Pay it Forward

My SIL turned me on to this great idea for a blog post.

I agree to do something for the first 3 people who leave comments at this post if you agree to do a post like this and "pay it forward" to 3 people from your blog. Sorry, this is open to bloggers only and not to blurkers. Although my SIL recommended that you watch the movie Pay it Forward as it is really good (and I concur); I implore you to read the book of the same name. The book is better, and different from the movie. I liked them both.

Another insight into me.

Thanks to Skye and Laurie  for posting this and giving me another blog post without much work.  Color denotes completion.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a Praying Mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables 
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train (more times than I wish to count)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked (that's how you got a taxi on my mission)
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michaelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in movie
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar (and yes, its really THAT good)
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car (but we get brand new cars every few months as part of B.A.R. job.)
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Talked your way out of a ticket

38!  Yep.  Though I am somewhat disappointed, I think there are 10 or so I would still like to do.

100 books

And, no, I haven't read them all. I'm a little disappointed in the few that I have read, but to be fair, I don't normally read fiction of my own volition. I read politics, biography, and non-fiction. Fiction books down there on my widget are usually group reads or classics that I have never read and think ought to be consumed while in this life.

The National Endowment for the Arts has listed their top 100 books. They estimate the average adult has read only six. Thanx Crazy Mom of Six for posting this on your blog to begin with.

I have read the ones in color.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling (all 7!)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

That's 17 I have read, and a few more that I have on my shelf to read. #99 I have not read because I read James and the Giant Peach and became sure I would not read any other thing Roald Dahl wrote.

I think that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich should also be on that list.

Update: Apr 2013 I have read 29 of those listed here and Persuasion by Jane Austen has become my all-time favorite book.  I am sure I will read many more of these, but I am not convinced that I will read all of them.

4-4-4 Tag

This is from the summer we spent in VA. This is from the little trip we took to the Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach. It was late afternoon on a Saturday in May.

These are the rules:
1. Go to your pictures.
2. Upload the fourth picture from the fourth folder.
3. Post.

Iff'n you feel like it do it again.

Prom Pictures

See, Landee, I am going to do that great post you suggested about Prom photos.  So here are all my great prom photos:

Yep. That's all of them.  Look closely, you may even see that I half didn't care about going to prom.  I didn't have a boyfriend.  I didn't know any boys interested enough in going to the dance to even consider taking me.  Most of my friends weren't going. I didn't want to have to buy or make a dress (see my earlier post about me and finding dress clothes that I like).  I didn't have money for a new dress even if I made it.   I didn't have some anti-prom party like some of my friends did.  By the time my Senior Dinner Dance (our senior prom) I really had no desire to engage in all that headache for one night that didn't even promise to be really fun.  

In fact,  the only thing that I ever did for prom was get my friend a date.  She had never been asked to any school dances up to this point and this was going to be her last chance.  I knew she really wanted to go and liked this guy who liked me (that too, was not reciprocal) .  They were both seniors and I was a sophomore (and barely 16).   I convinced this guy to take my friend (and even helped him devise a way to ask her)  before he could even dream of asking me.  He didn't have a car or even a driver's license, so I had to find somebody else for them to go with.  At least when I asked this other guy to double with them,  I didn't have to find him a date!  

They all had a good time, and her parents and I explained ourselves (they were in on the secret) after the event was over.  

Photo mosaic

Here are the instructions: 1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. 2. Pick one image, the one you like best. 3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answer
1. What is your first name? Alexandra
2. What is your favorite food? Mexican
3. What high school did you go to? Provo High School
4. What is your favorite color? Green
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Matthew McConaughey
6. What is your favorite drink? Milk
7. What is your dream vacation? Hawaii
8. What is your favorite dessert? Cheesecake
9. What did you want to be when you grow up? Other than a mom, a thinker
10. What do you love most in life? Being with great friends
11. What is one word that describes you? unique
12. What is your flickr name? I don't have one. So, I searched "unknown"

1. Alexandra Park (2) - Colour IR, 2. Vegetarian Tacos even meat-eaters will love!, 3. football field, 4. underground tunnel, 5. Untitled, 6. the Army of the Brave Milk Bottles, 7. Blue degradée, 8. Chocolate Chip Cheesecake with Raspberries, 9. thinking up a storm, 10. My Buddy, 11. Unique, 12. Bridge to Nowhere - Mackinac Bridge in Thanksgiving Blizzard; cable study.

