11:11:11 on 11/11/11

Thanks, Dad.

Now that Easter is over, I feel like this is bloggable. Something about the Sabbath and Easter made this feel every shade of wrong. The Monday after Easter, I feel like it really only covers half of that spectrum. And that, friends, is grounds for blogging.

I call this collection "Freaky Easter Bunny: Childhood trauma."





(Credit goes to Huffington Post and The Daily Caller, and my Dad for filling my inbox with these photos Sunday morning.)

I don't have children but I like to make mental notes sometimes about what I will and won't do when I have them. Taking advantage of photo ops with demonic bunnies is my most recent addition to that list. It's right up there with saving them from the horrors of velveeta.

I just hope someone tells me.

Last night, cousin Bec, in true cousin Bec form, sent me an email with a link to a set of obscure pictures that made me laugh so hard I started convulsing. Harry agreed. These pictures are golden.

They're from an album entitled "Basset Hounds, Running."








It makes me a little worried. When I'm really REALLY old and wrinkly, with maximum face jowls, would someone dare take a picture of me, mid-run? And post it to the internet?

I just hope that if I develop jowls comparable to a basset hound, someone would tell me. So that I could make sure there were no cameras within a 6 mile radius of me if I ever decide to go on a jog. Leave me and my old lady jowls off the internet.

And now a lightning round of

Name That Expression.

Found these on my computer. They were taken by Cam on Thanksgiving.


My best guesses are "numb lips from an invasive route canal" or "undercover genius fugitive."

This one... I'm still struggling to put a name on.

Weekend of love

This last weekend, Hal's brother Dan got hitched!



Dan and Aja (Danja, for those of you who are prone to abbreviation) had one of the most beautiful wedding ceremonies I've ever attended. I wanted to take video of the whole weekend and edit it together later. But then I remembered that when you're hanging out with family and catching up with people you rarely get to see, taking video falls by the wayside.

The wedding was beautiful. Aja is an incredible woman. I love it when you meet a couple and know that they were made for each other. My amazing SIL snapped some shots of the beautiful couple. She snaps a lot of amazing photos. For a few shots of the beautiful wedding day, go here. To see more of her amazing photos, mosey on over here.

Mazel tov to the happy couple!

I even made myself a skirt for the occasion! With the help of my Mom, I put together this little diddy two days before. It was a quick and simple design, and was done without a pattern! Here's a photo booth shot of my outfit- sent to my mom for her omnicient-seamstress-approval.



Not nearly the most amazing skirt I've ever worn, but I really enjoyed it! I'm getting the itch all over again to sew more clothing.

Lastly, the day after the wedding I snuck away to my sister E's house to see her newest addition to the family. Baby I is so adorable! He's sweet and quiet and little, and let me hold him from the minute I walked in the door.



All in all, I recommend a weekend like this.

Published!

Not me, my good friend Kylie Nixon.

Kylie was our amazing wedding photographer. A low maintenance, creative, inventive, and genius girl.

She recently emailed me to tell me that one of the pictures she took from our wedding has landed a spot in a book that was just put out by theknot.com. The picture is on the right- me and 3 bridesmaids in yellow holding our flowers.



Love this girl.

In other interesting news, the moment Harry woke up this morning, he looked at me and said, "Is it too late to move to the suburbs and start a musical group with five kids known as the Jacksons?"

This was followed by a lengthy pause.

I love that man.

What do you do when your job ends?

Take a trip, of course.

More specifically, wait two days after your last day of work, and take a trip to where people you love/miss reside, and play for 4 days straight without pausing for breath.

I've been getting better at documenting (though someday I plan to upgrade from taking pictures with my phone to pictures with an actual camera). For any/all who are interested... here was the weekend of love, 2011, Farmingtown, USA.

Driving to Provo with cousin Bec

Figuring how to fill up the car with natural gas

(Uncle R is saving the environment w/ his hot wheels)

Hello, Cam!

Don't know why I felt compelled to take a picture of the cougarettes poster. All that studded patent leather they're wearing... it was just worth a photo.

Fro Yo makes a great mid morning snack.

The BYU candy counter. We got reacquainted. We're old friends.

The only soda fountain in the world that offers Caffeine Free Diet Coke. Oh BYU. I love you.

Carl Bloch Exhibit at Museum of Art w/ cousins Libby and Mary. It was breathtaking.

Imported from Denmark.

Cafe Rio! I contacted all the local peeps I could to come join us for dinner. Thank you to everyone who came!

Salads.

Me gusta Cafe Rio!

We baked bounteous cookies and cupcakes. What we do best. Recipes can be found here, here, and here.

Driving in the car w/ Cam.

Dinner with Cam and gal pal K! Too much fun!

Visiting Cam's apartment. We watched reruns of "Parks and Recreation" and had a blast. His roommate called me "old." I wanted to kick him but realized I left my steel toe boots at home. Dang.

J and A. Blushing newlyweds! They came over for the superbowl.

The men, engrossed.

Trivial pursuit. Serious business with Kyle.

And Bec.

And Uncle R.

Things not pictured:

1) Kyle playing with the remote control helicopter.
2) The wild game of mad libs.
3) Watching all episodes of Masterpiece Theater's "Downton Abbey" (thank you Whit for the link! I will watch it over and over again!)
4) Thrift shopping-- belt, ruffled satin skirt, 2 victorian picture frames= $9.
5) Seeing both Annette and Sophie for the first time in years.

6) Breakfast at Kneaders

7) The notorious trip to Costco (the Saturday before the Superbowl, apparently Costco has the most samples of any day of the year. It. Was. Epic.)


At the end of it all, it was high time that I high tail it home to this man and his fancy new glasses. I now call him Harold B. Lee, and think he should showcase his handsome retro frames as a cast member on the show "Mad Men." Only playing the part of a faithful spouse, of course (something that show is particularly lacking).

