My blog was needing a face lift in the worst way so here it is. The new and improved blog look. Some will also notice I changed the name. Partly to tie in to my photography website and partly because I felt it was time to retire Newtie...
Well my weekend has been a lot of homework with a little regular work peppered in so now it is time to kick back and relax for the last few hours of my weekend.
The first Adventure for Bobbie
Not to be confused with Bobbi
Bobbie missed his other little chili pepper friends when he first parted ways with him but quucikly settled into his new surroundings.
Here is Bobbie hitting on Strawberry shortcake. She was very nice when she turned him down explainging she liked her guys sweet and syrupy vs Hot and Zesty like him.
He then hung out with his 2nd cousin once removed on his mom's side, Pepcid, and the local gang of Pez dispensers, don't wory they are friendly, I mean they dispence candy afterall.
Bobbie then decided he needed to unwind and relax, so like any man he hopped up in the chair grabbed the remote watched Myth Busters..
So last night we had our first annual Chili cook-off and dance for our ward. The main goal was to have an adult social for people to be able to mingle. The Bishop even made it to the event despite his allergic reaction to ward Parties. 
Although our group was fairly small (30-35 people) it was a lot of fun. If you ask me it was ALL about the music, but I might be a bit biased. Course the music did make the clean up go faster, and help a few burn off those chili calories.
Our small but highly efficient activities committee really pulled together a great night. The chili's were all great and all very different, which made it really fun. I tried them all and lived to tell the tale....
Our chefs were naturally overwhelmed when it came time to hand out the awards. Just look at Margie Beaming with her little Chili Pepper award. 
and a few of our other big winners. 
I might have not made any chili or cornbread for that matter but I still managed to come away with my own little chili Pepper. I am pleased to introduce Mr. Piquant Blaze Rufescent Toots or Bobbie for short.
Stay tuned for further adventures of Bobbie.
A couple of my friends have this on their blog so I decided I would play along...
1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew us a little or a lot, anything you remember!
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.
Try to keep it clean folks...
Have you ever had the unfortunate circumstance of having to be in close quarters with someone that has clearly forgotten what soap and deodorant is used for? I am not talking just a little bit of body odor you get an occasional whiff of but the kind that permeates through walls, wilts flowers when they walk by them, has small children running away in terror, turns you green from the potency of the odor, or causes birds to just drop out of the sky when they are flying above. That my friends is what I have been faced with, and I have lived, barely and with little help from my “friends”, to tell the tale.
So in my hour of need I email a friend, Missy, to let her know if I stopped responding to her emails it was because I had come to an untimely end from the smell. I promised her I would leave her my sticker collection, and my mini collection(Which includes my strawberry shortcake minis, smurfs, and littlest petshop to name a few). She quickly responds back and tells me to hang in there. I am thinking she’s a great real and true friend. Then I slowly peck out on my keyboard that I am fading fast and to please send Febreze, a gas mask and chocolate, cause we all know chocolate can cure anything that ails you.
I had thought to request a diet coke also but didn’t want to press my luck being that she is one of those Pepsi drinking types. 
She responds back, I am off to run an errand.. WHAT??? I thought she was my friend. She was bailing on me while I was clinging to life, breathing in this noxious smell. There I sat, barely able to remain conscious, desperately trying to keep my lunch down, turning a lovely shade of mountain Dew green, and she was off to run an errand, and calls herself a friend. Sheesh.
At least Promise stood by me, she even suggested a glade plugin, a fan to blow the smell in another direction, but sadly I am not sure that would even help, unless it was one of those big fans that they use on movies to simulate a hurricane coming through. 
Then she pointed out the smell would probably just get blown around and while not as strong and concentrated it would be everywhere with no place to escape it. Then she tried diversionary tactics like telling me about the latest book she read, but then mentioned she gets motion sickness if she reads in the car which made me think about vomiting again. I am reevaluating her friend status at this point because of that. But at least she didn’t abandon me in my hour of need, and pointed out I was lucky that it wasn’t mid August with broken AC.
That’s Promise for you always looking on the bright side of things. Of course she was probably secretly hoping along with Missy the noxious fumes would do me in so that she could have all my unfinished craft projects, why the unfinished ones? Because she wants to build a memorial to me showing I had so much left to do in life, as evidence by all my unfinished projects, and her husband called dibs on my music and DVD collection.
As evidence of this blog post I have survived this latest encounter but I am not sure how many more my weakened body can handle. So please for those of us with a sense of smell, take that shower, and live on the wild side and use some soap, and if you are feeling very adventurous slap on some deodorant. Anyone with a nose will thank you….
