Wednesday, February 28, 2007

My illustrious career as an actress and model

Ok, my list of five things about me was fairly boring and you probably knew some of them so here’s a deep dark secret that popped into my head this morning; when I was 14 I was signed on at a modeling agency.

I have to go back a bit to really explain this one. I am from a very creative, artistic family. Everyone had their own talents. My mom is an amazing decorator and quilter and can create just about anything with her hands that you can think of. My dad has picked up photography and even guest lectures at BYU on different developmental processes, he’s really talented with stained glass, and he can figure out how to build anything only he always does the highest quality work with his own finishing touches like he decides to build a pond in the backyard, but of course it has to have a waterfall made from sandstone that he quarried himself or he decides to build a shed but of course it needs stained glass windows and a copula and it ends up being so beautiful my mom won’t use it to stash dirty yard tools in it. Then there’s my older sister Candice, genius photographer, famous scrapbooker, and did you know that she used to be very into acting? She was in several plays in high school and college and she did a theater study abroad in London. Oh, and did I mention that she has an amazing singing voice? She was on one of Janice Kapp Perry’s CD’s when she was little and she was always chosen as the soloist in just about everything that you can think of, weddings, choir concerts, plays, you name it. My little brother Eli is the athlete of the family, but don’t think the creative gene skipped him. He’s a drummer and he had his own band through junior high and high school. And let’s not forget my little sister, Marissa. I would say that her creativity lies in her day to day activities. You are NEVER bored around Marissa and she easily talks the people around her into doing the craziest things and they never regret it because they have a blast. Like when Marissa convinced her roommate to dress up for their picture in the ward directory to make it look like a mug shot, huge ratted hair, fake black-eye, and cardboard sign with their number that they each held in front of them and all. Or when they got tickets to the monster truck rally and all dressed up like white trash and spent the evening hooting and hollering. Or a two night before she left on her mission when her girlfriends were spending the night and they had nothing to do so they decided around 1 a.m. to throw an unbirthday party and they went to Walmart to buy cupcake supplies and they each had two dollars to by a birthday gift for someone else in the group, then they went home and made crazy paper hats and partied. You never ever quite know what you’ll be doing when you hang out with Riss. Knowing that she’s so spunky, it’s probably not a surprise that she’s never been shy and when she was younger she really wanted to be an actress. She was in a lot of children’s plays and after a lot of begging and pleading, she convinced my mom to take her to an open call for a very reputable modeling agency (her best friend was represented by them and make a killing just by riding a bike in an Evian water commercial). At the time we lived in Hawaii so the open call meant a trip to the other side of the island and I went along with my mom and sister because I wanted to go to Costco afterwards with my mom. We waited in a big room with all the other kids and one by one they were called out to another room where they were turned down and sent home. We were the last ones left and figured Marissa would meet the same fate (although she was adorable) but instead the agent walked in with contracts in hand for both of us. I was totally surprised. Candice and Marissa were the actresses in the family; I almost had a heart attack mumbling the one line I had in my seventh grade play.

At any rate, we were both signed on and when the photographer came to our house to shoot our new headshots my mom asked him to do headshots for Candice and Eli too. As soon as the agency saw those, they were signed on too. Yep, a whole family of models, which lasted about a month before we found out we were moving back to Utah, and thus ended our modeling careers as we all lost interest and moved on to other things (but not before Candice was an extra in a Jackie Chan movie).

Anyway, I've mostly tried to forget about this embarrassing period of my life, but I was reminded about it by seeing a picture of myself on Candice's blog. I always feel so awkward in front of a camera. I am not photogenic so it's a good thing that I have a patient sister who also just happens to be a photographer or I wouldn't have any decent pictures of myself. Candice recently wrote an article about how so many women don't like to be in front of the camera, but it's important to capture them so we can remember the wonderful women around us and we can save our own memories. So here I am in all of my awkward glory.

Monday, February 26, 2007

35 weeks!

