Crazy In Love... with this video.

"Is this the way Beyonce would dance?"

Ummmmm.....

Snowed In

8 inches (or so) looked like a lot of snow at the time, but now there is at least double! Snow fell ALL day yesterday--literally, there was not one minute without snow. And today, same thing. We can't even see 9th East from the house.

In other news, we are going skiing tomorrow. Yes, WE. I have refused to ski since my failed attempt at snowboarding sometime back in middle school. But I'm getting back on the mountain, which should really be worth some laughs.

Yay for Utah!

A Funeral Story

 St. Mark's Lutheran Church

We had an interesting experience today. There is a lady at church who Todd is assigned to Home Teach and I am assigned to Visit Teach. She doesn't come around too often. We try to call her every month to see if we can stop by, but she never answers her phone. We've dropped by unannounced, together and with our Home/Visiting Teaching companions, and she has only been home one time. So we talked to her once for like 5 minutes.

And then, her sister passed away unexpectedly.

The Bishopric of our ward asked us and our companions to help with the funeral. We arrived at the Lutheran church early, at the same time as the family.  We asked if we could help with the programs, they told us to have a seat. So we sat there reading the program for 30 minutes... then figured out that we were here for the viewing, and the funeral didn't start for another hour.

Sooooo we sat there in the pews, just us and the family, for more than an hour. Let me set this scene for you: we are the only white kids in the building. Gospel music is playing, interspersed with music I swear is not appropriate for a funeral (Christina Aguilera).  We never met the dearly departed, and can't even recognize the woman we're here to support among all her sisters. When we do figure out which one she is, she clearly doesn't recognize us at all.

The service finally started. It was sentimental, though I'm sure we weren't able to catch the full spirit of it because we didn't know anyone in the room. Then it got... loud.

Before today, we had never experienced a Southern black church service. I've gone to church every week all my life, but I have never heard anyone yell AMEN! HALLELUJAH! PRAISE THE LORD! HE IS FAITHFUL! OH YES HE IS! or GOD IS GOOD! during an LDS meeting. I've only ever seen people do such things in movies, and it's usually presented in an overblown, comical way. So my first instinct was to laugh (horrible!). But then it made me smile. People were voicing their joy at the prospect of being reunited with their loved one again through the grace of our Savior. I suppose testimonies can be loud, and sometimes that's perfectly okay.

And I liked the sermon the preacher gave as the eulogy-- he talked about God having a prepared place for prepared people. Good message.

I hope the lady from church felt our support. But I am glad we got to have a totally new experience. Sometimes it's good to be a fish out of water.

Turkey Weekend

This Thanksgiving was the first I have ever spent away from my family. Amazing. I'm not the overly sentimental type, so it wasn't a big deal, but I sort of didn't know what to do with myself.

We had dinner with our friends the Teuschers and the Rhynards. We spent all afternoon eating and talking, it was great. Emily did a great job with the place settings and fitting all six adults plus baby Blake in the dining room.

 

One with Eric

One with Paul

The dinner was so good. I'm glad I wasn't in charge of the turkey. Not sure I can handle a dead bird that actually looks like a dead bird. I was pretty much on the See Food (Eat It) diet this week, and I ended up losing 2 pounds. Riddle me that? Todd has lost 25 pounds since he started school, so let's hope the scale went very much in the other direction for him.

This break could not have come at a better time. Poor Todd spent all day Friday working on his cover letters, and we're both spent several hours working on his school projects and internship applications yesterday. We are super boring lately because we've been so busy doing this stuff. Wow, we will be relieved if/when Todd gets an internship (late Winter).

Of course, no amount of business could stop us from watching the Holy War. Best day of the year, if you ask me. We watched the big game with the Teuschers and a handful of other former Cougars. It was fun up until the last quarter or so.

In the immortal words of Max Hall...

“I don’t like Utah. In fact, I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate their program, their fans. I hate everything. ... I think the whole university and their fans and the organization is classless."

 Amen.

(For the record, I don't hate Utah that much. But I also love that he said this.)

nov. 15-20: week in review

this week we:

began writing internship cover letters

both got sick

dragged our sick selves to see harry potter 

(loved it)

got possibly the worst night's sleep of our lives

had a great primary lesson despite no prior inspiration

realized we are leaving for christmas break in four weeks and can't wait

gamers

we own EIGHT video game consoles.

finally cleaning out our den.

thought you'd like to know.

unhappy dream

i normally have very pleasant, completely strange dreams. the other night, i dreamed my sister caitlin and her friends wanted to float down the amazon river in plastic chairs and i was trying to talk her out of it because of the piranhas. (?) normally my dreams are like that. but last night i had an unhappy dream.

uva has a really cool program called "semester at sea," which as far as i understand, is a semester-long cruise. i dreamt that i had to do a semester at sea with a bunch of old co-workers. i kept asking everyone why i had to go, no one had answers. i just had to go. it was four months long, and todd had to stay home.

