English Lesson

A funny thing happened while Ben and I were in the car today that I knew had to be shared. We were talking about finding Ben's missing jacket and he said, "My clothes were thrown halfhazardly." I thought he was joking and just laughed and said, "You mean haphazardly?" His response was, "Haphazardly? Halfhazardly. Halfhazardly." You could see the panic in his face as he kept repeating the word and realizing his mistake. "You mean you don't pronounce the ph together?" I had to promise him about three or four times that I was not just pulling his leg. I love moments like these, because the thing about living with Ben is that he is always right. That's great for him, but sometimes it's nice to have change. However, when we got home, we looked up the word "haphazardly" on the internet. We found a site with audio clips of the word correctly pronounced. This particular site had one in American English and one in British English. Lo and behold, we listened to the British one and the woman said, "halfhazardly." Ben's response? "I'm British!"

1/2

Today marks the day that Ben is 25 1/2. We (meaning I) realized this at church when we (meaning I) saw the date printed on the program. As a complete coincidence, we had beef stroganoff, Ben's traditional birthday meal, for dinner. I've always been one to get excited about half birthdays. Partially because my birthday is in the summer and I never got to have a party at school (though I still maintain that summer birthdays are the best). So far, Ben's 25th year has been a good one. He's almost done with school--he's now planning on graduating in August. He still isn't sure what he'll do right after school, but we're still leaning more towards work than grad school. His favorite past times include baking, playing Sporcle, painting watercolors, riding his bike and reading about sports. His favorite colors are blue and orange, which explains the vibrant, slightly painful colors of this post. He's still as energetic as ever and never stops being happy, fun and exhausting.

Creative Corner

Once again, more time has passed since our last post than is desirable. I have a hard time finding mentionable events when we're not riding elephants or touring ancient ruins.

I have recently been struck with the desire to start drawing. I took some art classes in high school and really enjoyed it, but since then I just haven't even tried. My goal is to draw a picture of the Nauvoo temple in charcoal for our wall. To warm up my rusty skills, I did this picture of the hut we stayed in on the beach in Koh Chang, Thailand.

Our Sunday activity turned into art--while I drew, Ben pulled out his watercolors. His creations were much more abstract... no, insightful. They were definitely fridge-worthy.