up there.

:: While we were in California, my super cool cousin Caleb took us on a tour of Google's campus because he works there. And at one point, we were all enjoying some Google couches and foosball cricket when some guys came through the lobby we were in and chatted with us a for a second. After they left, Caleb asked if we knew who that was and we were all like, "uh...nope." Turns out it was Vint Cerf, the father of the internet! And this sounds like a brag that I met him but I didn't actually say a single word to him, so I'm not really gonna claim that. Buuuuut I did learn suddenly and permanently who invented the internet. I shall never forget.

STUFF. LEARNED. I love learning.

Glory days

Today, I cleaned out the part of my closet that holds (held, I guess) all of my academic awards from my high school days, and whoa did it feel like a return to the glory days. It reminded me of these two YouTube bookmarks that I have kept since I ran into them a few years after graduating:




As musical theater goes, we weren't exactly top notch. Of course, it's not like we practiced the theater bit very often, since these are the only two choreographed pieces I ever performed as a member of this choir (that I can remember, anyway). BUT planning these numbers as a group and performing them on concert night was a stinking blast, even for the girl who always preferred accompanying.

So lemme just bask for a moment in the warmth of the glory days, mmkay?

Ahhh...


Okay, I think that's all I needed. If you need me tomorrow, I'll be discarding the plaques and certificates making reference to my GPA and debating whether I'll ever need hard copy proof of my test scores ever again. Should be fun.

Happy Thursday, folks!

From the draft archives: "Note to self"

I need to remember this in all of my walks of life, but probably very most when I'm driving.


Image source: a Google image search takes me to Dallas Clayton, who apparently writes children's books. Check out this Pinterest board for some similarly adorable poems from the same guy.

Journal entry: 31 July 2014

I took a little California vacation for half of last week and half of this week. While it was fun and relaxing and great to get away for a bit, I sure missed my husband. I may or may not write more about vacationing alone later, but for now I'll just say that these last couple days have convinced me that I much prefer being home with my love over being gone without him.

On a normal Wednesday and Thursday, we would probably eat normal food and watch episodes of House in the evenings to entertain ourselves. We might would gallivant a bit on Thursday afternoon since neither of us has work (well, Joe usually has one guitar lesson to teach, but...that's only 30 minutes of the day), but it would mostly involve errands we would need to accomplish anyway. OR we would stay home so Joe could practice and I would blog. Or something. We're homebodies. We like it that way.

BUT. Since I got home, we've been enjoying each other's company like never before.

Last night, I asked Joe if he had any great ideas for the chicken I was thawing in the fridge. Normally, he would probably say that anything sounded good; but yesterday, he made a request! It is so much easier to make dinner off of a request than it is to make dinner out of thin air. So we had sweet and sour chicken + rice + cauliflower. I was happy for the request, and he was happy to have the dinner he wanted. Win-win.

Then, Joe requested a treat for the evening. I had wanted to make him something to snack on before I left for CA, but I never got around to it and just bought him some snacks instead. He cashed in on that small mention I had made before leaving and requested some chocolate chip cookies. Since I'm a sucker for baked goods, I hopped on board. Normally, this would be primo practicing time for Joseph, but last night he chose to sit in the kitchen and keep me company while I baked. And no surprise here, but I learned quickly that baking is infinitely more fun with company around. It was another win-win since I helped him delete a virus off of his computer in between baking cycles. 

So dinner and dessert together was already more exciting than sitting and watching House. But today we basically jumpstarted an early weekend because...why not? Joe's one Thursday lesson was cancelled, so we had all afternoon with nothing to do. When I got home from work, I ate lunch and we headed to Seven Peaks to see if our POAPs were expired yet since we got them sometime around this month last year. They're still good, so we spent a few hours on the lazy river, in the wave pool, and in the hot tubs. I don't know how to swim, so Joe gave me a little lesson on floating on the river and a longer lesson on actual swimming in the wave pool. I improved! 

On our way out of Peaks, we stopped by the office to ask when our POAPs actually expire. LO AND BEHOLD they don't expire until January! Apparently, our 6 month delay on actually picking up our POAP cards (as opposed to just being lazy and using our paper receipt) paid off in some strange way. I might would feel like we had scammed them on accident, but they scammed us because we were supposed to get gift cards with our POAP order and we never did. Whatevs. We'll be back allllllll summer long. And we'll be mini-golfing through January. Free date nights!

We came home, dried off while catching up on some funny social media posts, and ate an easy egg dinner. I think I may have caught a cold, so Joe pitched in and made his own dinner to ease my load. I still made my own because I'm finicky. Then we settled in for some House-watching and snuggling on the couch.

I guess this still sounds like normality, and it is pretty close to normality. What's really struck me since I got back is how good of friends we really are. I mean, we're married and we're stuck like glue, so we spend lots of time together. But spending time apart reminded me how much that time together matters! It helps us to understand each other's needs and wants. It keeps us on the same page for our short- and long-term hopes and dreams. It reminds us that we're both happy with where we're at and what we have. It reminds us that we're lucky to have each other, and we're lucky to like each other. That time is good for the soul and it's good for our friendship. And that time feels so much sweeter when there's been a shortage of it.

Sometimes it's good to get away from the routine of life for a bit, but it is always good to get back in that same routine. I told Mom when we got home that my favorite part of vacation is always coming back home. Home is good, routine is good, life is good. Why leave when it's so good? (I always have to convince myself that leaving and growing and stretching is good, too, to answer this question.)

Anyways, I'm off to sleep in my own bed and love every second of it. Good night.