M & M

Last week on a beautiful August day, my little sister Masha married Matt Mulcock. I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my little sister, who also happens to be one of my best friends and favorite people, is now someone's wife. Seems like just yesterday we were fighting over our one cabbage patch doll and speaking to each other in gibberish Japanese.

That said, it thrills me to no end to see Smash as happy as she is when she's with Matt. He treats her like gold and complements her personality perfectly. Matt also gets bonus points for picking up on the family dynamic so well. Case in point: at the wedding dinner Mash and I were talking about something random and apparently Matt needed to have a word with my sister so he stood right by us for probably five minutes waiting for a break in the conversation. Of course that break never came, so finally Mike had to come over and bring Matt's presence to our attention. I felt pretty rude but Matt's reaction was classic: He turned to Mike and said "I know there's no interrupting these two." Oh Matt. Apparently you too are aware of the phenomenon that Butch refers to as "the sister zone." Sorry dude.

Of course I forgot my camera that day, but here are a few photos I stole from facebook pages:

Smash and I at the wedding dinner:
And at the temple. Isn't she a gorgeous bride?

Butch and I.

The Preo sisters. I love these two more than words can say. Family at the reception. Mom's face is classic.

Dema and Alex

Baby Anna in her yellow dress. It doesn't get any cuter than this:

The Little King raiding the candy dishes.

Bridesmaids (and a little bit of baby Anna). I look pretty dang stubby and pale standing next to supermodels Hannah and Erin. Bad choice.

Smash with the G parents. Who are still kickin at 90.
Brothers and sisters. Apparently I am the only one in "picture mode" and Dema just said something interesting.

Well, it looks like Wedding Season is finally winding down. Our fridge is a little less cluttered with announcements and the calendar space once crowded with showers, receptions, etc. is looking blessedly free. I love weddings as much as the next person, but going to a ton of them in a row leaves me completely exhausted. And admitting that makes me feel like I am 24 going on 80. Or maybe just socially handicapped.

The Pages I've Been Turning

I love to read year-round, but when summer hits my appetite for books becomes absolutely insatiable. This is probably because I still associate summer with my younger years, when its blessed arrival meant freedom from responsibility and ample time to spend lounging by the pool absorbed in a good read. No such luck this year, but between Bear Lake weekends and the afternoon reading breaks a few of my co-workers and I have instituted, I’ve been able to finish a few books.

Here’s the breakdown of what I’ve read lately:

Sarah's Key is one of those books that had promise because of the interesting subject matter (French involvement in the holocaust), but it wasn’t my cup of tea. The writing style reminded me of instructions they give you in junior high English classes, I could guess most of the plot twists from about twenty pages away, and the whole thing felt a little forced and melodramatic. It was also very sad. But not in a beautiful way.

Oh. My. Land. Jonathan Safran Foer is incredible. That’s all there is to say. But I will say more anyway. Namely that I loved this book from start to finish and I wish I could have the experience of reading it again for the first time.

The plot centers around a nine-year-old boy whose father dies in 9-11 and this novel is narrated mainly from his point of view. His voice reminded me a lot of the boy in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, so if you enjoyed that then Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is definitely worth picking up. Easily one of the best books I’ve read in years.

I think this is one of those books best read in one sitting when you have a few hours to do nothing but soak up some good old-fashioned storytelling and descriptions of the Norwegian countryside. It’s very slow and quite vague, but the writing does have a definite beauty to it. Maybe I just had a hard time with Out Stealing Horses because I was forced to read it in small chunks, and, after the postmodern busyness of Extremely Loud, it was difficult to focus on a book as nuanced as this one. I guess you could say I appreciated it but didn’t really enjoy it all that much. Maybe I’ll give it another try when I have ample spare time on my hands.

Chuck Klosterman’s essays are kind of like an inside joke; funny if you get what he’s talking about and completely lame if you don’t. Unless you are a bona fide expert on pop culture, chances are you’ll find yourself scratching your head more than a couple of times. But when you do understand Klosterman’s subject matter, like when I read his essay on Saved by the Bell, he is pretty clever. Albeit in an overthought, cynical way best enjoyed in small doses. Also, Chuck can be pretty crass at times. Just putting that out there as a warning of sorts.

Ah, the token summer bestseller. I read this book for the same reason that I read The Help, DaVinci Code , Twilight (ugh), and countless other titles: because everyone else was doing it. Like those other books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not going to win a Pulitzer Prize any time soon, but it was entertaining in a trashy, quasi disturbing way. I don’t recommend reading it when you are all by yourself at night, though. If you’re anything like me you will be convinced that every creak of the floorboards is a serial killer hell-bent on breaking into your house and smuggling you away to Sweden.