I'm just over 35 weeks along and thanks to some wonderful friends from work, I'm feeling a bit more prepared.
From the left, this is Gloria, Michele, and Jen. The four of us got together at Michele's house on Saturday for lunch and an "exclusive baby shower". I felt so incredibly spoiled! Michele made an amazing lunch, Jen brought fun shower favors for everyone, and they all were so generous with their gifts. Gloria even managed to find a few children's books that I don't have yet.

I have been counting down the days until I am done with work, but getting together made me realize some of the things I'm really going to miss. Hopefully we'll all be able to get together again after the baby is born.

And this last picture is just so you can see how pregnant I really am. Can you blame me for not posting more pictures of myself lately?


Friday, February 23, 2007

Finger Puppets

I started working on the finger puppets for the quiet book pages that I'm making (obviously the chicken still needs a face). I have to do 18 of each of these so I haven't decided how many I really want to do. I'm leaning towards making five different animals, but I'm still experimenting with different animals so we'll see. Any guesses about which animals I'm making next?

In other news, Larry just got back from an interview at Oregon Health Sciences in Portland. He said the interview went really well and when he got home there was a message for him from the program he applied to in Denver asking him if he's still interested in the program. They said they emailed him an invitation a month and half ago, but he never received anything from them (which is a little annoying because he might have been able to come to Alicia's wedding with me and interviewed then). The good news is he has one more interview. Now we're left wondering if any of the other five programs he hasn't heard form have tried to email him too.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Whodunit?

Living in Columbus and looking for a cheap date this weekend? I have two ideas for you. The first is that the last Friday of every month is Family Friday Night at COSI, the only night COSI stays open late. If you arrive after 5 p.m. admission is only $7/person and it includes an imax movie.

Second, Balletmet is doing a production of Whodunit? a ballet murder-mystery that I'm dying to see. The ballet doesn't open until March 8th BUT visit whostolethemusic.com and try to solve their murder mystery this weekend and you can win a prize. You'll have to read the suspect statements to answer 12 questions. If your answers are correct, you will receive the final hint to reveal "whodunit," as well as a list of items that you will need to collect as the last part of your scavenger hunt. You must drop off required items (including a suspect accusation and canned food donation to benefit the Mid-Ohio Food Bank) between 11am and 1pm on MArch 3rd at the BalletMet Dance Centre, 322 Mount Vernon Avenue. Everyone who is right will get a gift pack and there will be a grand prize winner that will receive free pepsi for a year, season tickets to next year's BalletMet season, and of course a pair of tickets to Whodunit?

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

5 Things

My sister-in-law Keri challenged me a few days ago to come up with five interesting things about myself to post on my blog, but I've been putting it off since I already posted 100 things about myself and I'm not so much feeling interesting these days and I'm feeling big and round and awkward! Anyway, here are five things that I came up with:
  1. I have a list of words that I can’t stand and my family loves to tease me by using them. Oh, no I’m not telling you what they are or you might you them on purpose too!
  2. I love Doris Day. My sisters and I watched Calamity Jane a million times when we were little and now I love watching any of her comedies.
  3. I’ve never been a big cereal eater, because I’d rather get a few more minutes of sleep in the morning than eat breakfast, but since I’ve been on my low-carb diet I can’t even begin to explain how much I’ve been wanting to eat a gigantic bowl of Honeynut Cheerios. I can last for 5 ½ more weeks, right?
  4. I’m a REALLY Deep sleeper. I never wake up when Larry’s alarm goes off and even though my alarm is really loud, I can sleep through it for quite some time. It’s a little scary. Everyone keeps telling me that it will change when I have a baby, but I’m afraid it won’t. My sisters used to take full advantage and come in and pester me early in the morning until I told them they could borrow my clothes, then later I would wake up and see them wearing my clothes and get mad that they were wearing them without my permission and they would swear they asked and I said yes and there was nothing I could do about it because I was too out of it to remember waking up at all (or maybe they were always just making it up!)
  5. I only have three weeks left at my job. Part of me cannot wait to be done, but I’m also nervous about how I’ll handle all of the free time. When I finished graduate school and was only working full time without classes in the evening or a second job on the weekend, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. It was like I almost had to rediscover my hobbies. I think I’m also going to miss having a lot of adult interaction; I know it’s something I need, and I don’t get a lot of it at home with Larry working so much.

