Open the Gates and Seize the Day

So browsing around the free library movies the other day I came across this little gem. I of course brought it home and forced my husband to watch it with me last night. Shockingly he wasn't as drawn in to it as I had been on my first viewing during my preteen years. (I guess I should be glad that he has no attraction to dancing and singing teenage boys) And yes I can still sing every word to all the songs. All the lyrics are still there swimming around with all those rusty Nintendo skills and plots from Judy Blume novels. Watching it again also brought back random flashbacks to skits acted out at my Jewish Day camp with me and my sisters wearing my dad's newsboy hats. (my dad has some great hats, a side effect of much travel and having a head that, to quote my dad, "burns under a refrigerator light"). So here's to Newsies!!!! Arise and seize the day, indeed.

Tree adventures

Last Saturday my dad was in-town visiting and invited us all out to dinner (yummy Vietnamese at Mi La Cai, two thumbs up, thanks for the recommend Jules). When we arrived home there was a police car parked in front of our building, lights flashing and blocking our road. In general, never a good sign. When we got closer we found the source of the commotion. One of the large trees in front of our building had uprooted itself and fell across the driveway and into the street. The miraculous thing is that this driveway is usually full of cars but none of them happened to be there when the tree decided to give up the ghost. It completely missed the building and didn't leave a scratch on the nearby fence. All in all a very surreal experience but great in a way to see how all our neighbors pitched in to take care of it. My husband and dad were the first on the scene, using our saws all electric saw to cut branches to clear the road. A guy from the city came out to help clear the portion that was blocking the road. He had two gas chainsaws but couldn't keep either of them working more than a cut or two. Other neighbors soon showed up and by the next day it was all cut up and neatly stacked out of the way. (Anyone know someone looking for some free firewood?). The pictures don't really do the size of the tree or the mess of branches justice. We had news people from Channels 2 and 13 out taking video and I actually got interviewed by Fox 13. On the whole it was defiantly one of those count your many blessings evenings.

All the Whos in Whoville

A couple weeks back we bathed Bella and then threw her into bed for a nap before church. When we woke her up to leave this is the fine hairstyle she was sporting. We call it her Grinch hairdo.

I am not sure exactly how Bella managed genetically to get the hair type she has. Coming from two curly, relatively thick haired individuals she has managed to avoid much at all in the way of curls. Unless of course you count hairdos such as those pictured where her hair will standout from her head at strange angles and resist all attempt to plaster back down.

New Service Project

So on Sunday evening I was reading through the Ensign and came across this article about the church looking for 10,000 bilingual volunteers to help with the extraction of Spanish records. So I figured, why not, I'm bilingual and have an Internet connection and it's probably more productive than playing Spider Solitaire on my computer in the evenings while watching videos with my husband.

So that's what I've started doing, and it has actually been kind of fun. I decided to do batches of a project from Managua, Nicaragua where I extract names and dates from wedding records, all hand written by some clerk in 1934. I actually spent a summer in Nicaragua, just outside of Managua in a ghetto called Ciudad Sandino so this project jumped out at me. My husband joined me last night in puzzling out some of the handwritten names, fantastic gems like Pasquala, Borges, and Efrain. Though I think my favorite was Elia, I actually thought it was pretty though my husband was less impressed. Though he was somewhat surprised at the number of grooms that listed their occupation as carpenters (and how many 16-17 year-olds were getting married).

If anyone is interested I highly recommend it as an easy service project that you can do working at your own pace. For those that are not Spanish speakers there are plenty of English projects to choose from as well as a couple other languages. The batches are easy to download and they only take 15-20 min apiece once you get use to the handwriting and where to find the information you need to extract.

All this thinking about Nicaragua is making me remember my 8 weeks I spent there. I need to dig out my pictures....