A new bike

I got a bike. We drove through lots of pouring rain Thursday night to get it. It's a decent bike that should do for my purposes. Those would be to:

• ride to the mailbox (3 minutes walk away)
• ride to the library (8 minutes walk away)
• ride to a friends house (9-25 minutes walk away)
• exercise (sigh....)
  
• ride around for fun
• have a bike to take on road trips so we can ride around places.

Most of those things are technically within easy walking distance but it is just so much funner and faster to ride a bike so I am excited. I get impatient with walking to the mailbox because it is slow and I just want to put this letter in and be done with it but Nooooo. I usually end up running.

So, here's my new bike. It's not really new; we got it off Craigslist.

Clues to the game

All right. Here are some clues. I know you guys would know a lot of these songs if you actually heard them.

1. A boy band

7. A classic from a war-related movie

9. From one of my very favorite movies ever

11. It's not The Piano Man

12. One of the most well-known groups from Northern Utah recently; they play concerts in Logan regularly, or at least they did while I was in college there.

7, 17, 12, 13. I am skeptical now of my iPods shuffle abilities because the same song is #7 and 17 and the same artist are #12 and 13.

18. A song from a movie that you might recognize distinctive music from, but I don't think you would recognize the lyrics to any of it. I skip through many specific sections of this trilogy when I watch it.

20. 20 and 24 are from the Curious George soundtrack, which I like very much.

21. From A Walk to Remember soundtrack, and no, it's not Switchfoot.

1,18,22: Songs that have the title in the first line

A little game

My friend Bethany did this little game on Facebook and I was bored and decided to do it too even though I was very bad at it when she did it. I put the first line to songs on my iPod down and anyone can leave comments guessing what the title and or artist of the song is and you collectively try to get them all. So here it is. I know I wouldn't even be able to get them all and it's my list but a little challenge is good for the mind.

Also, I have not updated my iPod for a very long time. There are some random mixes on there that were made, I believe, by a person related to me and older than me who shall remain unnamed. This person didn't label the song title or artist so I myself had to look some of these up to find the answer. Good luck.
__________________________

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Step 1: Put your iTunes or equivalent on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strikeout the songs when someone guesses correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING
__________________________

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1. Hey Hey! Bye bye bye
2. Mornin' came and I was on my way when you reminded me
3. Can I get your hand to write on, just a piece of lead to bite on
4. Love is burning low upon my tabletop, snow is softly falling
5. Should've known better than to let you go alone
6. I still hear your voice when you sleep next to me
- Every Time We Touch by Cascada
7. Watchin' every motion in my foolish lovers gaze
8. Woah! Hey! Don't touch me!
9. There's magic in the air this evening, magic in the air
10. Look at me, you may think you see who I really am, but you'll never know me
- Reflection from Mulan
11. Anthony works in the grocery store savin' his pennies for someday
12. When you cry be sure to dry your eyes cause better days are sure to come
13. Some people think me ugly, some people think me cute
14. The sun just slipped it's note below my door
15. Today's chasing me around, I go crazy when your outside of my world
16. The stars will cry the blackest tears tonight, and this is the moment that I live for
17. Watchin' every motion in my foolish lovers gaze
18. May it be an evening star shines down upon me
19. It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart
- When You Say Nothing At All by Alison Krause
20. Who's to say what's impossible? Well they forgot this world keeps spinnin'
21. The day I first met you, well I thought you quite funny
22. In any other world you could tell the difference
23. Oh! You burden me with your questions. You'd have me tell no lies.
24. Maybe it's up with the stars, maybe it's under the sea
25. It started off so well said we made a perfect pair

Any guesses?

Funny video

I saw this Brian Regan video on a friend's blog and thought it was funny. I like comedy and wanted to share it with you. Ha ha ha.

Rain, rain go away

The weather the last 5 or so days here has been lousy. Rain! Not our usual dumping-buckets-for-half-a-day rain, but long-lasting drizzly, cloudy, on-and-off, misty rain. I know as I am saying this that I will not get any sympathy at all from my overseas family since that is kind of the norm there, but I still don't like it. When we first moved to North Carolina, I didn't like the rain much at all but I got to like the quick in-and-out storms that are more common here. I like the craziness and randomness of a lovely morning followed by tons of rain for an hour or two and then sunshine. I think one reason why our current weather is now so despised is that we had a marvelous weekend before this with 80 degree days and sunshine the whole time. Psych!

There are a few things I'm really looking forward to this spring:

• Picking strawberries at the pick-your-own farms
• Seeing all the tons of spring flowers all over, especially all along the highways
• Planning and hopefully planting some vegetables in our garden
• Tennis!
• Hiking and camping

Hooray for the first day of spring on Friday! Everyone balance an egg to celebrate!

Self Portrait

Here is a self portrait that I drew when I was 5 years old. Some of my favorite things about it are:

• Freckles - I did have a lot of freckles when I was little. Apparently I thought they were very bold and only above my nose.
• Earrings - I definitely did not have earrings when I was 5. Maybe I thought they would help distract from my grossly uneven ears. Come to think of it, those look like Mr. Potato Head ears...
  
• Red hair - Is that a mistake or not? I did not have red bangs, but I wasn't colorblind either.
  
• Apparently no clothes - need I say more?

Anyways, I think this is pretty good, considering. Blue eyes, pink cheeks, light skin, crooked smile, yellow hair. Yep, that was me all right.

Picnic Weather

This weekend has been so beautiful! Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all above 70 degrees and sunny. On Friday I wanted to work on fixing up the garden a little to get it ready to plant but after a few minutes I decided it was too hot. Sunday we went on a picnic at the park. We sat on a blanket and had sandwiches (thanks Ryan and Lindy!) and played Kubb (that lawn game where you throw the wood sticks at the other wood pieces). It was fun. We should have taken our camera! Agh! I need to get better at that.

Little Jeran

While we were in Utah, I managed to get my hands on a whole bunch of pictures of Jeran when he was younger. Previously we only had 2 or 3 from before his mission and it was so sad! Now we have a lot of wonderful pictures so I thought I'd share a few here.

Baby Jeran

Jeran (left), Raymond and Derek

Raymond and Jeran

Jeran's on the Expos Little League team (about 10 yrs old)

Jiggity Jig

We are home again now. It was a fun trip and VERY busy. It was great to see all the family and friends again. We made it up to the Beav and got both sunburned and sore but it was worth it. The snow was perfect and it was plenty warm without being melty. Andrew's wedding was fabulous and I am so happy for him and Lindsay. Anyhow, I'm supposed to be working now so I'll write more details later.