Monday, February 19, 2007

How cute

So what did we do for Valentine's Day? Last Valentine's Day after dinner Larry offered to paint our living room, which was a very big deal because he REALLY didn't want to do it and I'd been trying to convince him for months that it would be worth it. This year he offered to paint the nursery by himself, but I didn't take him up on it because I still haven't settled on paint colors. Instead we headed to Target after dinner to start a baby registry! I meant to take a picture of Larry standing in the aisle looking completely bewildered. There's just so much stuff out there for babies and how do you really know what they will need? We registered at Babies R'Us last weekend and I thought Target would be easier because the baby section is so much smaller, but we were still lost. We didn't end up registering for a lot, but we already have a crib, bedding and a stroller carseat combo so I guess we have the essentials and we can figure out the rest later.

We had a baby focused weekend too. We spent four hours on Saturday at childbirthing class (Larry rearranged his schedule so he could be there with me even though he didn't really need to attend because he's actually delivered babies). After that I hosted a baby shower for a friend who is having a girl. I'm so excited to be having a boy but it was nice to have an excuse to buy some girly pink things. I'm not really into baby shower games but I needed some sort of ice breaker so I was really excited when I found this bank.



Isn't it cute? I told everyone that the mother-to-be would be "banking" on their advice so each person wrote down some advice, and then read it to the group and added it to the bank (it's a really big bank with a large hole on the bottom).

And speaking of cute, I don't want to forget to show you this purse that Larry got me for Valentine's Day.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

La La La La Larry!

In honor of Valentine's day, here are 50 things about my Valentine, my husband Larry:
  1. He was born in L.A.
  2. He went to elementary school with the kid who played Urkle on Family Matters
  3. He’s allergic to nuts (but not peanuts, they are legumes)
  4. He’s the only person I know who loves circus peanuts
  5. He’s not a sport enthusiast
  6. He served a mission in Connecticut
  7. When he was little he was obsessed with the Fonz and had a fake black leather jacket that he wore as he rode his tricycle around
  8. He only has one living Grandpa, his Grandpa Ford, and he calls him about every other day.
  9. He makes me lunch every day
  10. He loves the movies Napoleon Dynamite, the Nightmare before Christmas, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and The Addams Family
  11. He used to hate tennis shoes (which he calls sneakers sometime just to bug me) and he only had one pair which he hid in his closet and he only used to play racquetball
  12. His full name is Larry Creed Ford, Jr., Larry is not short for Lawrence
  13. His favorite color is black
  14. He hates Toby Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Ben Affleck and won’t watch movies with any of those actors.
  15. He does our laundry
  16. He put off medical school for a year because I wasn’t ready to get married and he wanted to give things time and see where they went
  17. He forgot the marriage license the morning we got married, but luckily as we were driving away from my house I quizzed him on all of the things he should have and he realized he needed to go back and get it.
  18. Little kids love him. When we were babysitting Kate and Jack the other day, Kate kept saying, “Where is that Larry?” and when I drove Jonny Hall home from church a few weeks ago, he cried because he was hoping Larry was coming with us.
  19. He tutored my sister Candice until she finally passed Physical Science at BYU.
  20. Every morning he leaves me a note on the floor by our garage door
  21. He did not even come close to being an eagle scout
  22. He’s applying for a fellowship in infectious diseases and he just got his sixth invitation to interview.
  23. He’s a pack rat, but he knows it and he’s trying to be better
  24. He hates mowing the lawn and he reminds me that he always said that he never wanted to own a house until he could afford to pay someone else to take care of the yard.
  25. His least favorite household chore is mopping the floor. We had an agreement that if he would always clean the bathrooms then I would keep the kitchen floor clean, but that fell apart.
  26. He loves coats and has started quite the collection (which is funny because he hates snow and cold weather)
  27. Donny Osmond was one of his young men’s advisors in church
  28. He loves Gwen Steffani, Tori Amos, Cheryl Crow, and Regina Spektor so it’s understandable that people often mistake his CD collection for mine.
  29. I think gnomes are really creepy and Larry loves them (although I’m still not sure if he really loves them or he just insists he does to bother me).
  30. He will always stop to read any historical plaque or marker and is happy to watch anything on the history channel
  31. The longer we’ve been married the more excited he’s been about holidays (my family has really rubbed off on him). He’s even excited about putting Christmas lights on our house next year and has been telling me about his plans.
  32. Since radiation he no longer has a working thyroid and has to take medication everyday.
  33. When he’s excited about something it’s amazing how fast he can talk (if he’s not tired after a long shift)
  34. He’s more social than me and loves to get together with friends.
  35. I’ve never heard Larry claim to be even a little artistic or creative, but he encourages me in all my crazy endeavors and never complains about the messes.
  36. He works really hard and loves being a doctor.
  37. He never wants to live in the south or out in the country. He’s definitely a city boy.
  38. He rarely has free time to read, but one month read Ender’s Game and came along with me to the Children’s Literature book club.
  39. He doesn’t love the ballet, but he’ll go with me as long as there’s a storyline.
  40. His favorite TV show is Scrubs, but he’s rarely home to see it.
  41. His two favorite restaurants are In N Out and Tito’s Tacos in LA.
  42. When he’s traveling he would rather be out seeing the sites than relaxing by the pool.
  43. He studied microbiology in undergrad
  44. His favorite author is Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  45. He loves old cemeteries and always wants to stop when we pass them
  46. He’s not an outdoorsman, but he goes letterboxing with me because he likes the boxes with historical information and he likes visiting random places we would never otherwise see.
  47. He looks forward to the Circleville Pumpkin Show just as much as I do every year.
  48. He can’t play any musical instrument
  49. He hates it if anyone touches his collarbone so he and his friend are always trying to attack each other and grab them.
  50. He regularly reads my blog and leaves comments

