workspace

So right now I am burning a kabajillion CDs for the missionaries. It's the present from my parents - a CD full of pictures. And I sort of got semi-put-in-charge of all of the technical stuff. So that's what I've been doing all morning! And this is my multi-tasking workspace.

 

You will notice in this photo...

=>>Three piles of CDs meaning that I have only one-and-a-half more piles to go! (Ten in each, and we need about 45-ish.)

=>>My charging iPod. Uh, it just needed to be charged.

=>>My carry-with-me-everywhere notebook, with a list of things needed to get done. In green colored pencil. Because that's how I roll.

=>>About ten thousand annoying little wires connected to all of the little contraptions that make internet use possible. So annoying. But oh well.

=>>Le Livre de Mormon/The Book of Mormon. I know it's awful to be multitasking while reading scripture. But I'm a little behind and the goal is to finish by next week.

=>>My cup of ice. Anyone that has known me or spent a full day with me where there is a semi-large cup and an ice machine will know that I am constantly eating ice. Constantly. It's always there. Yup. Take the nugget-ice machines at Heber Valley Girl's camp for example. We used to CONSTANTLY make trips to that. Half of the time just for me. I'm just cool like that.

=>>You can somewhat see the open iTunes window. I was listening to The Postal Service. Because their electronic-ness rocks my socks.

 

What you CAN'T see...

=>>Me. Clearly. But I now have funny hair and I was wearing glasses and hadn't gotten ready at all yet. Not that that REALLY matters but I just didn't want to be in any pictures! So... too bad. Deal.

=>>The other plethora of windows open on the mac. Such as three or four word documents that I was updating with my randomness, Facebook and entertaining myself with these awesome little button things called flair (seriously: so addicting. So many wonderful things in one place! Bah!), my email, my blog (obviously), probably someone elses blog, and I think I was looking at USA Today or something exciting like that. [[yes, it is possible to do that many things at once. try me.]]

=>>My mom. In the kitchen. Cooking. A. Lot. And preparing things for tomorrow. Oh! Yes, what we're doing all of this for is the huge Christmas Zone Conference we have tomorrow that we brought all of the missionaries in for. In which case we have a couple sisters and a mission couple staying at our house. So we were preparing for that.

=>>My dad. (Not unusual, but still factual) He was picking up people at airports, running errands for the mish, at the mission office and other such things.

=>>The mess that I had just cleaned up. Yes!

=>>Prolly a ton of other things that I can't think of right now!

Oh, and p.s. this is officially my 50th post on this blog. How EXCITING! This is me saying YAY!

oh christmas tree.

We may very well be one of the ONLY people with a Christmas tree in Tahiti. Not too many others do I don't think. This was stuffed in the garage of our house and we managed to force it together and throw some of the rad decorations on it that were already here as well. We also brought some of our favorite ornaments from home. One of my very, very favorite family traditions is that we buy a new ornament each year to represent something significant of the year. (i.e. a darling Mr. & Mrs. Claus for when my parents were married, something for when the kids were born, a thing for a new house, moving etc. etc.) This year it was, obviously, moving to Tahiti and the mish. We went shopping for that yesterday and we now have two options for what we're going to use, and that is still under discussion. Hmmm... But anyway, that's me putting up one of the yearlys. 

 

Okay, we thought this was hilarious. We went to Carre Four and they were selling this "snow powder." Since they can't have the real thing I guess that's as close as they're going to get! I was half tempted to buy it. But not really.

 

Gotta love our family felt advent calendar. Every night we sing a Christmas Carol and put up the next corresponding ornament. It's crazy, in years past sometimes we've found our schedules too busy to do this with consistency - but now that it is one of our only Christmas-ey things in our lives we've found ourselves clinging to it. It's been really fun to do as a family, and I've really loved singing the Christmas carols. (Especially since we don't sing them in church until the WEEK before Christmas! How SAD!!!)

 

 

 

We also did a gift exchange in YW/YM. (Which was interesting on my part but it all ended up working out. Stupid language barrier. Can't we just all GET ALONG?!) And this is what one of the guys gave me. (If you're reading this Mike this is what the flower thingie looked like.)

 

Christmas is definitely different without snow, and without family. But we're doing the best to make it our own and have a great Christmas just the same.

a filler.

Sorry I haven't blogged in a really long time. Let me show you a few of the things we've been up to on our island.

 

My mother and I ate poisson cru all by ourselves. Like, we just went into the fridge and got it out and started eating it for lunch. I also made sushi. We're becoming strange people. And notice the large pile of plates in the background, that was us preparing for a large stake presidents dinner.

 

Um, we had Thanksgiving. But, I already talked about that and I really want to get this awkward moment over with while you guys are still wondering why I'm posting about Thanksgiving nearly a month after the fact.

 

This came from a Temple worker dinner-ness that we went to. Great food.

 

We had new missionaries come...

 

...and old ones leave

 

We had toe problems. I bruised mine playing basketball (I think) and my mom dropped something on hers. It's pretty funny. 

