Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Last night, Brandon and I had the chance to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform live. For students, the tickets were $6 each. It was a pretty great experience.

 Our seats brought us this close to it.

Brandon dressed sharply for our date night out.

We had Lloyd Newell, the announcer for "Music and the Spoken Word", announce the songs to us. He said he had been with the choir for 22 years, and I thought, "That's a really long time!" Then I realized that was how old I was.... ouch.

The guy who sat behind us kept singing pretty loudly along with the music. I learned that if I turned my head a little bit then I couldn't hear him.

They sang a lot of songs, and it was great. Some highlights were "Welsh Hymns", "Music of the Masters", "American Folk Hymn and Spirituals", and some international songs of "rejoicing" from Russia, Spain, and Nigeria. The Nigerian song was crazy, not what you expected from the MoTab. They then sang some classic American showtunes. "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep", "It's a Grand Night for Singing", "Sunrise, Sunset", THEN the surprise of the night was the organist breaking into this stunning rendition of "I got Rhythm". Seriously, he was all over the place. He played better with his feet than I did with my hands. The final song from that category was "Seventy-Six Trombones", which of course was great.

Their final category was signature hymns. They sang "Come, Come Ye Saints", which was so beautiful. I got a lump in my throat from listening to it. Then they sang their famous arrangement of "Battle Hymn of the Republic". It was so great to hear the songs live that I listen to on my iPod all the time. Then, they encored with "God be With You 'til We Meet Again". That was when the tears really started to flow. It was so powerful, and reminded me of Austin. I had a hard time getting myself back under control.

I think that if you ever have the chance to go see them live, do it! It was beautiful and I am so glad I got to go.

Yes, that's a leather jacket. TARGET!

Kids Say the Darndest Things

More quotes, this time from Toddler Lab:
Me: "Hey look I made a pirate Potato Head! Arrrrr!"
Girl: "Arrr! Me hearties!"

Me: "Look it's an owl! Hooo Hoooo!" (showing the owl swooping and diving)
Girl: Walks over to a boy who's crying and says: "HOOOO HOOOO! CRASH!" And throws the owl on the ground.

Me: "Do you want crackers"-- signed "cracker"-- or banana?" (signed banana)
Girl: "Now you're just being silly."
(the best way to get this is to see how banana is signed. You hold up one index finger, and use the other hand to "peel" the banana)

Girl: "Hi what's your name?"
Me: "Camille, what's your name?"
Girl: "No, your name is PinkPurple Lipstick! And I'm Mom, I'm in charge of you!"

I loved my little kids.

Dane

Alyse had her baby! I can NOW finally say I'm an aunt! He was born on September 15. Couldn't be more excited for the little family. He was 7 lb 12 oz (good sized baby) and 20 1/4 inches long. They decided to name him Dane (after Dana, and Tommy served his mission in Denmark) Gregory (after Tommy's dad) Leininger. I know everyone else is stealing pictures from Alyse and Tommy's emails too, but I just wanted to document this.

My mom says he's advanced for his age after opening his eyes so much... it's already begun.

We are all already obsessed with him. It's surreal to see that baby and know that it's a part of our family, as close as it is to being our child (without actually being our child). Grandma Murphy (Mom) is on her way now to see them and help Alyse out. We can't wait to meet him in December!

Synopsis of Summer 2012

So, summer is coming to a close. The more I think about it, the more nauseous I get. The only thing keeping me going is 1) knowing I get to see "baby boy" after the semester ends; and 2) it's my last semester of classes! I'm sure that my Kindergarten Practicum teacher (despite the fact that he is what's making me nauseous) will help me get ready for student teaching in January.

Anyways, just to sum up our experiences in the summer, I will list off the things we did with pictures. The italicized one are from our "Rexburg Bucket List"... we're almost done with it!

1) "Dark Knight Rises" midnight premiere

(Our only picture from the night. The flash was really strong.)

Then Dallin came into town! And while he was here...

2) Wind caves hike with Mikey

3) Big Judd's

 4) Saw Ririe, Idaho

 5) Rexburg Rapids (for free, which made it better)

6) Twin Falls, the temple, falls, and Grandma's childhood homes

 7) Rigby Lake... we didn't get a picture but we will!

8) Family Reunion in Aspen Grove... just some highlights.

 The one picture of us from the week.                    4 Murphy girls... and baby Austin!

Dad being a balla. Obviously.

Then Bethany came back to Rexburg with us!