Everything is Illuminated is up next on my summer reading agenda, but after that my list of library holds is a barren wasteland. So tell me friends, what have you read and loved lately?

Stars and Stripes Forever

This year we celebrated America's birthday by going up to the Bear Lake cabin with Mike's fam and our friends Megan and Travis (we missed you, Ben and Camille).

It was a little chilly, but that didn't stop us from sporting our classy patriotic swimwear (aren't my tan lines attractive?)

It was too cold to go out on the lake, but we entertained ourselves by playing volley in the shallow water:

And playing some golf:

I lost not one, not two, but at least five balls in the water that day. I struggle like you wouldn't believe.

Megan's birthday is on the 4th, so of course we celebrated.

I made her a festive red, white, and blue cake for the occasion:
Other highlights of our trip included:
-Lighting our own fireworks on the beach and watching the show created around the lake by everyone else doing the same thing.
-Raspberry shakes at LaBeau's. I swear they put crack in those things. So good.
-Owning everyone's trash in a game of Trivial Pursuit. That victory almost made me feel better about my sorry golf game. Almost.

-Sleeping in, eating delicious food, and engaging in all the other lazy activities that a weekend at the cabin entails. I love that place.

The only downside of the weekend was this:

"Heartbreaker" is the only term I can think of to describe this game. I spent most of Friday afternoon sulking over the fact that Ghana came this close to becoming the first African team to reach the semis and freaking choked. I should really stop watching sports. Or at least just stop getting so emotionally invested.

A quote

I may not understand a thing this man had to say about physics, but I'm diggin his perspective on other matters:

(Photo taken at last weekend's chalk art festival)

For my college graduation my uncle sent me his favorite biography of Einstein. In the inscription he wrote "hope you become the Einstein of your chosen field." At the time I thought it was a tender sentiment but now I just feel guilty for not doing anything to live up to it. Unless wasting time on the internet could be considered a "chosen field."

A Solstice Anniversary (Kinda)

Mike and I have never been big on commemorating the milestones of our relationship. Meaning there aren't really dates on the calendar that we point to and say "oh, on this day such-and-such happened." We pretty much celebrate our weddding anniversary and call it good. But on Sunday night I was looking through an old journal and noticed that the entry dated June 22, 2007 began with "Last night Mike and I went on our first real date..."

When I realized that the next day was June 21st I was all "hey Butch, tomorrow is the third anniversary of our first date!" and he was all "that is neat" so we decided to celebrate the occasion by trying to recreate that first date, which consisted of some night fishing and a campfire up Millcreek canyon.

Here we are on June 21, 2007:

(We unknowingly wore matching outfits, which we thought was funny so we took a picture.)

(My first time gutting a fish. Apparently I really enjoyed it.)

And here we are on June 21, 2010:

We couldn't go fishing this time around on account of this spastic animal:
So we settled for a hike instead:
Who would’ve thought that three years after our fishing expedition Mike and I would still be traipsing around Millcreek together? It’s only fitting that our first date occured on the first official day of summer, seeing as ours was a standard summer fling that just happened to turn into something so much better than either one of us expected. Life is amazing. Especially when you get to spend it in the beautiful mountains with your favorite person.

More

Since writing my previous post, I've come across some more World Cup advertising treasures. Most of you probably don't care, but we've already established that I happen to love this kind of crap so I'm posting it anyway.

The Wavin' Flag video makes me want an African squad to win the tournament so badly. I even get a little choked up when watching it (seriously, what is wrong with me?) The coca-cola one is pure happiness, and the Nike commercial would be ten times more awesome if Kobe Bryant weren't in it. Ew.

Enjoy:

Waka Waka

Like most Americans, I’m not a huge professional soccer enthusiast. Besides a few REAL games and the summer I was in Europe during the Euro Cup, I've never really watched it at all. I’d say I have the same beef with the sport as most redneck males: the lack of scoring, arbitrary time keeping, games ending in a tie, etc. Plus my soccer playing days ended about the time parents stopped handing out Squeezits at the end of a game so I really don’t know enough about soccer strategy to recognize the skill involved.

Given this information you would probably assume that I have no interest in this summer’s World Cup. And you would be right until you take into account that I’m a sports marketer’s dream. As established in previous posts (here and here), I’m not in it for the sport itself so much as the spectacle and backstory involved. If you can get me sentimental enough before the actual sporting event, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be glued to the TV for the whole thing. I think FIFA had people like me in mind when they produced this little gem:



Cheesy, quasi-inspiring lyrics? Check.
Close-ups of the athletes' various emotional faces? Check.
Footage of the sport's highlights? Check.
Clips of happy, cheering fans? Check.