i sort of wanted to go, but then again, i really didn't. i did not want to be away from todd for that long. but he dropped me off for my trip, and i kept making excuses and forgetting things so i had to get off the boat and see him again.

i woke up long enough to realize that i was dreaming. i didn't really have to be away from todd. so i snuggled closer to his side of the bed and fell back asleep, figuring i might as well enjoy my dream cruise, but keeping him close for reassurance.

dad visits

last weekend, my dad was in dc for business. we drove up to baltimore on friday afternoon, which took us 4+ hours because of all the traffic on the capital beltway. funny, we've been to the dc area (and beyond) several times, but have yet to set foot in dc.

we stayed with my aunt catherine and uncle bill in their baltimore brownstone. it is amazing. the windows, mirrors, floors, gilding, fireplaces... wow.

we were only there friday night and saturday morning, so catherine and bill took us on a little tour of baltimore. we went to fort mchenry (the location of the flag about which the star spangled banner was written), to the harbor to see bill's sailboat, and to the american visionary art museum.

i really liked the museum because it wasn't fussy. it was colorful and silly and imaginative and happy. they had a whole room full of works by legitimate, institutionalized crazy people. i've never seen anything like it.

we also had our pictures taken with this beautiful delivery van.

before you think we should be making art for the crazy people gallery, look UP to the sign on the left side of the building. it's charm city cakes!

the shop is only a few minutes from catherine and bill's house, so we drove past to take pictures for cait. they were actually loading cakes when we were there, so we saw a few of those and could see into the shop through the open door. i've only seen the show a few times, but it was cool to see where they work.

that afternoon, we drove 3+ hours back to charlottesville so dad could see the town. we walked up to todd's school, the to the rotunda and around the lawn. dad took us out for steak on the downtown mall, then we drove him to richmond so he could fly home.

phew, what a weekend! we're so glad we got to see dad, catherine, and bill.

amy's shower

mallory, me, amy

a few weekends ago, my friend mallory and i co-hosted a baby shower for our friend amy, who will be having a baby boy in just a few weeks.

it was very sweet and simple. the baby's nursery is nautically themed, so we went that direction with the party also.

i'll have you know that bunting has meaning. each little flag is inspired by actual nautical flags, which spell out messages from one ship to another. the bunting flags don't spell anything out, though. so i guess that means they actually have no meaning at all. oh well, they're cute!

mallory taught us to make freezer-paper onesies. they were so easy and turned out really well.

congrats, amy!

Now Featuring: ME

kirsten did a feature on me and that little design blog i started. have i told you hers is my most favorite design blog? well it is, and she is wonderful both as a designer and as a friend. so if you don't already follow her, you should.

 check me out.

taxis

"boomerangs are making a comeback"

i’ve never seen this anywhere else, but literally every taxi in charlottesville has a catchy saying on the back of their cab. i always like looking at them and wondering exactly why the cabby chose that particular phrase to mark his vehicle. and i think it's best we not discuss how i got this photo.

Cavalier Football

this is where we were this weekend. actually, just for one quarter. todd was sick sick sick, but he toughed it out to indulge me in some college football. we got free tickets to the uva vs. unc game, and it was supremely disappointing-- unc scored a defensive touchdown in the first 20 seconds of the game, and it was pretty much downhill from there. not that byu did much better. it was a sad, sad weekend for football.

we also heard the virginia "fight" song for the first time. holy boring. it's to the tune of "auld lang syne" with some out of sync, hooligan yelling at the end. however, they have a gorgeous arabian horse ridden by a cavalier for the mascot and a beautiful stadium.

acc football, not so much. but i have a feeling acc basketball will totally make up for it.

behind

we had planned to spend today day in dc, but decided to stay home. we were feeling so behind and needed a day to catch up.

i went for a nice, long (for me) run this morning. i have a playlist of "running music" loaded on my phone, but i almost always listen to soundtrack music and sometimes mo tab instead. that cannot be normal. i suppose popular music just seems out of place with the scenery.

i stopped and took this picture of the rotunda at my halfway point... it sure makes running a lot easier when the view is so great!

todd took a long break in the middle of the day so we could drive the blue ridge parkway. the leaves are changing, and the weather today was perfect. tomorrow is supposedly the best day to see the fall color this year. we love having mountains to drive through again!

student for the day

today was "partners day" at todd's school. i got to sit in on his operations management class.

when i was introduced, i had to answer a random get-to-know-you question: "what animal best represents you?" i said a finch... because someone once told me i reminded her of a finch, and i have no idea what that means. but now that i think about it, i think she said canary. but really, i am the human version of a cat. but i said finch.

the class was far more interesting than i thought it would be. it wasn't a crazy math/quantitative class, and i was given the case to read beforehand, so i knew what was going on. plus, the teacher used stuffed animals in his demo.
 
i basically spent the rest of the day hanging with long-lost and new friends eating yummy food and learning about the madness "my student" is going through. great day!

