My Dad is Cooler Than Your Dad

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Love you!

6 month re-cap

Another link to K.C.'s blog? Why not? She inspired my 6 month re-cap. Or is it 6-month recap?
Either way. 6 months in 12 pictures.

My cubicle.

Robert leads a flag detail in front of some big wigs.

Sister-in-law Alisa gets called to serve in Taiwan.

Other sister-in-law Brynn and I pull out the ol' Christmas socks.

Naegles congregate at Aspen Grove. Aunt Sandy's arm makes it in the picture. 

Cousin's child plays a tiny violin. 

New Year's Day on Antelope island. Some guy is there with a truck full of hawks. 

Robert grows a horn. 

Brother-in-law James looking dapper, cold, and suspicious of the PORCUPINE in the tree behind him.

Robert has his Golden Birthday and I throw him a little par-tay.

Robert makes a 10,000% profit on a basketball card he bought 15 years ago. It ships to Taiwan, coincidentally.

Oh yeah. We are having a baby :)

Faceboot

Back in December Robert and I finally got Faceboot accounts.

We made sure we "liked" each other's account...

...then we spent the night updating our profiles. Make sure to Share! :)

My next post

Months ago I entitled this "My Next Post" hoping I'd get around to it soon. Well I didn't.

Robert and I tagged along with siblings, nieces  and cousins to hunt down our own Christmas tree this (last) year.
K.C. has some great pics of the really fun afternoon here.
I'll add a few more pictures and videos.

Flight suit and saws at the ready!

Frozen river!

Also, this.

Oh, and this picture of the fun you can have with a sheet of ice.

Lunch break!

After hours of searching, we found the perfect one.

Ta daa!

'Tis the Season

Okay, so it's been a while. Here are some things we've done:

Want to know how the Air Force Ball went? It was fun. We had a few light refreshments, danced a few dances, shook a few hands, had a few laughs, and tried to take a few self portraits after we got home and changed, then remembered we didn't have pictures so put our gear back on and set the camera on a timer.

Our clock is military time. It still throws me off. (By the way I see the date is November 11th. Yes, it's been a long time.)

Robert headed to a field training preparation overnighter. I was proud of my packing skills.

Thanksgiving dinner at the Dave Naegles. Delicious as usual. Robert had two name tags since we still can't get his name right.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING 7 MONTHS AGO!

Les Miserables

Here is a little twist I put on a popular song of the season:

Oh, the weather outside is freeeaking awesome.
And watching the Les Mis trailer is so delightful.
And since we've no place to go but the AIR FORCE BALL tonight,
Let it Snow, Let is Snow, Let it snow!

I have creatively, beautifully, and successfully portrayed in this verse the Top 4 things I am excited for right now.

1. The Air Force Ball tonight. This will be my first dance. Well, my fist dance where Robert is my date, that is. Yipee! I'm nervous, but excited.

2. Snow. Obviously. This includes all the cute cozy clothes that you get to wear in the winter time.

3. Les Miserables. Les Miserables. Les Miserables. 

(UPDATE: It turns out Stephanie posted a "Love-Les-Mis" post yesterday, too. See here.)

Bear with me as I confess to you (my millions of readers) my love affair with Les Miserables. 

Some of my earliest memories include Les Miserables. I remember sitting right in front of the speaker in our living room acting out Les Mis with two trucks; A TONKA truck for any male singer and a pink and yellow truck for any female singer. The fist hook was simply the music. It was beautiful to me. It gave me goosebumps.

Then I started listening to the story. I would listen, while sometimes interrogating my mom. If I was really lucky, my mom would sit and explain the whole story to me as we listened, which she did many times. 

She also took us to see the musical. I remember a few things from it (and Phantom, and Beauty and the Beast, and Secret Garden, and Music Man, etc.) but mainly I just remember being enchanted throughout the whole long thing. And getting goosebumps.

As I grew, I found out about the 10th Anniversary Concert. What?! A whole new world of dialogue that wasn't on my Original Cast recording! I would watch it, then listen to my CD in my room and act the story out as it pieced itself together. My appreciation grew.

In my little freshman dorm, half my roommates and I used pens and highlighters (Angela Valentine Naegle style) to act out the whole thing to the other half of my roommates. 

Then...the 25th Anniversary Concert. My Les Miserables world turned upside down. First, because the Jonas kid was a really poor casting decision, but second and more important, I fell in love with Alfie Boe and Norm Lewis. They are my Jean Valjean and Javert.

Robert and I went to see it at the Capitol Theatre a few years ago (THANK YOU AUNT CRISTY!) and Robert, who loves a good story, fell in love, too. Robert and I then began asking more important questions about the characters...well, character. About society. About the author's views. 

Here we are, the present day, and I am halfway through the book. I needed answers to my questions and the book is thorough. I think it is safe to say there is no book in existence that is more thorough than Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. When  I listen to the musical now, I get goosebumps and cry like I never have before. Ah...I could go on and on. 