I realize my blog has been lacking. Sadly there is just not that much going on to write about.
I did get a really awesome gift in the mail a couple weeks ago that I can’t wait to use. It is a cream colored baby afghan that is going to be perfect for new born shots, just need to find me some newborns to photograph. Thanks again to Jill for making me such a wonderful gift.
Lets see what other exciting things can I update all my readers on. Oh my baby brother got engaged this past weekend. No other details to share though, other than it will most likely be in DC since that is where her family is from. I got a text simply telling me he was engaged. So I am sure there will be details coming on that, and no I am not going to be his photographer, he is flying a friend from college out to do it.
Saturday night I went to the adult session of Stake conference and then joined a large group that made the obligatory stop at Zwahlen’s http://zwahlens.com/ afterward for ice cream… There was the big table of people and the smaller table. We nicknamed the tables the adult table and the kids table, I am sure you can all figure out which table I was at. Yep I was at the kids table with the Stratton’s and the Latey’s, and I am convinced we had the most fun by far. Oh and Dave Vagnoni was suffering an identity crisis and ended up at the kids table after a stint at the adult table.
Missy and I have been getting caught up after not seeing each other for 30 years. See the below post if you are not sure who Missy is and why we have not seen each other in 30 years. We are both having fun reliving the highlights from our youth, like Strawberry shortcake dolls and scratch and sniff stickers. E-bay is a dangerous place when it comes to looking for things from your childhood. I should take some pictures of my finds and post them at some point… Maybe next post will include pictures…
See I told you not much going on in my little area of the world. Everything else is school and work, and trying to decide if I should go for my masters degree after I finish up school in May..
So I think most of us are aware of the evils that can come from sites like facebook, myspace, and the like. However, there are some good things about them also. Case in point, a little over a month ago I got a message on facebook from someone asking if I had attended the North Penn School district. I replied letting her know that other than Kindergarten nope I had not been in the district. Well it turns out I was the person she was looking for.
It was my old friend Missy from Kindergarten that I had not seen in close to 30 years. She was someone I played with a lot that year in school and went to her house outside of school, fell down a big hill in a bicycle accident, and helped her pick on her younger siblings.
If you can say you have a best friend in Kindergarten Missy would have been mine. Sadly we moved int he middle of the year and even though I finished the year out there after that summer we lost touch. That is until she tracked me down on facebook.
Here we are in August of 79 probably one of the last times we saw one another.
I cropped her brother and sister out of the picture so you can focus on the beauty that is us.
Fast forward 29 years and here we are from tonight, almost 30 years after we first met.
It took a couple weeks to get our schedules to mesh with school, work and vacations but we met for dinner tonight and it was like we had never lost touch over all those years. Things were completely cool, laid back and fun. I see many more night's out in our future as our schedules allow. We have a lot in common still and are looking forward to getting to know each other all over again. Oh and how cool is it she still has her sticker book and a collection of Strawberry shortcake dolls. Us children of the 80's have to hang together....
In our Family we have what we call Bobbi moments. So I thought I would track a few from my last vacation and document them. Now I must also say I adore my step mother and I am very thankful to have such a great stepmom because trust me I have had the opposite and it was not pretty, and have friedns that have had bad experiences so having such a wonderful one is something to be thankful for.
Bobbi Moment #1
While we were at dinner on Thursday night at Chili's Bobbi had the epiphany that Chili's is a Mexican themed restaurant. Yes she has eaten there before and noticed the little chili pepper, just didn't realize it was a Mexican restaurant. We love Bobbi. It was Josh's first Bobbi moment since being home for a whole hour.
Bobbi Moment #2
While having dinner Josh mentioned how his mother sent his birthday card tot the wrong address and gave his brother the wrong address also. Fast forward to the car ride home. She mentioned wanting to send Josh's girl friend a graduation card. and we said she could also send it to Josh and the comment was made she could get it from Linda, Josh's mom and we all started laughing, and Bobbi didn't understand why which only made us laugh harder at her. Finally we reminded her about the conversation about the wrong address but only after laughing for a bit..
Bobbi Moment #3
Do you see mountains like that every day? This comment came when looking at pictures of Utah. The comments continued, there is mountains like that on both sides? Oh that is why they call it Salt Lake Valley, Utah Valley, etc.. because it is in the valley of the mountains? She is very taken by the mountains, she just could not get past it. The going on about the mauntains continued for a good 20 minutes seriously in awe. We can't wait for her to go out there to see them in person.