A fun tag

I saw this on someone else's blog and thought it would be fun to do while I wait for B.A.R. and my family to arrive

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was in the MTC waiting to go to Russia on my mission.  Wow, that was a long time ago!

2. Five things on today's to-do list:
* Make dinner in the crock pot before 8 am
* Go grocery shopping
* Fold and put away a mountain of laundry
* Unload, load, and unload the dishwasher 
* Take a shower

Proud to say that I did them all before 4 pm

3. Snacks I enjoy:
* Chips and salsa

* Almost any kind of salty snack food

* Chocolate

4. Things I'd do if I were a billionaire!
* Pay off my mortgage
* Buy a large piece of land in the sticks (B.A.R. really wants this)
* Quilt endlessly
* Move some family or friends close enough to visit regularly
* Race go carts


5. . Places I have lived:
* Provo UT
* Rexburg, ID
* Perm, Russia
* Volgograd, Russia
* Sochi, Russia
* Rostov na Donu, Russia
* Belleville, MI

* Ypsilanti, MI

* Virginia Beach, VA

* Hesperia, CA

6. People I'd like to know more about:
Anyone who is reading this, especially if I don't know you very well or at all.

Memories

I love comments, so make my day and send me the best/worst/happiest/saddest/craziest thing that comes to mind.  My blog is open to all to comment, no excuses.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Thanks again to Jenny over at The Wealth of Home for giving me something to blog about.

Keeping it Real

Thanx to The Wealth of Home for giving me something fun to do on a Thursday afternoon.

The rules are: take the picture--no fussing, no fixing it up--just a snapshot of your life, today, as is.

1. Kitchen Sink.  This is actually really good.  Usually the whole dishwasher load is waiting in the sink before it gets loaded.

2. Inside of the refrigerator.
3. Your shoes.  These are the ones I had on, and probably my favorite ones too.
4.  Your closet.

5. Your laundry pile. 

a.  The clean clothes on the washer

b. The slipcovers for the couch (for their annual cleaning).
c. Hamper in our room.
d. Consolidated boys' laundry 
e and f. The two baskets of clothes I just finished putting away before I read the blog to take these pictures.

6.  What your kids are doing.

a. Blanket is sleeping.  (Actually I took this photo at the end because he was fussing himself to sleep while I was taking the household photos)

b. Tiger is in the sandbox (I took this one last because I knew he would want my attention once he saw me).  What happened after this photo is a whole other post unto itself.
7. Your favorite room.  My bedroom because it is the only one we have spent any money decorating.  All the rest don't match at all!  Though I miss our bedroom in our MI house because we painted the walls RED.
I must confess, I made the bed and stashed a couple of things under the bed (you can see them creeping back out).  It's my favorite room when it is clean!
8. Your toilet.  Mr. Popularity--it's downstairs so it gets used all the time.
9.  Fantasy Vacation.  Hawaii.  I've been to lots of places in Europe, but I am a sucker for tourist traps.  Besides, who wouldn't want to visit Paradise.
10.  Self portrait.  Sorry, didn't work as well as I wanted, but I was hurrying to get all the photos taken. 
Feel free to be tagged.  This was really kind of fun!

I've been tagged...

Skye tagged me

My Love and I
Where did you go on your first date? Date? Just to some little mexican joint in Provo.  But by then we had been friends for 4.5 years. Both had served missions and both graduated from Ricks College.  It took us a long time to decide we wanted (and were ready) to date each other
How long have you been together? 7 years of marriage, 8 years dating.
Who eats more? Marty most of the time, but I am nursing and he is on a diet.
Who said I love you first? Marty!
Who is taller? Marty
Who sings better? Marty, without question.
Who does the laundry? I wash, fold and put away during the week.  If he wants to he will wash on the weekend.  No folding, no putting away for him. 
Who pays the bills? Marty.
Who mows the lawn? Daddy and Calvin
Who cooks dinner? I do.  Marty will make burgers or use the grill (I'm not allowed.  I had an "incident").  He helps, but dinner plans are all mine.
Who drives when you are together? Marty, usually.
Who is more stubborn? Depends on the topic.
Whose parents do you see the most? We don't discriminate. 
Who kissed who first? Marty kissed me and only me.  Oh, and I only kissed him.
Who proposed? The proposal came a long time after he decided to marry me and shortly after I came around.
Who is more sensitive? Me!!!
Who has more friends? Me, though he has a lot of work friends now.
Who wears the pants in the family? I want him to, he wants me to. It just works.

I tag Emily