This video ups the ante by including the happy dancing that makes the World Cup look like one big street carnival. Plus the song itself is so dang catchy. I dare you not to feel some degree of happiness while listening to it.

So all right World Cup, I’m in. You better be awesome.

P.S.- for a funny commentary on sometime soccer fans like myself, read this.

Extreme DIY

For most people, springtime is synonymous with blooming tulips, warmer temperatures, and hayfever. I’m beginning to realize that, at the Cassity house, spring awakens a desire to push the limits of our time, money, and sanity. Last spring we were stripping wallpaper, tearing down walls, installing appliances, and performing the various other miscellaneous tasks involved in transforming an old smelly house into something fit for living creatures. All this while I was working full-time and Mike was smack-dab in the middle of studying for finals.*

This year, spring at our place looked a little like this:

Granted, this year’s project of landscaping our backyard was not quite as big of an undertaking as THE REMODEL, but much of it felt the same: Home Depot appearing on our bank statement a bajillion times, Butch impressing me time and time again with his mad skills, and awesome friends and family showing up to help us carry out our hairbrained schemes.
Here’s the project in a nutshell:

Before (I do miss all the trees, but they had to be ripped out. We will be planting more soon):

After (new retaining wall, sprinkler system, and grass- ignore the temporary fence in the first photo):


I never thought something as simple as a functioning sprinkler system and grass could make me so happy, but after we laid the sod I had to strongly resist the urge to kiss it. Goodbye, mud pit/jungle of a yard, hello badminton parties, backyard picnics, and our very own garden.

Next up: New siding for the outside of the house. Gotta love fixer-uppers...

*I keep meaning to do a “before and after” post about our home renovation since I love looking at crap like that on blogs, but do any of you even care anymore?

Lola and the lawn gnome

Sometimes I think our dog might be mildly retarded:

I had a birthday. And wrote a really long, sentimental post about it.

When you're a Jazz fan and a playoff game falls on the eve of your birthday, and the age you are turning coincides with the jersey number of your favorite player, then you just have to throw a party. And so it was that we decided to round up the Jazz game crew last weekend for a Paul Millsap-themed birthday extravaganza.

We payed tribute to Paul through sugary treats:

And some ghetto decorations:



The party would have been perfect had the Jazz not lost in a true heartbreaker of a game and left us all slightly depressed. Such is life I suppose. I used my disappointment to convince my friends to sit in formation on the couch for a group photo. I believe my exact words were "if the Jazz can't pull off a win I'm at least getting a good picture out of this night, dammit."
So here we all are (except Logan):
Pretty much everyone in this photo was a regular fixture in our basement during the playoff games. It was good times- Smeegs routinely showing up in a wifebeater and slippers toting a big gulp, Scott doing his Jerry Sloane impression and introducing us all to the deliciousness of cowboy grub cookies, Sara not even pretending to care about the game while the rest of us freaked out and screamed at the TV. I'm going to miss those weekends.

It's crazy to realize that we've been watching Jazz games with most of these peeps for the better part of three years. In fact, one of the first times I met Mike was at a playoff party at Scott's house. If memory serves I called one of the refs a douchebag and Mike gave me a strange look. At the time I thought he was quietly judging me for my choice of language, but come to find out he actually agreed with that analysis and it might have had something to do with him asking me out a week later. And I think my first encounter with the Morrisons was when Mike and I were newly married and ended up watching a Jazz game in their apartment with mutual friends. I was starving and Megan offered me some of her Cafe Rio, which made me love her instantly. Two and a half years later, they are some of our closest friends. Funny how cheering together for a sports team can do that.

Anyways... I shared my actual birthday with all the mothers of the world, so Sunday was spent going to church, then heading to the Cassitys for a delicious salmon dinner and spending the remainder of the night with the members of my family who weren't out of town (Dad was in Seattle on business, the Leppards ditched us for Lake Powell). In an antidote to the sports-filled mania of the night before, we spent the evening in a decidedly sophisticated manner: eating chocolate-covered strawberries and an assortment of cheese and crackers on the patio, then using the combined clout of Mother's Day and my birthday to convince the boys to watch a black and white Audrey Hepburn movie (Roman Holiday and they actually liked it). It was fabulous.

Thank you to all the family and friends that made my birthday weekend memorable. I think 24 is going to be a great year.