Category: Uncategorized

Engagement Photo Dump

Posted on by Sierra
I cursed myself: I preemptively blogged! I figured that my visit at the lady doctor would be the genesis of hilarity; in actuality, it was rather routine.
Thus, I’ve been avoiding my little neglected blog. I’ve been haunted by the idea that I must make something funny that… may or may not have been funny, and may just come across as crass. And so I’ve avoided the blog world entirely.
A Disclaimer: This is more “journal-esque” than I typically write. But since my journal is neglected these days too, I figure this is an appropriate forum for my goings-on.
I’ve been watching my the apologies on the blog reel rack up as my blogger friends poetically admit that they’ve been too busy relishing the sun and flattering the butterflies to maintain their blogs. Sometimes I wish my summer consisted of making ripples in the pool with my toes. Instead, I’ve been frantically and gloriously busy.
 Doing what, you ask?
 
Here’s the condensed version (maybe just for posterity’s sake if it fails to interest the masses):

1. I’ve been working four jobs! With varying degrees of success. I’ve been maintaining my TA position in the Theater and Media Department, and loving it with my whole heart and soul. I am a Writing Fellow for an educational law class at BYU, and then occasionally managing content for Jeremy’s web design business. Finally, I admit, I took the walk of shame back to the old Tucanos. It’s a walk that many make with empty pockets and heads hung low. And truth be told, my experience back there has been nothing but delightful. You may even think I’m being sarcastic, but I assure you, I’m not! It’s been fun!

2.     2. I’ve been sending invitations, making decorations, and receiving congratulations for the upcoming wedding, which creeps ever closer every day. It’s been far more stressful than I’d ever imagined, but there are some gratifying moments as well. For instance: Wearing your sister’s wedding dress. Nothing could be more special. It’s my favorite part of the wedding  (besides the groom, of course), and trying it on makes me feel like such a bride. And you know what, when I don’t feel like a complete Bride-zilla, being a bride feels wonderful. (Pictures not included because Jeremy can’t see!)
3.    

3.           

3.     3. I’ve been battling some serious bouts of anxiety, be it my own or my family members’. The Robinson clan is seeing lots of big changes this year, and while we have momentary moments of panic, I think something characteristic of our little family is our resiliency. When the tough keeps coming, we keep punching back. Eventually, we come out conquerors. But you could probably still send some prayers our way.

4.     4. Jeremy and I put a deposit on our first little starter apartment in Provo. And it definitely has character. It is at the basement of a 100-year-old inn. The entryway is our bathroom and there’s no living room, but there IS a bookshelf with one book on it. If you TURN the BOOK, it opens a secret passageway. It makes my heart sing. To quote my good friend Eleanore Steinmetz: “Sierra, that’s incredible and awful! Incredible for your writing career, awful because we may never see the Will Be Sierra Penrod again. You’ll be stuffed away writing a Potteresque novel in your secret passageway.”—Is it bad that I kind of hope so?

This is our new kitchen, with our new table and chairs! We have a new stove and a newly installed fridge. Also, white tiles.
This is the before shot of our bedroom.
Don’t be fooled by this seemingly innocuous bookshelf.
Or our (so far just MY) giant mountain of stuff.
Seriously nothing sexier than a man doing the handy work. Jeremy’s been hard at work making all our cabinets close tight and straight. He makes living in a fixer upper so much fun.
This is the secret passage way I told you about! Aren’t you just riddled with excitement? Aren’t you just dying to peek inside?
This is the bedroom’s current state. This is just my stuff, since Jeremy won’t move in until we are properly wedded. The bedspread is likely to change. The bear stays.
Another picture of my handyman. Couldn’t resist.
My handiwork. I’m no decorator, but books do a nice job of looking nice on their own.
5.I5. I’ve been showered! I had a lovely and classy and slightly embarrassing bridal shower thrown by my sisters Bethany and Kristy and my best friend Chloe. I had some transcontinental friends, Kelsey and Jenni travel in for the affair, which made me feel so very special. My friends far and wide spoiled me (and Jeremy) rotten.
Wouldn’t you like to know what was in this present?