The Secret Garden

When I was but a young buck and a freshman in High School, our family decided to have a Palo Alto Thanksgiving with some extended family.

My first Cross Country season had just barely ended. My sister E has always been a runner herself, so we planned weeks ahead of time to go on a Palo Alto run together. The first night we all arrived in Palo Alto, E and I pulled on our running gear and headed out the door.

Running in Palo Alto is unlike running anywhere else. Most of the year, the air is lush, cool, and smells like eucalyptus. The streets are narrow and tree lined. E and I took haphazard turns down beautiful streets at our own whimsy. Randomly we happened upon a beautiful garden that was open to the public. It was made up of plotted squares with lanes of gravel that ran between them. The garden boasted exotic flowers, bushes, trees, vines, and an enormous vegetable patch. There were bird baths and benches and an enormous white gazebo in the center. That has remained a very fond memory to me—winding through a random garden with my sister at dusk in Palo Alto.

When I moved back ten years later, husband in tow, that garden was in the back of my mind. I didn’t make any efforts to find it though. I think I didn’t want to go looking for it, I honestly hoped I would just hear about it or magically find it. As if I live in a Disney movie or something. Very realistic.

When we first moved here one of the very first things I did was plot a run on Google Maps that would take me from our apartment to the house where my mother was raised (in the older part of Palo Alto). It’s a stunning house with white wood siding and navy shutters with waning moons carved in them and a brick walkway. Every so often I run to the house and back (if I’m feeling ambitious—round trip it’s about 7 miles) and stand outside it. Correction: I stand outside it across the street so I don’t look like I’m a stalker. And then I let the waves of nostalgia wash over me and wish my grandparents were still alive and still lived there. And then I decide that if I ever become a billionaire I’m buying it (from the billionaire who lives there now).

A few weeks ago I was running to the house on a cool, overcast Saturday morning. I was just minding my own beeswax and drinking in the smell of freshly cut lawn when I peaked down a random road perpendicular to the street I was running on. And all of a sudden… there it was.

I found the garden.







I felt like Mary Lennox in that part of “The Secret Garden” when she realizes the key in fact fits in the lock, and the robin led her to the right door.

I immediately called E (got voicemail—and no, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t screen my calls but she is a busy mother of 3.99 children) and left her a wheezy and breathless voicemail that sounded like:

“OhmygoshIfoundthatgardenthatwewentrunningthroughinNovember1999andit’sexactlylikeitwasthendoyourememeberwhatI’mtalkingabout??”

It was completely quiet and deserted, and I wandered through it, snapping pictures with my phone, wandering down every lane, and drinking in the smell. It's the Elizabeth Gamble Garden (I decided I should probably find out the name...) on Waverly and Churchill.

It’s now one of my favorite spots in Palo Alto. I plan on bringing a book here one Saturday and just hanging out on a bench with the squirrels. And I guess Harry can come too.

Recents

Good evening, and welcome back to the 2011 edition of “Sarrison’s Life: a study in the habits and lifestyles of nerdy people.”

It’s been a long time, internet. So much has happened since we last convened. Christmas came and went and so many fun things happened sandwiched in the middle of it all.

That said it was nice to come back to PA.

I went to a Royal Ball (aka Baby Shower):





Also, 90% of my Christmas pictures are on Facebook, which I still have deactivated (I’m completely over withdrawals), so I snuck on and stole them from my sprightly SIL (thank you Sal, my gal pal).

For Christmas, we had about two weeks to play with, so we drove to both of our parents’ homes, about evenly splitting the time. We figured we’d have about 22 hours of driving time total over the two weeks so we downloaded “Speaker for the Dead” to listen to in the car. The book itself was fine, but I cannot figure out for the life of me why he has the same people narrate his audio books. A few of their reading voices make me want to plug my ears and sing the theme to “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” at the top of my voice. I’ve resolved to read whatever Orson Scott Card book I want in the future to spare myself the frustration.

We spent time in Irvine with Cam, my parents, and Jeffedith (I refer to them as one unit). Here is the picture I took during that time—Cam in front of a house that was lit up all fancylike in Balboa a few nights before Christmas. My family likes to take night walks there at Christmas time, usually accompanied by my brother and Dad playing the bag pipes. This time they nixed the pipes and we just meandered.



Then we drove to fabulous Las Veeeeeeeegaaaaaaaaas (sung like the Brandon Flowers song). Here are the snatched Facebook pictures to prove it (E, I'm so sad I don't have pictures from hanging out at your house! Next time!)!

Something extra memorable was getting to see my brother-in-law’s fiancée get baptized. I’m really excited to have her in the fam, not only because she’s really fun to talk to and hang out with, but because she’s creative and inspiring and really soulful. Yep. I’m excited.

**I'm fighting a nasty cold and do not have the mental capacity nor the physical energy required to put these in chronological order, so you're going to experience some time-whiplash. Sucka.



Caroling w/ Reynoldsies.



M and A, top notch snugglers.



Christmas morning. New Christmas clothes have a funny effect on Harry.



Serenade a la SNL by Hal, Joe, Mac, Dan, and Will.



Cindy + A, me looking hazy in the background.



Sarahs.



Christmas morning (my first ever not spent at my parent's house. It was delightful in all the particulars!).



Just arrived in Irvine from Palo Alto, exhausted, happy to be watching something Christmas-like with some Eaton brood peeps.



Yoga ball. Those pants I'm wearing? Harry's high school track and field pants. I felt like MC Hammer.



Here we are in Irvine where we got to spend some QT with Annie/Go/R/M/O at the park!




That's it. I'm hungry. Peace.