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Happy Valentine's Day!

Thanks to a level 2 snow emergency in Columbus, I'm home today! Unfortunately it also means I won't be delivering all of the Valentines that I put together for my friends so if you live in Columbus and you don't get one, it's due to the snow. I love Valentine's Day and I figured why should I stop giving Valentine's to my friends just because I'm not in elementary school?

Larry and I agreed not to spend a lot of money this Valentine's Day, but I still wanted to do something special for him. There's a local company that I love called Wonderful Graffiti that makes quotes with vinyl letters to stick on your wall, but they look like they're painted on and they are easily removeable. I love looking at all of the ideas on their web site, and I've been wanting to order this quote to stick on our entertainment center. Sometimes they feature special designs for the holidays. This year they had some really fun Valentine's Day designs so I ordered a set of conversation hearts. Last night after Larry went to sleep I put them up all over the house in spots that I knew Larry would see them and I left a little note with each one: on the bathroom mirror, the fridge, the door to the garage, our headboard, even the dashboard of his car.


Monday, February 12, 2007

The Second Annual Family Snowflake Cutting Extravaganza!


February in Columbus is gray and yucky so I try to have a lot of fun things planned so I have things to look forward to instead of moping about, complaining about the weather (something I learned to do from Cat, my adopted mom in Columbus). This weekend was the Second Annual Family Snowflake Cutting Extravaganza at our home with the Erneys, our adopted family. This is a fairly easy actitivity to plan, but it’s lots of fun. First we start with a dinner of all white food. Last year Cat brought cauliflower and white chili with white chocolate raspberry cake for dessert. This year we picked up white pizzas from Mama Mimi’s, my favorite pizza shop and Jones Soda’s Cream soda (which Larry LOVES because it tastes like liquid cotton candy) and for dessert Cat brought over cream puffs with white chocolate filling (and she even made them sugar-free for me). I cheated a little and had salad too since I can’t eat a lot of carbs, but for the most part we stuck with white food.