 

Jes and Caitlin came even though Jes really should have been having her new baby girl that day.

 

Just because the photo loaded weird doesn’t mean I love these girls any less.

 

Some of my oldest and dearest friends at the shower.
6.    6.   I’ve been family-ing in Colorado, California, and Utah! We had a great weekend getaway where we could let go of the wedding stress and just enjoy our new family members and relax in the Colorado mountains.
My aunt Margie got married! Never a more deserving bride, and we sure do love Mike too!

 

This is sweet Doug who brought a bouquet of flowers to his mommy. Thank goodness this woman is procreating!

 

Teeny has indeed bonded with “Uncle Jeremy.” And to be honest, I think he has a little soft spot for her too.
Jeremy and I in the Mountains on Memorial Day. My family is patriotic. Please note the flag my father hung on the tree.
Jeremy sharing his love for entomology with the smalls. Kiana was especially excited that he caught a butterfly for her.

7. Mere moments after I had just been asserting to Jeremy that I was man enough to change a tire–I got a flat tire and had to put my money where my mouth was. Conveniently, I was wearing overalls that day (Because the 90’s are coming back, don’t you know?!)

Dang straight.
7.    8.   I’ve been spending time with my future husband and enjoying every single drop of time I get to just relax, cuddle, and be with him. We are that gross couple that accidentally alienates their friends with their PDA. But you’re only engaged once, and through the stress, I am loving it all.

Oh my gosh. My blog is becoming a Mormon Housewife Blog. Next blog, I will repent, I promise.

Tell Me True

Posted on by Sierra

So, a recent survey of Google Analytics yielded some interesting results. I have readers in Yemen!? What?!

Basically, I am curious to see where my blogger readership actually comes from. Who is simply surveying my site, while who is actually reading it? Please comment on this blog and provide your state or country, but you can exclude all personal username info.

However, if you would like to tell me anymore about yourself, I am dead curious to know :).

Thanks friends!

Robins in Winter

Posted on by Sierra

Today was one of those miserable, sucky days (with the exception of the three blissful hours I spent in a high school English class, details forthcoming).
One of those days where I woke up a heavy mass of dark, tangled human, trying to be remembered by my memory foam mattress that I was trying to sink back into. 
It was one of those days where my cramps literally pushed me up against a wall and pinned me, immobile, but mentally kicking and screaming. 
Today was one of those “parking permit gets revoked” sort of days. 
And just as I was beginning my solitary t r u d g e home from campus, feeling burdened by the impending cumulus-nimbus and the pervasive cold that was marching into my ears—a little one of these guys burrowed out from a bush beside my path.

A robin! A robin?! In Winter?!
I didn’t even know that there were robins in winter! I thought they were strictly spring creatures. And actually, as it were, there was a whole family of twenty beautiful robins puttering around the bushes and looking for frozen worms. And while I was scaring innocent passers-by, accosting them by enthusiastically yanking on their shirts and forcing them to notice our feathered friends, I realized something:

Sometimes, you gotta stop and look down. Especially when you’re already looking down to begin with.
Oh! And watch this: The Weepies

Little Prince

Posted on by Sierra

     I’m the sort of girl that appreciates a healthy amount of validation. 

     While now I have come to understand that this thirst for validation may be somewhat damaging to my person, especially since they have seemed to dwindle significantly in my college years. I have exercised great care in needing validation less—and to some degree, I have been successful. But even still, it appears that there is someone out there who understands my apparent need for validation—and for the last month has been giving it to me in form of type-written (like, from a type writer) notes perched in the seal between my car’s frame and my car’s door twice a week or so. These notes are literary in nature, and even though they might not be from a secret admirer per se, they seem perhaps affectionate, or if nothing else—intensely personal.