Bobbi Moments #4 and #5 both had to deal with technology. First it was a USB memory stick, ahe was amazed that all the data that could be stored on one, next up was the ipod nano and how little it was and all it could store on it. Then when they showed her pictures and video on one intead of just listening to music she was blown away.
We also have what I like to call Bobbi-isms my favorite of the trip was .....
Suzy cream cheese - translation good two shoes.
This is how she felt about my birthday gift to dad. Probabl;y because he thought it shoudl be placed on the mantle...
For those following my educational journey another class can be checked off the list. I wrapped up a class last night and that leaves me with 5 till graduation. I will have 3 this fall and the final 2 in the spring. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Will there come a day when historians will write about how the United States globalized the world, but forgot to globalize itself.
I am sort of deviating from my normal blog entry, which I admit have been slow to come lately and I apologize to those that stalk my blog that there has been nothing new and exciting to read. I will get back on track I promise.
So yesterday I was working from home and flipping through the channels to see if I could find something good to watch. I came across the CBS news show called Sunday Morning and they were talking about China’s rapidly growing economy.
Here is a link to the entire article: Coming soon a Post-American World
And here is the Carnegie study they mention: China’s Economic Rise—Fact and Fiction
I found them an interesting read and some of the estimates they give are staggering. Such as in one economic model they show that China’s economy will be as big as if not bigger than the US by 2035 and by 2050 it will be twice the size of the US economy.
And here are some quotes from the Sunday Morning transcript of the piece by Martha Teichner
” And it's happening right under our noses. America's beverage, Budweiser beer, is now owned by Belgians.
The government of Abu Dhabi last month bought a 90% stake in New York City's iconic Chrysler Building.
And isn't the United States supposed to be the place with the biggest and best of everything?
The tallest building in the world isn't in New York or Chicago anymore. It's in Taipei.
The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, once the world's largest, isn't even in the top ten now. The biggest one's in - surprise, surprise - China.”
So I realize I have been neglecting my blog lately. I promise some new posts though from my latest vacation. The pictures will have to wait till after I get home though..
So I woke up at 4 AM yesterday and was on the road by 4:20. Since I was able to avoid a good amount of traffic I made good time I arrived in 7 hours 10 minutes..
The drive was fairly uneventful, well except that stupid rock that hit my windshield and left a divot in it.. grrrrr.
Saw some rather interesting things, as always. One thing that amazed me was this guy cruising along on his motorcycle going about 70 mph with a ball cap on. No it isn't that he didn't have a helmet on because that is a personal choice, but that he was able to keep that ball cap on his head at those speeds. I mean was the thing super glued to his head, velcroed, or maybe stapled on? Seriously I was amazed, and kept waiting for it to fly off but never saw it leave his head.
The other thing that is worth mentioning is also related to a guy on a motorcycle and oh how I wish I had a picture of this one cause it was special. There was a rather large man riding on a motorcycle. This individual was wearing a pair of denim overalls. You know just your typical denim overalls, however he had on no shirt and he had a super dark farmer's tan. So here is a guy cruising along with no shirt, but his pale skin against his farmer's tan looking like a hairy skin shirt and his old beat-up overalls with his hairy fat rolls just a flapping in the wind as he cruised down the highway doing about 80. I know my description just does not do it justice but it made me do a double take.
Other than that it was pretty uneventful. It was clear with no rain till the last 20 minutes when it started to pour. AFter I arriced we went out for lunch, then I came home and showered and changed so we could head down to the airport to pick up my siblings, Josh's flight was delayed but he finally made it, but poor Susie had her flight cancelled so she comes in at lunch time today. poor kid. We went out dinner wating to hear from her, dinner was eventfull. It took forever to get our food, and some of it was not all that good. We ended up getting some of it comped and got 2 free deserts. We finally got back home and I was beat so I was in bed by midnight...
Stay tuned for more updates and pictures once I get home.
Okay so I was checking otu some blog posts of a friend, I am so far behind on reading blogs, it is awful... Anyway I came across a great post on my friend Sarah's blog about a new exercise she is hooked on, called hooping. It is like hula hooping for adults but there is more to it. Instead of trying to explian it and getting it all wrong I will link you to her blog so you can see what it is all about since she has video of her hooping.
Sarah's hooping Blog
And if you decide you want to try it out here is the link to her Etsy shop where she is selling them.
Hoop soup Shop
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