Megapost

Sorry for the long time it's been since I put anything of significance up. It's been a difficult past couple weeks... but I've gotten a lot of thinking done.
First off, James' Mom (Ronnie) came to visit last weekend. It was a lot of fun to have her here. She also came bearing the Minolta Beercan Lens... but more on that later. I miss having her handy. So does Will!
Speaking of the Willex-- he's trying hard to learn to crawl and walk at the same time. He likes to hold on to our fingers and totter around the room on his own two legs, which is a relief to my two legs (and arms!). He's also just figured out how to get both of his legs straight out behind him when he's on his hands and knees. Before, one leg would straighten, and the other would stay at a 90 degree angle to it in front of him. He pushed up onto his toes today trying to crawl (picture an upside-down V)-- I was impressed!
Anyway, with the thinking. Cara lent me her Thomas Jefferson Education book, and I've been looking through it. I'd be hesitant to believe that education is in the state described, except for the inconvenient fact that I spent 4 months at Sunset View Elementary here, working as an ESL teacher. I've seen public education, at least in this school district, and it's scary. More scary to me right now, however, is the state of my education. So I have a new goal (along with my goal to lose 20-30 pounds, figure out how to keep my living room decluttered, and all the other ones): to read the list of 100 classics at the end of the book. Possibly excluding Nietzsche, but I'll at least give him a shot. I was looking through the list, and realizing that I hadn't even heard of some of these people. I started thinking-- I've heard General Authorities quote these people without thinking twice. Reading older books like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, characters routinely quote great authors. When I read these books as a child, I always kinda figured that I'd be able to do that too, when I grew up, or at least after college. Well, I'm 26 this week, I have a husband and a baby, and I graduated from BYU 2 years ago this fall. I'm both grown up and a graduate, and I can quote (or even paraphrase) very few of the works on this list (if anybody wants it, I'll email it to you. I copied it down out of the book). So, by the end of 2008, I want to have all these books read. Then I'll start on the 200-piece long list of children's classics. My record is significantly better whith those, but still not what I'd like. I can't decide where to start on my list though. Alphabetical order? Chronological? Regional? What do you guys think?
Anyway-- pictures. As aforementioned, Ronnie got the Minolta Beercan (telephoto) lens as a gift for me (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU). So now we have a pretty nifty set of lenses that'll do just about anything we want. I've never had a telephoto before, so I'm still practicing taking pictures with it, but the past couple weeks we've gotten some pretty good ones with all of our lenses. Behold: The Stevenson Photo Gallery (part xxxvii, or something like that).
NOTE: Blogger's doing some weird things to the layout of the pictures, so if the captions don't quite line up with the pictures, I'm sorry! Also, it's putting tons of space between some of the pictures, so make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the post.


Ah, my little Bug Baby:) This is from the same expedition where James took the menu picture (see below). I think those are my Dad's sunglasses.



















With Aunt Amanda (who will have a little one of her own in December!! YAY!!!) at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake. This picture came out overexposed (I think James forgot to turn off aperture priority), but I actually like it that way. I think it condenses it down to its essence.















Willex hitches a ride. I actually really like this picture of me. It makes me look a lot cooler than I really am:).



















Ronnie (I think. It was either her or James) took this one in front of the NuSkin building in Provo. I love the colors.











James, Ronnie, and Will. Awww:)















This settles it. I have the cutest kid in the world. Ever.
That's Ronnie holding him. It's a picture I took when I was trying to get a picture like the one above, but James and Ronnie came out blurry. Willex, however, is perfect.












Well, that's it for this Megapost. I'm gonna have James do another one with some seriously cool pictures we got the other day outside our house. Oh, one more for Eddie and Andrea. I said I didn't want you to remember me as a whale... It's not the greatest picture, but also one of the only ones where I don't look like I have a double chin:). Here you go!