Scenic White Board Photo

All day long I work in an office building. I sit in a cubical in the middle of the building, far, far away from any windows- which can be kinda depressing, especially during the summer when I know it's supposed to be warm and sunny, but I just can't seem to feel summery at all. Sometimes I take a break just to stare longingly out the break room window, or when I'm feeling daring, even go outside and walk around the building to soak up some sunshine. Anyway, even though I don't have a window in my cubical, I do have a white board. On said white board my dear friend and co-worker, JaNae, has taken to drawing me a scenic view to enjoy from the comfort of my own chair, just to brighten my day. And it works!

I love her drawings so much that I just had to post her latest one. Regretfully, I don't have photos of the previous two she's done, but this one might just be my favorite one:

Couple's Photo

Yesterday Matt and I went up to Ephraim to spend some time with his parents and sister. While we were there we went over to his dad's work and got the tour of his office with a window. Afterwards we sat on the grass in the field and Matt played with his camera. He didn't really expect to get any good photos since he was just playing and letting his dad and sister play, but he actually got a few good ones- with him in them! I'm pretty excited since I've been asking for a couple photo of us for a while and some of the ones that turned out were of us.

Matt uploaded them to Costco for me and even had a 8x10 printed of us to hang in his house. Tonight when he got home he put it in a frame and put it on his wall in the entryway. I was feeling pretty special! I mean, he's got a picture of us hanging there for everyone to see. That's a good sign right?? As I was admiring it, I thought maybe it was a little crooked and I went to straighten it. I guess I straightened it too much because it went totally crooked the other way. I pushed it with my finger to the other side and knocked it off the wall! It crashed down and hit two stairs before it finally stopped in the entry way and broke! The glass shattered, the frame splintered and even the photo got scratched from all of the glass. I guess that'll teach me to be cocky! ;-)

I got...

... a new camera! I've never had my own brand new camera so I'm excited! And it's small enough to fit in my purse so I won't be at one of Spencer's events suddenly finding that I've forgotten my camera. Yay!

The Host

The Host: A Novel by Stephenie Meyer

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I finished The Host over the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it, even more so then the Twilight series! The pace was good and overall the book was an easy read. Stephanie Meyer did a wonderful job of introducing a new point of view for an alien invasion, while still keeping it simple enough that you could connect with the main character, Wanderer, an alien. It was hard for me to decide which side I was on and how I wanted things to end.

I really liked the resolution with "The Seeker." The book did a great job of explaining what was going on there and why she just wouldn't give up.

The only part of the book where I did feel a little disappointed was at the end. It almost seemed as if the author were trying just a little too hard to please everyone. However, it worked, and even I was happy with the ending. It made enough sense to me, and the very last part of the book put a wonderful twist on things. I would like to see her continue on with this line of "going native" like Orson Scott Card did with Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.

If you want to find out more about the book go here:The Host.