Now that you are convinced I am a legit fan, let me tell you that I am excited for the movie, simply for this reason: 

Les Miserables is a fantastic story. I can't wait to see it in "movie" medium. I know there are Les Mis movies out there but this one will be grand because it's a movie of the musical. I will keep my singing expectations in check and look at Hugo's story from a different point of view. I am so excited!

Moving on. (p.s. I shortened this Les Mis entry by about half before posting it. You're welcome.)

4. THE HOLIDAY SEASON!

It's snowing right now. Right this second. I don't care what people say, I can listen to Christmas music. All this talk about "if you listen to Christmas music you are forgetting Thanksgiving"? I won't have it.

There is a magic about Christmas time, and listening to cheesy music awakens past holiday feelings of  peace, electricity, and the Spirit of the season. I don't see anything wrong with giving two months to this feeling instead of 25 days. Why must I hold back until a certain day to start getting excited about all of the  magical, wonderful. spectacular, miraculous things about Christmas? Uh uh, not me. I'm not waiting.

Of course, I'll try not to overdo it.... :) 

Lots of "less"

This weekend I was a little bit bummed.

I had been looking forward to our ward Trunk-or-Treat slash ward Party for a long time because I usually miss activities due to work. But this was a Saturday evening party. Oh yeah.

As the date approached I began thinking about what to be. I really wanted to be Rosie the Riveter but I wasn't sure what Robert would be. Seeing how he is actually in the Military, I felt funny asking him to dress up like a soldier, and I think he felt the same way. Before I even got the chance to ask him, I had a wonderful idea with which to replace the previous not-so-good idea. 

Since it is a Trunk-or-Treat and we have a truck, I could create some awesome trunk decor. Then the idea came...

"Robert! Let's build the UP! house and stick it in the back of our truck!" 

My dad has a bunch of foam core board for lawyer stuff and I figured it would be perfect. Thursday, I drove to Salt Lake in a snow storm and picked up the boards and a toy bird I have, courtesy of Heather, that looks a lot like Kevin. I got home that night and didn't have time to work on the house but planned to work on it Friday night with Robert. 

Friday night came and Friday night went. Robert was so tired from the busy week that building a house didn't really sound like fun. I tried really hard to just let it go but...but...*lip quiver....I really wanted to do this and now our plans were wrecked. I, in a moment of pure enthusiasm and excitement, volunteered to bring a soup to the party, so if I had any time between work and the party, I'd be making soup. To make it worse, we didn't even have costumes to fall back on.

 Late Friday night, I suddenly felt really stupid. We were trunk-less, costume-less, friend-less, kid-less losers. 

The new star-gazing club jacket-less member is the child-less couple in a family ward. Or the costume-less couple at a Halloween party. The trunk-less car at a trunk-or-treat!

Not to mention dog-less. There is this dog that I want so badly....but that's another story.

Can you tell I was bummed? 

I went to work and did my thing. I came home and Robert's truck was gone. I figured he was at the library. The poor soul treats Saturdays like any other week day...but you should see his grades. Phew!

I walked up the steps and stared at my lawn. (Like father like daughter) I planted grass (for the third time) and I take great pleasure in seeing the little blades poking out of the ground.

I was staring blankly when Robert came roaring up the parking lot in the truck. He hoped out and bounded up the stairs. 

"Hey! Have...have you been inside?" 

"Nope. I just barely got home."

I was clue-less.

He unlocked the door and pushed it open. There, in all it's almost-finished glory, was the house. There, in my living room, was a miniature UP! house with shingles and everything.

SPEECH-LESS!

It had taken him 4 or 5 hours to build and he was just getting back from buying spray paint to finish it off. He also went and picked up candy and half a dozen helium balloons to attach to the roof!

I was so thrilled I could have stayed home and stared at it all night, but we hustled and got everything together and headed to the party: house, candy, balloons, Kevin, and boiling soup in tow.

We arrived 30 minutes late and pulled up as all the children were walking up the stairs. The Trunk-or-Treat was over and people were heading inside to eat and play games or whatever you do at parties. 

Bah! We got in line for dinner next to our neighbors, and friends (I lied about the no friends part), and sat at a table of all our child-less tenants/neighbors/friends.  We parked our truck right outside the main door so people could see the house on the way out and left candy in a bowl. We stayed for the whole party and my second favorite part other than the house was that MY soup that I threw together and didn't even taste before setting it out was the first to go! Om nom nom. 

The night I thought I was going to hate turned in to a lot a fun.
Thank you, Robert, for the self-less person you are. (See that positive "less" I threw in there...see how I did that?)

But really. He did not have time to do everything that he did on Saturday (not to mention he helped someone move that morning and mowed someone's lawn. Sheesh.) I can't hide a thing from Robert and I can count on him to make me smile, especially when I am feeling really bummed. 

This was a forever long and unimportant post about something silly, but it meant so much to me. That night before we fell asleep, we watched the clip from UP! You know the one I'm talking about, where it shows Ellie and Carl's life together.

 I cried and held Robert tight.