Easter

It's Easter Sunday. What better way to celebrate than blogging?

It's been a nice day so far - Easter baskets for the kids this morning, pleasant times at church, the ham and cheesy potato bonanza awaiting us for dinner - things are good.

There have been several things I've meant to blog about over the last couple of weeks but just haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I'll just adopt a monthly digest form of this blog. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, here are a couple of things:

General Conference: I enjoyed more than I have in a while. Thanks to DVR, I actually watched all the sessions and stayed awake. That usually helps when it comes to taking in the messages. As usual, President Uchdorf and Elder Holland knocked it out of the park, talk-wise. I found the following on Facebook and it made me laugh:


There were other talks that I found meaningful as well. The overall message I received is that I need to focus on my relationship with God, my testimony, my prayers, my humility and not worry about much of anything else. I heard a lot of "Don't get so wrapped up in the church (the people, the programs, the gossip, the shortcomings) that you don't pay attention to the Gospel which is the thing that actually matters. Worry about striving for your own perfection before worrying about others' lack of perfection."

Part of the reason I was able to stay awake for General Conference is that I spent most of it moving heavy dressers and assembling beds. We decided it was time for Maryn and Avery to have their own rooms so I spent most of my spring break doing that. We had a tv room and a living room - and the living room never got used for anything. So we moved the tv in there, moved the master bedroom into the old tv room, Maryn into our old room, and Avery kept the room she used to share with Maryn. It doesn't sound that hard but it involved a lot of moving, hauling, dusting, etc. (By the way, if you are ever under the impression that you are a clean person, try looking under your bed, behind your nightstand, etc. and you will find that you most certainly are not.) So now both girls have their own space and seem to enjoy having a space to retreat to. It makes them seem older and I guess that's more or less a good thing. They are older.

We've seen quite a few movies over the last couple of weeks so allow me to sum up:


Something Borrowed - the lamest of the lame. Trite, predictable, bland, not worth the dollar twenty five it takes for Redbox to haul it out of the cauldron of mediocrity from whence it springs. Can we just agree that Kate Hudson's presence in a movie pretty much guarantees a high reading from the Suck-o-meter?


John Carter - Sigh. Not bad for someone who enjoys sci-fi and has read the books but, as a stand-alone film, kind of a failure. I'd love to write a comparison paper one day about directors who got their start in animation and then moved to live action. Brad Bird, director of The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouie, went on to direct the very successful Mission Impossible 4. Andrew Adamson directed Shrek and Shrek 2 and then got tapped for the first two Chronicles of Narnia movies. Then came Andrew Stanton who directed Finding Nemo and Wall-E, both wonderfully successful films. He got picked to helm the John Carter adaption and managed to lose Disney 200 million dollars. Too bad for him and too bad for those of us who were looking forward to a cool, long-lived franchise.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 - Sweet fancy Moses. Please kill me.

The Hunger Games - Pretty well done. It's a very economical telling of the story, even at 2 hours and 20 minutes. The casting is good and the effects are okay. It's surprisingly affecting. I'd read the books and knew what was going to happen but I still felt anxious and worked-up as the story went along.


The Muppets - Sublime. Honestly, I know it's probably just because of my sentimental attachment to the characters and material, but I loved this movie more than anything else I've seen this year. If Jim Henson were still alive, I'd write him a letter just to thank him for making something wonderful, sweet, and hilarious that I have enjoyed literally for as long as I can remember. My very earliest memories are of sitting in front of the tv with my brother, Jason, and my parents watching the Muppet Show. The jokes are funny, the cameos are great, the songs are hummable - I loved it so, so much. (There is a barbershop quartet version of Nirvana's "Smells Like a Teen Spirit." Brilliant.)

In non-movie news, I read Ann Pachett's State of Wonder. I'd loved Truth and Beauty so much, I was eager to move on to something else I found equally moving. Unfortunately, it didn't happen and I'm sad about that. Some books move you, and others do not. Ah well.

One other thing. Yesterday I got a letter from Brother Scott Samuelson, my former English professor at Ricks College. I took a couple of lit classes from him back in the day and somewhere along the way, we became friends rather than just teacher and student. I try to make time to visit him on campus or at his house whenever we make it back to Rexburg. We trade stories and poems. He gives me advice on how to be a teacher, how to be a grad student, how to be a husband and father. I give him . . . not much in comparison. Well, I sent him a copy of my story, "The Iron Door," recently and in response he sent me a very nice letter accompanied by one of his watercolors. He and his wife spend weekend afternoons driving around the country surrounding Rexburg. Shauna drives and Scott either reads aloud to her (which is how they read my story together) or he paints. Since Scott often understands things about me, I think he knows how much I miss Idaho's landscape. So he sent me a small piece of it. It was a nice thing to get in the mail:


P.S. On an entirely unrelated note, I just looked at my blog dashboard and discovered that this is my 666th post. It doesn't feel particularly devilish but devilishness is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.