Stuff to do...

Tonight is book club night. I just finished reading this month's book called 2001 Things to Do Before You Die. The host for this evening also told us to bring a list of 5-10 things that we want to do with our lives.

I enjoyed this book for some reasons, but the person who wrote it had a distinctly different world view from me. I therefore felt that some of the things on his list I would rather die than do. But reading this book did get me thinking about my mental list of things I want to do before I die. Some of them I've accomplished, some of them I am working on, some of them are distant goals, and yet others are near impossibilities. Here is a sample:

• Become a published author
• Make my own pasta from scratch
• Live on the East Coast long enough to receive mail there
• See Michelangelo's Pieta
• Live outside of the U.S.
• Work in a press office
• Design and sew a wedding dress that someone wears in an actual wedding
• Visit the Taj Mahal
• Raise kind children
• Learn to make the perfect soufflé
• Learn how to install a toilet, a ceiling fan, and hardwood floors
• Reupholster a chair
• Live in a house with secret passageways and a hidden room
• Enjoy opera
• Get a pilot's license
• Finally become conversant in Spanish
• Get a Master's Degree...in anything
• Go on a cruise
• Own a Dyson vacuum
• Build a tree-house
• Grow a lush garden
• Become a certified rock climber

What's on your list?

Check that attitude!

I was taking pictures of Griffin yesterday and this is what he gave me:

Talk about attitude. This little guy's personality is coming in full force. He's often sticking out his tongue to be silly or laughing at himself for no apparent reason. Truthfully, I suppose this should not come as a great surprise to me. Griffin comes from a long line of easily-amused and self-entertaining progenitors. It's nice though for Landon and I that we have a built-in source of amusement with Griffin around.

On Wednesday this week the weather was gorgeous (for the first time in what feels like ages). So Griffin and I decided that we'd have a little picnic in our backyard. We spread out a blanket on our dead grass and ate popcorn for a while.

Then we put on our shoes and tromped around in the crunchy leaves and dead grass. Griffin loved munching popcorn and crunching leaves. The only problem was that when he fell, he wouldn't get back up because he didn't want to touch the pokey grass. So he just sat in the grass until I got up to save him. This happened several times over.

And speaking of personality, I really don't know where Griffin gets it:

I've mentioned before that I work in the children's organization at church. Well, this last weekend we had a church "So You Think You Can Dance" Party. This is the Primary Presidency all decked out for the kids' dance number (I'm the one with the tuft of orange hair coming out of the back of my head). The kids all dressed up like rockstars too. And you know that we took first place, with costumes like that how could we not? Actually, I think the parents' votes really pulled through for us. So far I've dressed up as both a pirate and a rockstar to fulfill my church calling...I wonder what's next?