This is 11-y-old Joseph Money on Gchat. Best human ever.

Joseph: hi

6:42 PM :)

:-|

nikki

hello

nicole

money

6:43 PM smith

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just me right now. Me and My Maudlin Career.

I am so sleepy.

Healthy muffins are much more gross then unhealthy muffins.

It's so windy and lovely outside.

I really liked Coco Before Chanel. Audry Tautou is incredible.

I went shopping with my friend and her 2 little boys today, and now I'm even MORE terrified of having children someday.

I miss my husband.

I miss Joseph.

Elder Money is doing awesome in Los Angeles, Dominican Republic.

I pray for friends and family going through hard times right now.

Sometimes I sit and listen and watch and feel all at once.

Out here in Rockville, MD, it never feels like what it looks like.

I love pineapple. Fresh pineapple.

Be... something something

I love Thursdays because we get a new shipment of products into the store. I love putting away brand new Aveda products. They are so clean, and beautiful and pretty smelling and the plastic is so smoooooooth.

I want to get all of these things. And I want to get a manicure, pedicure, massage, and my hair done. I'm finally a girl. But alas, I'm supposed to wait a month more. I bet old Daniel is a softy and let's me early.

This post just isn't getting formatted the way I want it to. Pretend it is symmetrical.

This is MOVIES!

Over the last year, Nikki and I have been all about the LIBRARY! The Provo Public Library is the beautiful, restored Brigham Young Academy, the quaint precursor to what is now the sprawling BYU campus. It houses loads of treasures: music, magazines, awesome old VHS tapes (we have a great old video-cassette player), DVDs, and books. At some point it would be great to talk about the great reads found at libraries, but for now we are going to discuss the world of classic American cinema!

I have long been a fan of black-white-movies. The idea that people (even my own mother!) lived in a world sapped of color yet vibrant in character and detail captured my attention as a little boy. Watching Katharine Hepburn lovingly tease Cary Grant while tagging around a leopard enthralled me. What was love if not a raucous game of tag? And to my childhood mind, there was nothing more fun then tag, thus love! I fell in love with the movies, the wonderful films of an era when love was the fulfillment of hopes or the remains of dashed dreams, manifesting itself as jealousy, adoration, or bumbling idiocy. In life, like the movies, I am jealous, adoring and a bumbling idiot. Nikki I love you and love sharing this world of make believe.

Norma Shearer transcended type in her best roles. Some cinematographers found her difficult to photograph on film because she was not considered a beauty of the times. They saw her asymmetrical face as a problem to correct and made popular the notion that there was a "good side." Because of this she lost parts to other actresses. However, her lure as a strong woman with an unparalleled gift for acting meant that if she were replaced, certain directors would follow her, leaving the film.

In George Cukor's pitch-perfect satire The Women, Norma plays the woman at the center of a barnyard of bevies who let their need to gossip supersede their bonds of friendship. Most of the surrounding characters are stereotypes, albeit very funny takes on the established ones. (With the exception of Joan Crawford whose ugliness seeps out like a poison, creating the perfect match for Norma's realism.) Anyway, I am smitten by her multi-demontionality, equal parts independent modern woman, hopeful, vulnerable, unsure, and all-too certain. Sadly, this is the only film of hers I have seen. Anybody have another?

Going to see Atomic Square near the Zoo

The Library
Music Area
Game room
Woods all around our house


Ahping Family
MoneySmiths


Collin tried to cut my arms off so he could eat the cake all by himself.
My favorite humans besides CS
Delicious feast on Sunday afternoon

Cupcakes by Me.

I love to bake. I REALLY love to bake. I feel like I'm pretty good at baking most basic things, but cupcakes are my baking nemesis. When I married Collin, we got tons of cute cupcake tins and a cupcake recipe book etc. Every time we baked cupcakes, whether from scratch or by box, they always were ruined!!! It's harder to bake in the high altitude of Provo + our oven was from the 70s, and a girl can only take so much so much heartbreak. I swore cupcakes off, FOREVER.

On Friday, I remembered cupcakes, that we now live at a normal altitude, and we have an excellent gas stove. I thought I'd give cupcakes another try in my life.

I whipped up a yellow cake recipe. The batter was SO GOOD! Kind of pretty, too.

The cupcakes were poured.

They still burned around the edges, but they were pretty good. I need to keep playing around with them to perfect. I used some of Collin's pink lemonade frosting. Yum.

I went to heat it up in the microwave, and cooked it a little too long...oops.

That night I met Collin in the pink snow. This week has been such a busy one, and it was wonderful Love to see his face.

So pretty. So handsome. I'm so in love with Collin, it's crazy.

7 O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth.
8 For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither, to the dividing asunder, at the command of our great and everlasting God.

Helaman 12

I want to be more like the dust: obedient and humble before God.
Even though I am less than dust, Heavenly Father knows and loves me.

Salmon ADVENTURA!

Clarified butter+minced garlic+fresh basil, in the broiler for 5-10 m on each side





Appetizer. This cheese is SO intense. I remember having it while I was in Ireland, and it is even stronger and sharper than I remembered. Haha, I honestly can't eat it by itself, it's SO sharp! (AND BELIEVE ME; I LOVE SHARP CHEESES!!!)

Bon Apetite

Smith, you're a genious. We want to start having fish at least once a week.

Family

Here are some highlights from when the Smiths were visiting from Florida a couple of weeks ago. (Has it already been that long?)


We stopped at the Geology conservation center. There was super strict security and billions and billions of MAPS!

Meeting up with cousin, Lane, in Reston, VA (blocks from where Collin works so he got to join us for lunch!)

Mom and her boyfriend at the NRA. That place is a little scary.

Lots of presents including these cute mugs! It's getting warmer, so we use them for pink lemonade, these days.

An afternoon in our Nation's Capitol. I'll never get sick of living here!

Son of Dad

Kendra and I made friends while trying to take pictures with Julia.

Easter Brunch!! Yummy yum yum!

They left and then there were two.

Ps. We are slowly getting lots of furniture to fill up our house(and sit on, phew!) We have house guests this weekend, so we'll get everything in order and take a virtual tour video.

BLOOMS. BLOSSOMS.

Them and me

These are the ones outside my kitchen window.