 

Oh, and now I'm on vacation from school/seminary. It's grand. Have a great holiday season everabody! 

grammies anyone?

Okay, so the 2008/2009 Grammy Award nominations came out last night! Kinda exciting! And some slightly off the wall-ness. Here are my un-asked for opinions! (You know you're excited....)

 

RECORD OF THE YEAR:

Chasing Pavements - Adele

Viva La Vida - Coldplay

Bleeding Love - Leona Lewis

Paper Planes - M.I.A.

Please Read the Letter - Robert Plant and Allison Krauss 

 

Basically as long as "Viva La Vida" got a nomination I'm happy. I'm slightly surprised (yet not in the least disappointed) that "I Kissed a Girl" missed the cut. I'm also a little surprised that Rihanna's "Disturbia" or possibly "Take a Bow" didn't make it on either. She had a good year. But I was PLEASANTLY surprised that Adele got in a few nominations especially this one for Record of the Year baby! I love that song... :) And "Bleeding Love" has won the hearts of many, and it deserves a slot. As for Allison Krauss... dude she's freaking won TWENTY-ONE grammies! It's only tradition that they go to their favs.

  

ALBUM OF THE YEAR:

Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends - Coldplay 

Tha Carter III - Lil Wayne

Year of the Gentleman - Ne-yo 

Raising Sand - Robert Plant and Allison Krauss 

In Rainbows - Radiohead

 

Good Choices. Not gonna lie I enjoyed Radiohead's album. And although I'm not so into Lil Wayne... I've heard a ton of buzz about his album- and he did get the most nominations las night with eight. So that's cool I guess. And Ne-yo's "Year of the Gentleman" is sweet R&B goodness. p.s. Applause for Coldplay again. Woot!

 

SONG OF THE YEAR (songwriters):

American Boy - Estelle and Kanye West 

Chasing Pavements - Adele 

I'm Yours - Jason Mraz 

Love Song - Sara Bareilles 

Viva La Vida - Coldplay

 

Sweet. Good choices. No complaints. Lovin' that Adele is gettin some buzz. And still lovin' that Katy Perry hasn't made it in here. Pretty cool that Sara Bareilles got in there too.

 

BEST NEW ARTIST: 

Adele 

Duffy 

Jonas Brothers 

Lady Antebellum 

Jazmine Sullivan  

 

Okay. THIS was surprising. Where the heck is Leona Lewis? You got her on for Record... yet you can't give her the best new artist? Weirdness of my life. And it was pretty surprising that Katy Perry didn't make it on here again. And PLEASE. The Jonas Brothers? They are not grammy material, give me a break.... Duffy I'll agree with as well as Adele (of course!)

 

Those are the important categories. I won't get into all one-hundred-and-ten... (That's a lot of awards! I wonder who, like, makes 'em!) Anyhoodle, it should be interesting! Who knows if anyone out there cares about the grammies anymore but... I think it's pretty sweetness. Happy Thursday everyone! (I guess now it's best to wish you a happy Friday... since it's Friday in most other places around the world. Oh well.)

we will miss him.

 

Thank you Elder Wirthlin, who died yesterday, for all that you have done for us as members of the church. Thank you for all of your outstanding talks, your strong testimony and wonderful example. We will all miss you. 

i need to stop being surprised and I know it.

I don't know what it is that keeps giving me electric shock when I look at the calendar and it says the first of a new month. I just need to cope with the fact that it is now December and yes, Lauren, you HAVE been in a fairy tale island for almost six months. Deal with it. 

 

I'm actually here to talk about alarm clocks. We had a humorous experience happen this week, so I thought I'd share it. We've had muchos troubles with alarm clocks in this house of ours. And my mom had been using an annoying contraption that made some sort of dying cat sound to wake her up in the mornings. Not pleasant. In Utah, my mom used her clock-radio thing to wake her up every morning. So... we decided to get a few adapters over here so we could hook that up for her to use.

 

Well... it wasn't explained very thoroughly that there are voltage issues when transferring most American appliances. We weren't aware of this before because we have several "American-type" outlets that we'd been using. (for straighteners, hair dryers etc.) Well, we plugged in her beloved clock-radio and POOF. 

 

And then the smell.

 

Yeah, we kind of fried it. Anyway long story short (Too late!) we went and got her a new 1,200 franc (12.00 approximately people...) clock-radio at Carre Four. Brought it home, plugged it in, no explosions, things were fine. We set the alarm for 5:00 am to wake up for seminary schedule the next day. 

 

My mom woke up the next day, came out the living room feeling slightly more tired than usual... to look at the clock and see that it was actually FOUR in the morning... Throughout the day the clock progressively kept getting faster and faster than the actual time. By 8:30 the clock read 1:30 in the afternoon. I mean, I've seen clocks that slow down as they get older... but I've never seen one that speeds up! It's like on hyper speed or somethin'. It's still wiggin me out. But anyway. Has anyone heard of this weird phenomenon before? We're STILL in search for a new alarm clock...