   I call this mysterious note-leaver “The Little Prince,” though my friends have been careful to inform me that it might be a “princess” since these aren’t necessarily professions of love.  “The Little Prince,” aptly titled because of the quote he/she left on my car first comes from a French book called The Little Prince, a book I love dearly. I’ve gotten quotes from The Alchemist, another favorite of mine, and from A History of Love, where the title of this blog was born. I’ve gotten, strangely, lyrics from a Glen Hansard song that I’ve always loved since it was played at my friend Tiffany’s wedding. Whoever this person is, I feel like they know me well, even though it’s possible that they might not know me at all. If anything, even if these aren’t love notes, or even compliments for that matter, getting them on my window every so often at least validates that I am alive, and that I have good taste in books.

    I have reason to suspect that The Little Prince reads this blog. To you, Little Prince, who seems to have ceased with the notes this semester, I leave you this message: Thanks for the validation. Now kindly tell me who you are. I will find out who you are eventually, Little Prince, because “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”


Sports Humility Syndrome

Posted on by Sierra
Friends: This is not me. 

I blame the slippery handle. I blame the knee-deep layer of sediment in the two-foot deep water. I blame the choppy waves that the multitude of other Pioneer Day celebrators bequeathed to us on Utah Lake. But for all my blame-placement, the fact of the matter is, I just don’t wakeboard.

I discovered this yesterday, on a most blissful day at the lake with my friends Brooke, Tiffany, Preston, and my new friend called “Brooke’s Boat.” I glided into the water with a little bit of an arrogant swagger, thinking, “Ben Dailey does this, how hard could it be?” Yet as I found myself continually whipped around the back of the boat, and usually falling backwards into the mud (the water was not especially deep, as I mentioned), a familiar breed of humility crossed my countenance.
This particular breed of humility is what I call “Sports Humility.” It was Heavenly Father’s, shall we say, gift to me to remind me that I’m really not that awesome. I was not blessed with an athletic bone in my body. I don’t even have an athletic pinky. I don’t even have an athletic fingernail (although I did quit biting for a while, see THE BLOG for proof).
In keeping with blaming anyone in the world but me for my lack of athletic ability, I will examine the Robinson family lineage. My dad’s athletic recessive gene was beat out by my mom’s dominant reader gene. For family gatherings and evenings of fun, you were more likely to find my family reading independently in the same vicinity rather than snorkeling, skiing, and goodness knows, wakeboarding. Thus, I came into the world—a non-wakeboarding, speed-reading dork.
Brooke offered me a good consolation prize as I emerged from the water, dripping in defeat.
“It’s ok, Sierra,” she said. “At least you can blog about it.
*A special thanks to Preston and Brooke, and of course Brooke’s boat. Because honestly, I had so much fun out there. Thanks friends!

Cartoon Crushes

Posted on by Sierra

I didn’t feel good last night, which is basically just a good excuse to allow yourself to snuggle into your sheets at 9:30 PM with the (not) Disney classic movie, Anastasia. This movie is surprisingly awesome for a 1997 animated film. First of all, I highly approve of Anastasia’s fashion choices (once she becomes a Princess, not a pauper). Also the music is extremely well done, and while the delicate framework of historical fact in the movie has been horribly skewed, we cannot overlook the fact that the movie has THIS character:
Now, I doubt that I am the first to blog about this reprehensible cartoon conman.  It seems common knowledge that Dimitri is just sexy, plain and simple. I mean, look at that jawline.  I remember coming out of the movie theater after the Romonav line had been restored and Anastasia effectively eliminated Rasputin (something the Communist party failed to do), and having my sister exclaim, “That Dimitri! He was cute!”
Apparently she was not alone.  The next day, all my third grade comrades (it’s nice to keep the communist diction alive) were all a buzz about the finest new cartoon spectacle. It seemed that Dimitri was all the rage, solidly beating out Alladin, but maybe even trumping Prince Eric. But I couldn’t join in the discussion. I just didn’t see it. You see, my third grade self only had eyes for one cartoon. It was a secret buried deep inside me, that only now—thirteen years later—that I feel comfortable divulging my cartoon crush. It was this boy:

Elroy Jetson. Elroy was the stout, futuristic boy of my dreams. I’m not sure what struck my childhood fancy about him exactly.  Maybe it was those black hole eyes or that little antenna thing on his cap. Actually in retrospect, I really think that it might have been his voice, and that when I sneaked down in the middle of the night to watch Cartoon Network, it was Elroy’s dulcet tones that lulled me to sleep in front of the faint flicker of the wildly inaccurate “ultramodern” program.
Now I bet that I am the first to blog about that.
Stay tuned, and you will hear about my childhood crushes on: 
Dante Bichette 
and
Patrick Roy.
Apparently I had a thing for fat athletes too. 

… I haz it.

Posted on by Sierra

The feeling. One morning you can wake up and you just know it. Today is a good day. For today you can feel the writing. You can feel the words streaming from your brain, through your fingers, onto a page. Today is a good day because today you are a writer. It’s one of those things that you can wake up and just know. But today is not a writer today.
            Today is one of those days where try as you might to corral them, the words you want are just out of reach, and though the tendons on your fingers are outstretched with effort, the brain isn’t supplying the words to complete the task. 

             What I’m trying to say is: I have Writer’s Block. Alright all you blog-loving community…. How do I combat it? What do you do when it seems you have nothing to say?

My Feelings on Twilight

Posted on by Sierra

Let me start this blog with a justification: I had no idea that the new Twilight movie had come out already. I take pride in the fact that I was informed about Eclipse by a boy no less. I rather thought that the Twilight movies would function more like the Harry Potter movies, which wring all of the patience out of you as though you were a particularly damp towel. But Twilight is different: twilight is a vast expansive money making machine. It is not about delayed gratification… Or actually, maybe that’s exactly what it’s about. And gratuitous vampire non- sex.

Let us please review the book that was so set up for failure: the book is about a vampire who falls in love with a girl  because he quite literally wants  to drink her . I want to drink a kool- aid but you dont see me lusting after the Kool Aid man. (although he does say ohhhh yeah! In a very suggestive way) I feel like I need to pre justify myself again and say that I HAVE NOT read the books in their entirety. This is because I believe that Stephanie Meyer had tortured the English language into uncomfortably bad sentences. Among my favorites ( and coincedentally the line that I stopped reading at) went something like this: “Two things were for certain:  Edward Cullen was a vampire and I was irrevocably in love with him.” I mean, really?! we wasted trees for that?

Now I feel I must give Miss Meyer some deserved credit however. Man, does that lady know how to manipulate the heart strings. It is here that I make my confession: I did see eclipse on opening night. Not only that but I enjoyed it also. Particularly, I enjoyed the scene where a scantily clad Jacob had to cling to Bella in the middle of a snow storm while Edward grimaced and bore it because his love for Bella was so deep that he wanted to keep her warm by letting the werewolf do it for him. I enjoyed the moment Jacob and Edward shared when Bella, nestled closely to Jacob’s bosom, slept and Edward confided in Jacob that “if we weren’t sworn enemies, I might actually like you.” I appreciated how the filmmakers set it up to feel like an almost secret gay confession. I think that would make the plot even more complex and dynamic, don’t you? 



I also appreciated the film’s power of persuasion. Formerly I considered myself to be an ignorant team Jacobite, but after sitting through two hours of Taylor laugtners appallingly bad acting, I now proclaim myself an Edward supporter. 

So folks, I confess– I’m jumping on the band wagon. I can say in all honesty that I enjoyed my eclipse experience immensely. Just make sure when you see it to have a fellow nay sayer with you to make fun of it with you sitting on your right. It makes the movie ten times more fun and I was surprised to find the Kool Aid man is exceptionally good company.