New Jobs

Up until last Friday, I had a pretty sweet gig as a Stay At Home Wife. Then I got a job. And as good as this is for our bank account, I miss the easy days! It's too soon to say how much I like or dislike my job, but it's definitely keeping me busy.

We also got a calling at church, teaching CTR 7! Exactly the calling Todd wanted. Yesterday was our first day, and it was interesting. The kids just talk and talk and talk. They're at a great age- old enough to be sassy and interesting, but young enough that they say hilariously honest things.

Other than that, we are pretty boring these days!

remember this guy?

he finished his first term exams today! 

and he's back to business tomorrow. not much of a break.

goodbye again, husband.

lately

todd has been working like crazy. he is usually at school 14-16 hours per day, and most of his weekends have been taken up with schoolwork, too. i don't know how he does it. but his hard work is paying off-- one of his professors emailed him this week to let him know he absolutely nailed the analysis on one of his cases. i'm very proud of him.

last saturday, he stepped away from the books for a day to watch the byu game (big disappointment) and play softball in the first athletic event of the darden cup. each incoming first-year at darden is assigned to one of five sections, and they compete for points in various academic, athletic, and service events over the course of the year. (sounds like the hogwarts house cup, no? that's what i call it.)

todd's team, section a, lost in the first round to a team that had a former college baseball player and a former professional baseball player. who knows how those two ended up on the same team. they're waiting for the soccer tournament to exact their vengeance-- one of the girls in his section was on the 2008 gold medal olympic team! (and we know a few other former college and professional athletes at darden... it's uncanny.)

as for me, i got a job working for the university! uva jobs are really hard to get, so i'm grateful. i should start next week. in the meantime, i've been keeping house, exercising, doing things with friends, and helping todd any way i can. rough life. even though things are crazy and we barely see each other, we're having fun and loving charlottesville.

throw a party, tell your friends

i've finally pulled my design blog together, and i'm pretty excited about it. my mind basically operates in design mode at all times (ask todd), so i'm putting it out there for all to see.

check me out at roost-home.blogspot.com. questions, comments, criticisms, and ideas are all welcome. become a follower, and let me know what you think!

outtakes

25

for my birthday, todd of course let me choose whatever i wanted to do. i chose going out to dinner, antique shopping, and monticello. i love federalist/jeffersonian architecture, so where better to go? thomas jefferson referred to monticello, his home, as his "essay" in architecture. he was self-taught, and monticello evolved with his taste and skill.

we learned that thomas jefferson was quite the horticulturist. i don't know what that enormous hanging squash thing is... but it was seriously more than three feet long.

when can i move in?

todd and his buddy, tj. apparently they would have been of similar stature.

sunrise, sunset

one night, i suggested we go hunt crabs. so after sunset, todd and i went with tanner to the beach. there were a few people night fishing here and there, and plenty of open beach for crabs to run around. they were all over the place-- and they move FAST! the worst part is that they don't always run away. they're not at all afraid to put up their claws and fight.

i was primarily occupied with holding the flashlight and prancing around the beach screaming. ew.

---

earlier, we took family pictures. i spent most of my time behind the lens, so there are very few pictures of me at the reunion. but here i am (action shot!) peppering with jordan while everyone waits for the big photo shoot.

 

in retrospect, i maybe should have showered or done something with my hair that day. oops :)

---

 our last morning at the beach, we woke up really early to watch the sunrise. i'd only watched the sunrise over the mountains in utah before. seeing the huge, flaming orange sun come up out of the ocean over the misty beach was totally worth waking up so early.

currituck beach lighthouse

the outer banks have a lot of famous lighthouses, most of which were at the opposite end of where we were staying. but we did get to visit one... the jim/cheri family didn't go to the top because we were in a rush to get back and make dinner for everyone. but the ground and old architecture were beautiful.

grandma marian is my hero. she is in her mid-80s, and climbed every step to the top of the lighthouse. i didn't even get her picture because she sped up there so fast. she is awesome.

beachside backyard

will the reunion posts ever stop? eventually.

beside playing at the beach, we spent a LOT of time in the backyard of the big house we stayed in. the pool was pretty much a daily ritual. the nephews may not have been crazy about the ocean, but they were insane for the pool.

pool toys were fun, in the water or out.

hagens are pretty competitive, so they invent sports to compete in when normal sports won't do. hence the birth of water basketball. i don't know the rules... but i do know todd qualified for the old men's team at age 27.

we also played a lot of beach volleyball. i'm useless compared to my high school volleyball days... and i was no all-star then. but i retained the instinct to yell cues to my team-- cues that apparently made no sense to todd, but perfect sense to me (touch! tip! line! free ball!)

one evening, someone brought out water balloons for the younger kids to play with. todd took it a step further-- he stole the bin the balloons were stored in, filled it with water, waited for his uncle randall to come out of the house, and drenched him. then randall grabbed a bin and drenched whomever was nearest him (jana).

i married into a crazy family :)