8)  Bear World

9) Drive-In Theater... Bethany and I did not get pictures but it was great.

10) St. Anthony Sandbar

11) Birthday party for this little guy:

12) Celebrated one year of marriage together in Logan.

13) Job hunted (and finally got one, thanks to Dianne!)

14) Celebrated my birthday, and made it great thanks to Brandon.

Dinner:

 Cake:

 15) Finished my baby blanket for the little guy.

It's going to be a great semester! Terrifying, but great. And Brandon put in his 2 weeks notice, which is a miracle. I get my husband back, and it means we can actually go places now on the weekends if we need it.

A blanket for "baby Austin", part 1

So, Alyse is having her baby soon. We have all been anxiously awaiting this day, and it's coming up soon!
Austin dubbed him "baby Austin" at his mission farewell, and so far that name has stuck. I started a baby blanket a while ago, and this is what I have:

I love it. It was a free pattern online, and I would only do it with two colors for a niece or nephew again. If anyone wants one, let me know! I'll do one color, but whatever color you want. Just give me a few months to get it done.
It's part 1 because I have a border to put on... it's going to be blue and fluffy (but tough, obviously). Part 2 will come up soon.

The Big 2-2

So, Friday was my birthday. To explain how this went, I need to go back a little bit.

Fun fact: the 10th will be my 18th and final first day of school. And in all of those 18 first days of school, I have not once been in school on my birthday. WHAT. UP.

My mom and I were the two summer birthdays in our family. She understood what it was like to have all of your friends out of town on your birthday, so she always made sure we did something special on my birthday itself. The rest of my siblings have had birthdays during the school year, which meant a lot of times their birthday parties weren't until the weekend of their birthday. As a result of being able to celebrate on my birthday every year, I've become a little bit spoiled with that.

Fast forward to this year. As we know, Brandon works on Friday nights. When he told me that we would probably have to celebrate on Thursday, I burst into tears (without even meaning to)... I think he got it then. I like doing fun things on my birthday itself. As fate would have it, his coworkers fell through and didn't cover his shift on Friday. Anyways. So he made sure to put a ton of time into making sure I had a great birthday anyways!

On Thursday, we did birthday dinner. Brandon made sure to get all the things I wanted, and even surprised me with deviled eggs. My birthday dinners are usually eclectic, because I want lots of different things. Like the year with shark and corn chowder..

 We grilled steak out on the barbecue, and it was amazing. I haven't had grilled food in a while, and I loved every bite.

The dinner was Guarana (my favorite soda, besides that Ironport that I had in Logan), steak, asparagus, rice, and deviled eggs. It was so good! We sat at the coffee table, since we don't have a dinner table yet.

After that, we went to Fat Cats in order to try and get free games of bowling. We had tokens for it, but I grabbed the wrong tokens. As a result, we got free flavored cotton candy. Pretttttty gross. So we played at the arcade like a couple of kids. Brandon got this attractive picture of me playing Fruit Ninja (I dominated, so the stance works)

Afterwards, we just went to Dairy Queen and got Blizzards. Because who doesn't want those?

The next morning, Brandon made me wait in our room until he was ready for me to come out... I didn't mind. He was working on a secret mission, which we'll get to later. First, we had birthday cereal, as always.

Then, he told me to get ready for something, but not to put on makeup. Instantly I was suspicious. But, I had no idea where we were going. It wasn't until we pulled up that I realized what was going on:

Brandon, being the thoughtful gift giver that he was, had called the school and reserved a facial and pedicure for me. It. was. HEAVENLY.  The facial was amazing. I didn't realize how relaxed I was until I woke up when she said I was done. I didn't even recall falling asleep. Brandon pulled through yet again with another great gift!

After that, Brandon had to sleep for work, which was fine. He had done enough for me for the last two days, so I gave him a break. Then, he went to work and I hung out with Mikey. I should have gotten a picture of us, but she did give us these sweet shirts!

Awkward self picture on my part. But how did she know that we would drive through Preston a month after she did? Who knows. But we now have sweet Napoleon Dynamite shirts!

The next day, we got to what Brandon's surprise was... the cake I asked him for!

It was a toffee cake, and was just what I wanted.

I so appreciate all the birthday wishes. It was great to get to Skype with my family on my birthday, and to celebrate it. I appreciate all the work Brandon put into it, because I hated not having him with my on the night of my birthday. He was great about it though, and made sure I wouldn't forget it. To another year!