Communication....

90% of communication is non verbal they say (whoever "they" is).  I have never understood this except for perhaps in regards to the animal kingdom.  Bees to communicate navigational information do a complicated dance to their hive mates.

Squid communicate by flashing messages in colorful spots. Don't act like that wouldn't be cool if humans could do that. 

Mosquitos that are male are drawn to the sound of the female's wing beat, a sound which is picked up by their antennae.  Maybe singles wards would go much better if the males had an antennae and could discern the interest of the females before asking them out and wasting their money at dinner and 4 hours of mortal probation.

Cuttlefish to communicate adopt special swimming postures along with gesticulations of their tentacles
Humans are a little more difficult in what they communicate.  They don't do a bee dance, have cool tentacles or anntenae, or flash colorful spots.  Every single person wants to be understood, appreciated and validated, especially by the people they love most (ie the one they sealed themselves to for the rest of existence).  To communicate love homo sapiens often suck on each other's lips:

 

But the truth of the matter is that there is far too much to do in a day to spend all day in a drooling lip suction so there must be other ways invented to communicate.  For example, in the above photo there is a magical photo shopping that makes me look far better than I am.  I had been tanning, working out, makeup on, and looking my best for awhile in order to scam the jackpot of all husbands into sealing himself to me forever.  I spend approximately .00002% of my life on Earth looking like that kissing in a park while the sun sets.  More realistically would be a moment like the one below:

 

No photo shop here folks, this is not my finest hour. This is hour 23 of labor and the blue bag seen on the bed is the equivalent of the barf bags on planes.  The reason it is empty is because my husband threw the one full of revolting pregnancy puke away, gave me a drink, removed the throw up from my hair and didn't leave me for a milisecond all night.  No fancy sunset in this pic, no lip suction, no romantic cards or tender movie like embracing, just real life.  Love is also communicated when you know you can go to the person when you are your very worst, your very saddest, your very ugliest, and when you love handles are the very plumpest and they will still hold you and love everything about you in your weak suckling pig like state.  

 Yesterday G came home from the grocery store and did a bee dance. No, what did do was randomly buy me 2.1 lbs of my very favorite summer fruit.  It's not my birthday, not even my half birthday, Christmas, or Yom Kimpur.  It was just a Wednesday night and brought them home and he communicated quite clear because he knows A. I love cherries B. I love surprises C. The cherries were a surprise.  The near kilogram of love is gone now and all that remains are the pits in the bottom of the trash but I loved his communication.  I love how he communicates love when he writes me nice cards on valentines day, I love even more how he communicates love by getting Liv so I can sleep in or unloading the dishwasher even though he has a jillion things to study.  I'm so glad I'm not a cuttlefish or that he is a mosquito and we are limited to tentacle gesticulations or wing beats.    People always say to live the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." But even better is the extra 24 carat golden rule of "Do unto others what they would have done unto them."  Or learn to love people not how YOU receive communication of love but how they do.  Otherwise that's like a bee doing a dance for a squid.  It doesn't mean anything.  I love surprises and words.  G doesn't really need either but he does things like buy me cherries because he knows it is how I feel loved and understand love.  If we really love someone, then we crack the code and figure out how they receive it, even if it is different than what we want.  I still think it would be cool to see Garrett do a bee dance though.

My volleyball named Liv....

 I have never seen the movie castaway.  I don't think my mosquito sized attention span would permit it.  However, I did have a companion named Lydia Jones who told me all about it one P day in the jungles of Ecuador which was probably better than seeing it.  I guess the main character has this volleyball that he talks to and becomes his friend because he is alone.  Obviously, volleyballs don't talk back but neither do babies.  However, I have come to love my talks with Liv who is much better than a volleyball, even though she does not talk back either.

Even though both are round, I just am so thankful that I have Liv.  She goes with me everywhere.  We meet so many people all day long and she never complains (besides the fact that she still screams like she's being stabbed every time we walk into Walmart).  I don't have time to list the characters that we have given rides to, friends we have made, and porch sitters we have chatted with on our walks.  I love her.

I love my life. A lot.

 

Have you ever just been breathing on a normal day and all of a sudden you just realize that your life is so dang good and you don't even know how you got where you are and wonder if there was a malfunction in heaven and all of a sudden your hogging all the blessings and there is an overwhelming sense of peace that you just seem to breathe in and it feels so good?  Well that is my life right now.  I love it. All of it.  I think this pic best describes how I feel.  This was yesterday morning. Normal. Too hot for Liv to wear clothes. Too early to be feeling guilty for not doing anything besides just sitting in a chair and holding her.  I asked her what she wanted to do:

 

Yep. So happy.  How can I not feel happy and so good when I'm married to the best man alive and then I hang out with her all day?  I mean give me a break.  For family night G was on lesson and I had bought our activity (Rack-o, a game with sentimental value which comes from endless summer hours of playing with mom growing up) at the flea market for 1 George Washington and then we ate cold watermelon balls for dessert.  So simple. So happy. I can't explain how good our life is.

I love my faithful partner all day who doesn't say anything or do anything but have gas but makes me squeal and kiss her cheeks excessively.