Each snowflake cutting participant gets rewards with a new item of winter-wear (which also works out well because winter stuff is on sale this time of year). This year was the year of the scarf. So here is a picture of each of us with our scarves and our favorite snowflakes.
We like to end the evening with a snow themed movie like White Christmas or Happy Feet, but this year we were too busy talking and having fun to make it to the movie. At the end up the night we pack up the snowflakes and mail them to someone in need of some snow. Last year they went to my little sister who was spending her first winter in Las Vegas and this year I think they are heading to my little brother who is busy enjoying summer weather in Brazil.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Family Update

For those of you wondering how my little brother is doing on his mission in Brazil . . .

He's great! He just got transfered to a new city, Itajaa, and he loves it (it doesn't hurt that one of the members there has a drum set that he's looking forward to playing (oh, how we do not miss Eli's band practicing around the house))

And for those of you wondering how Larry is doing at this very moment, I really don't know. He's taking Step three of his board exams today and tomorrow, which means right now he's about a quarter of the way through 16 hours of testing. Poor guy! I think I'm more stressed about it than he is though. He hasn't had much study time, but I'm sure he'll do well and he'll be one step closer to being qualified to moonlight at other hospitals. Last night I rushed home to eat dinner before heading off to a baby shower and we had a message from a Doctor at the University of Utah who wanted to talk to Larry about his fellowship application. Now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the fellowship application process, but that was highly usual. Larry had to submit everything electronically through a Website that distributes his information to the programs that he's interested in, then those programs email him invitations to interview if they're interested in him. We thought it was weird we he got an invitation though the mail so we were totally suprised by the phone call. It basically ended up being a phone interview to see if he qualified for an invitation for a real interview. They must have liked him because he now has an invitation to interview at the U of U. So far that means he's heard from six of the programs he applied to (which is about half of them) and they have all sent him invitations to interview. Now we just have to figure out how he will interview at all these schools in the next three months while he's working a million hours and Baby Ford is due April 1st, and let's not think about travel expenses, for now let's just celebrate the happy news.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Wedding Bells

I left early Friday morning to fly to Denver for my friend Alicia's wedding. I feel so lucky that she changed her wedding date so I could make it because at 32 weeks pregnant, I won't be flying again any time soon! Getting out there was awful (why is there always some issue when I fly through Chicago? Remind me never to do that again!), but after having problems with my luggage the last time I was traveling for a wedding, I carried on my luggage so it made it there with me safe and sound. I arrived later than planned, but I was still able to help with some of the preparations. Alicia and Andy are both really creative and fun so their reception was full of cool details. Their wedding colors were red, purple, and brown and they had an Asian theme (since Andy is half Japanese). First I helped some of Alicia's family stuff and seal these little Chinese takeout boxes with chocolate dipped fortune cookies for all of the guests to take home. Alicia's sister made all of the takeout boxes and of course Alicia special ordered the fortune cookies to all have sayings about marriage and love in them. They were so cute!

Then while Alicia and Andy had dinner with their families, I met up with some of their friends to begin setting up for the reception. It was held in a funky building in an industrial area of Denver called the Taxi Building and I can't even begin to describe it. I wasn't sure what to think of it when we arrived, but Alicia and Andy had a vision and it really made it work. They made 1001 paper cranes for good luck to hang all over the building. I can't even image how long it too them to make all the cranes because it took ages just to hang them up.Here's Alicia celebrating as we got ready to hang the final two cranes.It was a late night, but it was fun. The next morning I hung out with Alicia while she got ready. When Andy came to pick her up I was impressed that they both seemed so calm and said they were just ready to get the day over and start their life together.


