Beautiful Sunday. My brother Michael had his homecoming talk today in Sacrament Meeting. My Grandpa J and Aunt C and her family came down to Houston from Utah to visit Aunt E and my family. So they drove over and came to our ward for Mike’s talk, and we sang a musical number.

Grandpa sang opera in college and did radio announcing; he has a big beautiful bass voice. And it’s still strong, even with his walker and failing health.
My grandma died last year during my mission. She had played the piano and taught all her 8 children to play.

We have lived apart from our extended family most of my life. My mom’s family lives in California, my dad’s in Utah. But lately we’ve had a few families move to Texas for their jobs. And others are visiting more because of that.

So this was the first time we’ve had a family choir gathered together like this in Texas. Aunt C played the piano, Grandpa, Dad, Mike, Uncle J, Aunt E, me, my sis, and Cousin M sang “Were you there that Christmas Night?” (Mom would have sang too, but her voice went hoarse this week.) All these big, beautiful voices, all coming from the righteousness, talent, hard work, and blessings of two special souls, Grandma and Grandpa. It was a spiritual and special performance.

And I substitute taught the 6-7 year old Sunday School these last two Sundays. Oh, I love kids! They are just so wonderful.

This is what it is about, folks. What life and the gospel and everything is about. What we are fighting for. Families. (I watched Return of the King yesterday finally. More on that later, but that last shot of Sam and his wife and children? Yeah, that’s what it is all about.)

EEEE!
Okay, several wonderful treats here. First, click:

This was my Christmas gift to my missionary companion last year. I scanned and htmled it for everyone to see today. ^_^

Next, the Secret Santa Pic Exchange from Aimee’s Forum is up!

I did this pic for Betsey:

And look what Surfeit did for me!!!:
The Purple Siren vs. Santa!

Oh my goodness, dost he not ROCK?? *runs around excitedly (really, I did run around excitedly)* HEE! So cool. This is the first time I have seen my comic book superheroine character in a comic setting (which is my fault, of course, I haven’t gotten there yet), so this is so exciting to me. He did a great job. *gushes*

Happy Christmas!

I’m with my family; they are so wonderful. It’s just happy with them. ^_^

We are talking to Elder Tim J right now, he’s serving as a missionary in the Netherlands! Hee! I love this kid.

***********************

I know no one else is interested but I got a DIGITAL CAMERA for Christmas!!! EEEEE! And the new Josh Groban cd. ohyeah.
My Christmas Presents: » Continue Reading

I’m in Texas!

And . . . I’m done!!! Finally, finally done with all my Fall semester projects. Oh, thank goodness.

I got everything packed and moved to my new room (will unpack when I get back). I left at 6:30 yesterday morning and flew to Texas and hugged my brother, and we went shopping and stuff and celebrated my other brother’s birthday (bro#3 is 14 now :). And I woke up at 5am this morning to finish my php project and after horrid yellings and screamings at the forms for not uploading to the database like they should, finally now it is all working, uploaded and emailed to my TA.

So, here they are!! The projects from CHum 490R: Databases Tools for the Web
Feel free to play with these. :) (they aren’t perfect, but they work at a basic level)

Hello World -the first perl thing
Basic Addition Calculator -perl and regex
Simple Book of Mormon Search -perl and a bit, but not enough of, regex, it’s case sensitive, but works (search for “Jesus Christ” :)
Pride and Prejudice Search -does case in/sensitivity! whoo! still not perfect, but great for finding “Mr. Darcy” (I’ll fix the line length someday)

The PHP Art Gallery!!! -it works! finally! Leave a comment. ^_^

Now, I’m going to enjoy my vacation. *collapse*

First off, my brother Michael came home from his mission today!
He’s spent 2 years in the Montana, Billings Mission, serving the Lord and teaching the gospel.

I got to call him today and I will see him tomorrow. I’m flying back to Houston tomorrow morning (uh, this morning).

Finals are finally done! (sort of) I spent all last night working on my computer programming projects, and I got a lot done! Yeah! I have some final php aspects to get up, to my TA said to have them up and email him by Saturday morning. It’s gonna be a cram.

But now I have to get this computer downstairs! I’m moving apartments, and I need to get done before those girls go to bed! God has blessed me with energy, I’m not dying yet. I’ll collapse on the plane.

So, see ya’ll in Texas! :]

First off, this from Newsweek:

Goes with this article.

I will talk more on this, rest assured. I have many thoughts and opinions.
But after I catch up on sleep.

IONs – I hung out with Danielle and Kristin(burnt-or-dead) tonight! Fun! Art talk and Dance Dance Revolution. My goodness, that’s a game. Danielle is in super experienced hard mode, and Kristin and I are dying on beginners level. “What? You want me to step back? What?”

THIS makes me soooo HAPPY. (Spidy 2 trailer)
Oh, that opening scene. ^____^

Okay, what I had loved most about the original Spiderman (at least the cartoons I grew up with) was that he was witty. The man was funny.
They are not playing him witty in the movies. Tobey Maguire is sweet and darling dorky. He just gets my nerd loving girly romantic heart so bad.

All I can say is: yum. *squeal*

Edit: here’s the higher res Quicktime version.

I’m ALIVE!!! I survived my two biggest finals. Yes, I didn’t remember the names of all the modern artists I talked about in my ArtCiv essay exam, and I totally remembered nothing about constructing key signatures and circles of 5ths for Music Fundamentals, but, hey! I remembered a whole lot more then I expected to be able too. It was a blessing from God, let me tell you.

And I got my paper on religious/spiritual art done, the one I agonized over all weekend. I looked for hours and hours for just the right art pieces to talk about. 0.0 I looked at A LOT of art this weekend. oy. (too many nudes, far too many nudes. Put some clothes on, people. And quit it with the conveniently floating draperies, they’re annoying.)

But it is SUCH A RELIEF!!!!!

Figure Draw and New Testament finals tomorrow, got to study and draw 11 more sketch pages. Lah!

So my Elfwood Fanquarter site is finally up (nothing new). It appears that this is the rule- if it’s based on visual sources, like comics and movies, it’s for Fanquarter. But if it is a purely literary fantasy fanart, it goes in Lothorian. So HarryP, because of movies = FanQuarter. Discworld’s Death = Loth.

I hear they have fights over LotR stuff. If it’s too movie-ish, it goes to FanQ, if it’s pretty original, or predates the movie, in Loth. 9.9