I love my main squeeze who does all the responsible things like paying bills, changing oil, figuring out insurance, and organizing on a superhuman level that makes Franklin Covey look like peanuts.  Liv and I go on our nightly walk to see the fireflies while G studies and the sight below is one of my favorites because as soon as we walk in the door from our night walk he gets out of his chair and then its fun G in the house and we are together until its time to shut our eyes and start over the next morning when his alarm on his phone rings at 5 and then my human alarm called Liv goes off around 5:30 and there's no snooze....:)

Anyway, in case you haven't caught the theme of this post, I love my life. Like crazy.  We made a huge summer list of things to do which we will post later.  Life is so good in West Virginia. Come see us and taste the magic.  We promise a good firefly show, muggy air that will make you sweat and guaranteed cheap laughs when you come to town.  We love you.

Ode to Familia....

 Let me tell you something I have rererealized, I tripled the "re" because I have realized this before several times but once again had the epiphany this week.  Family is everything.  I mean when I was rocking the headgear and at the peak of my jr. high coolness, I thought friends were everything. Then I got older, traded in my headgear for a sweet retainer, got a drivers license and thought that boys were everything.  Wrong-o. The plan of happiness, the plan of salvation, call it whatever the heck you want because when it comes right down to it, it's just the plan of families. Period.  It's the way that you can keep hanging out with the people you love on Earth on a better side of the veil.  I don't really know how that will all work, are we going to have family barbeques on clouds?  Will it just be an eternal family home evening without refreshments or do we all just fly around and read the ensign together and try out for the heavenly choir?  All I know is that even though families are forever, today is part of forever and cross stitching that on a pillow doesn't do me an ounce of good if I don't love being with them now.  Having offspring has only further validated the fact that this better be forever because it is what my life has become.   My whole life I have been worried about the big moment of when I meet Heavenly Father again.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure it will exceed all my expectations and I will set my alarm so I'm not late when the time comes, however when its all said and done, He does have quite the family tree, or should I say forest and after that meeting, He's going to tell me to go back with my family because that is my forever.  Families not only ARE forever, they are what forever is.  Not hopping around on clouds and creating new species of sea horses and algae, but our relationships that we have formed here, in this life. Today, this very nanosecond. We are creating our eternity and our forever with every interaction.  As preach my gospel says, "Heaven is a continuation of the ideal home."   Family doesn't have yearbook day and say superficial things they don't mean.  When they say, "call me," they mean it. You don't have to wear makeup or worry about your love handles in front of family because they love you anyway.  Family can bug you and can make you feel like you want to give everyone a wedgie and make you cry when they don't make good choices, but its only because you love them so much.  I love family because it's a fan club that will never go away, a reality check at all times, and the people that you worry about, pray for, love, laugh with, annoy, and want to succeed more than anything.  Their success feels like your own as well as their disappointments and failures.  Family is deeper than facebook friends, stronger than life.  I miss family.  I love my family. I love my roots and grandparents, all the branches, the leaves, my own baby and husband twig that we have started, I love the whole tree. Family is everything.

 

New fam pics...

Go to: http://rememberwhenphotos.zenfolio.com/olivia if you forgot what our faces look like to see our new pics. We love you.

Welcome to Bluefield...

That's right folks, since 1889 this magical little paradise that feels like a humid green sauna has been home to untold number of obese accent laden citizens who act like your family the first time you pass them on the cereal aisle at Walmart.  I have never met friendlier people who have more generosity or less teeth in my life.  I don't think certain principles have caught on here yet ie. smoking, and frying everything is bad for you; as well as the concept of wearing bras and exercise.  I love it here. There are so many things that make me laugh so hard but are not meant to be funny.  I tried for 40 minutes to find a store that sold sprouts to put them on our wraps I was making for dinner.  The funniest part wasn't that there was not a single sprout to be sold within 5 cities (I called them all) but the fact that no one here had even heard of sprouts period. I'm going to grow my own today.  I'll include a couple of pics to help you feel right at home here.  To give you an accurate idea, the movie "October Sky" is about a city right next to us.  Yep, rent that and you'll be starting to see the vision of where we live.  It's gorgeous green and humid as a sauna.  I love our life in Bluefield.

 

 

Ball dropping in summer....

I know everyone gets all excited to get a gym pass, make goals and start over when the ball drops on News Years at midnight.  It's as if we honestly start to believe that there were be some magical mighty power ranger metamorphosis in our souls when the clock strikes 12.  Unfortunately, time induced clock changes that dramatic only happened to Cinderella. The rest of us have to make an effort consistently.  After going to the gym twice I remember G waking me up early to go again and I sleepily/grumpily responded that I didn't want to go that morning.  When he asked why I clearly stated, "Because it doesn't do anything."  I think secretly I was hoping that those two workouts would have everlasting fat blasting results.  I remember G laughing and getting bugged because I couldn't figure out what he thought was funny about my serious answer.  You see, I'm married to a man who understands the principle of consistency, dilligence and the self discipline.  He sweetly tried to help me understand the concept of the necessity consistent good habits in having permanent change in our lives.  Anyway, the point is that when the ball drops on new years, it's only a matter of weeks or days before I drop the ball of new resolutions in my own life.  Thus, I like to think of goal setting in terms of seasons.  This was G's original thought and I loved it (plus it has added credibility seeing as it comes from the goal master himself).  Every season is a chance to recommit ourselves, re evaluate where we are and what we need to be doing.  The first day of summer is one of my favorites.  We celebrated this year with a barbeque, corn on the cob, salad and potato.  Classic summer foods.  I love summer.  I love change. I love my husband.  I love my life.

The mighty civic and part of our house...