Everyone kept telling me that the Denver Temple was small, but it is huge compared to the Columbus Temple. I don't think I'll ever get tired of attending sealing ceremonies (in the Mormon church we call them sealing ceremonies instead of weddings because we believe when you're married in a temple you are sealed together for time and all eternity). Each ceremony that I've attended since I've been married remind me of my own wedding day and how grateful I am to be marreid to Larry, which always makes me even happier thinking of the couple getting married as I think about all that they have to look forward to. Alicia and Andy glowed after the ceremony, but I didn't take a lot of pictures because I didn't want to get in the photographer's way (I hated it when I worked for a wedding photographer and all of the relatives and friends kept taking pictures so we couldn't get the shots that we needed).

Alicia looked so beautiful! She had her dress made for her and I had a hard time picturing it when she described it to me so it was exciting to see how perfect it was for her.
Continueing with the Asian theme at the reception, Alicia bought tons of white paper lanterns to hang in the entrance to the Taxi building. I love how they looked.There was origami paper spread out on all of the tables with directions to fold origami.
There was origami in the boutineers and coursages

There was even a sushi chef.
And you know I love cupcakes so of course I loved this. As amazing as all of the little details were, the best part was just seeing Alicia so happy. I'm glad that she found someone who is so supportive and appreciative of her, and I'm glad I had the chance to be there for such a special day.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Baby Boy Ford

I just got back from spending a few days in Denver for my friend Alicia's wedding and I have lots of pictures to post, but right now you're getting my most exciting news of the day, which is that I had another ultrasound today and now we are certain that Baby Ford is a boy. We were already fairly sure, but it was really nice to hear that my doctor has no doubts. I’ve been buying a few boy things here and there knowing I could return them if I had to so now I can go home and tear the tags off and starting hanging them up and organizing. We’ll also finally be able to pick a color to paint the nursery.

The other great news is that he’s measuring at about four pounds, which means he’s a little bit small in about the 40th percentile for size, which was a happy surprise since I have gestational diabetes so my doctor has been concerned that he might be too big. He’s already head down so it was a little hard to tell and he may even be smaller than that. I haven’t gained any weight over the last month (I even lost a little), but Baby Ford is still growing and healthy. I’ve had some frustrations over my low-carb diet, but news like that makes it worth it.

Less than eight weeks to go!

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Girlfriends


There are women out there who are perfectly happy without girlfriends, I am not one of them. Life has been busy lately and most of my girlfriends no longer live nearby or now are busy with multiple kids. This week reminded me of how much I enjoy getting together with girlfriends. Maybe I feel myself lacking in this area of life because Larry’s so busy lately so I end up spending a lot of time alone, but I think it’s more because sometimes you just need girl talk. I need to know other women understand things I’m going through and I need to feel connected to the world outside of my home.

I got together with Deanna, Greta and Robyn one last time before Deanna moves. We had dinner at P.F. Chang’s and then we just stayed and talked as the restaurant started to empty, and that’s all I need to do with these girls to head home happy; we don’t have to have a fun activity planned, sometimes it’s nice to just talk.

Last night I met up with a larger group of girls to start a quiet book group (an activity books to help kids practice motor skills and keep them quietly entertained during church, etc.). Each girl in the group will be making multiple copies of one page and then we will exchange them to create a whole book full of different activities. I signed up to do two pages so I can make two books so I need to come up with a two-page layout. One other group member is doing a two-page layout and she’s creating a little race track with a garage to tuck the car in when that layout isn’t being used. I signed up to do a two-page layout where one page has flower stems with buttons at the top and the other page has a vase with stems and buttons at the top and you’re supposed to “pick” the flowers and put them in the vase. Some of the other pages will be so much more work though so now I’m thinking I should do something else. I was thinking about doing a clothesline on one page and a boy and a girl on the other page and making clothes you can dress them in or hang on the clothesline, but that may be too much work. My latest idea is a finger puppet theater with a theater on one side with curtains you can close and open and pockets to hold some finger puppets on the other page. I found some patterns for some felt animal finger puppets that look like they wouldn’t be too hard to make. What do you think?

My friend Brittany had an old quiet book pattern that had most of the pages my childhood quiet book had in it and it brought back such fun memories. I’m tempted to just make some of my old favorites so baby Ford can enjoy them too. I’d love to hear any ideas that you have!.