Voyage

"Are you there, too, Sir?" asked Edmund.

"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

-Aslan- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as Lucy and Eustace and Edmund prepare to leave Narnia, Lucy and Edmund for the last time. 

**

I have loved the Chronicles of Narnia for as long as I can remember reading, and I've been reading for quite some time now. 

C.S. Lewis certainly had a mesmerizing way of creating such a wonderful world where imagination and action come into one colorful and inviting element. The rich, thought out characters, and the lively land of Narnia, and its surroundings, are just simply amazing, and yet, very simple. Narnia is not overstated, and is very humble, but it's just captivating. A world that anybody would long to visit. Needless to say, I love the world that he has created here, and more especially, the symbolism of it. 

C.S. Lewis, and his characters, opened my eyes to a whole new world, not only fictionally, but spiritually as well. It helped me really see and understand things in a light that I hadn't quite grasped when I had originally read the books, being so young as I was when I went through them the first time. All I knew is that it was a book with fun characters. 

I will be forever grateful to my mother for getting me the work book for The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Growing up as a homeschooler was a very wonderful blessing in my life, which I will always take pride in, because I got to spend such wonderful time with my parents, learning things and seeing things in various ways, and being taught that learning is not limited to class time and homework, but that learning is all around and that you'll always find opportunities to learn and grow from, and that there is always something to be learned, even if the experience is not that great.

It was as my mom and I were going over a project from the workbook that we really started to learn about C.S. Lewis and his origins. We learned that he had fallen away from his faith as a youth and was a very devout atheist for a very long time. We discovered that he was good buddies with J.R.R Tolkien and that the wonderful Lord of the Rings author helped C.S. Lewis find his way to Christianity, and that the two encouraged each other to write what would become undoubtedly the two most beloved series of all time.

I'm grateful that we still have that workbook. I'm looking forward to being able to go over it with my children, and seeing their looks of understanding of the Narnia series change, just as I'm sure that my own did as I found out that the beloved Aslan was a symbol of our Savior. 

I had never thought of the Savior in such a profound way as I did after re-reading the scene where Aslan goes to offer himself as a sacrifice so that Edmund could go free, and be saved from his ignorance, and his stupidity. My eyes opened, and I saw everything clearly. C.S. Lewis was describing, by way of Aslan, the crucifixion of our Lord and Savior, and I had never had the Spirit testify to me so strong up to that point in my life, that the Savior is indeed a real and living Being, and that He cares enough for all of His people that He would be willing to suffer and die for our ignorance and our stupidity. That single book would change how I view the story of the Atonement and the crucifixion for the rest of my life, because I could relate to it. I could understand it. It wasn't using big, complicated words that I didn't understand, like the Bible did, and it was beautiful and plain to the understanding of a young one who was simply reading for enjoyment. 

C.S. Lewis changed my view of the Savior forever, and now, even though I don't think of the Savior as a big, majestic lion, I will forever think of Him as a gentle friend, one who is always there to pick us back up after we fall, and help us get back on our feet if we've been lead astray, or if we are in need of guidance. He may offer some chastisement at times, but anybody who loves a person will do that- it isn't good to go around life thinking that every little thing you do is good or okay, because sometimes it's not, and sometimes we need to be told what we are doing, so that we can correct our errors and learn to live a better, more meaningful life. 

I love my Savior. He is my closest friend, and I will be eternally grateful for His sacrifice, and for the opportunity that I have to talk to Him, to return to Him after my life work is complete on this earth. 

It has been, and will continue to be, one of my greatest pleasures to have received the knowledge of the Savior in my life. My parents were wonderful teachers academically, and spiritually, and I still learn from them on a day to day basis on how to love those around you unconditionally, just as the Savior would. 

So, even if we stumble, or make mistakes, even if our lives need a touch of readjusting, let us include the Savior in our doings, and let us see Him as a child would, or as we would see Aslan, as a caring Friend, as a gentle Guide, and as our Constant. 

 

I am vengeance; I am the night; I am BATMAN!!!!!

So, anybody who knows me or comes in contact with me knows, or will at some point during conversation find out, how I feel about Batman. He is, without a single doubt, my favorite hero of all time, so it makes perfect sense to me to have my newest post pay homage to The Dark Knight.

So I have to say that I really enjoyed the newest Batman movie- I thought that it was put together very well, and the cast was awesome! Of course, Christian Bale is a phenomenal Batman, and I just adore Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. What I wasn't expecting, though, was how well Joseph-Gordon Levitt did. That threw me for a loop, seriously. There was never any competition for Batman in my mind- until The Dark Knight rises, and an adorable freaking Officer/Detective Blake, played, of course, by Joseph-Gordon Levitt, showed up on screen. I told David Ace later that night that I surprised myself, because I never expected to like Robin (or, in his case, I prefer to think of him as Nightwing.) better than Batman. But in that movie, I sure did. :) He just did such a great job. :)

What a cutie pie!! :)

These movies definitely have a place in my home and will continue to be some of my very, very favorite movies of all time. There's nothing quite like watching The Dark Knight Rises when it's super snowy out, and you're in the home where it's warm, cuddled with your honey on your ginormous love-sack with all three doggies, and a big, pregnant belly, hahahah.  

So, if you haven't got the idea yet, my hubby and I are big movie people. We love to watch movies, so you can imagine our excitement for the new Superman movie that will be coming out later this year. I really, really hope that they get it right this time around. Superman is such a great character, and this movie promises to be a little richer than the other movies out there. I'd hope so, really. It needs to be, Superman is very complex individual, and needs his story told right, darn it!  

Surprisingly, I didn't like him before I met my husband, and before we watched Smallville. I've always been a Batman kinda girl, but my husband has always been a fan of Superman, and so he introduced me to Smallville, and from then, I was hooked. I really enjoyed Tom Welling's Clark Kent. I thought that he was perfect for the role, as well as the whole cast, actually. 

But I really am looking forward to this new Superman film. I have high hopes for it. It should be awesome!! :) 

Thought that was a pretty cool logo. :)

But at any rate, I think I am going to wrap up this edition of my random ramblings. :) It's nice to be able to get all my thoughts out, so they don't keep cluttering up my mind. Hahaha. 

May the Force be with you! 

All about puppies!!

I've been meaning to update for awhile now, but laziness and business with work ensued, and a substantial amount of blogger's block, if you will. :) But now I'm back and kicking.


So, my husband and I have been married a little over a year now, about a year and a half, and we've decided to wait a little bit before we have children of our own. Well, literal children of our own. That didn't prevent us from expanding our family with... PUPPIES!!  We have three wonderful, dorky puppies, two corgi/chihuahua mixes and one pure bred chihuahua.


Our little motley crew started when my husband and I decided to buy our house. We were still in the process of closing on it, and my mom wanted to get David Ace a puppy, because he loved my parents dog, Keno, so much. Well, David Ace wanted to get ME a puppy, because I loved Keno so much, and so, after some deliberation (and I say some because we ended up driving out to South Jordan that night to get him.) we ended up with Corgi. Here's a picture:

That's when he was a puppy. Isn't he cute? Now he's a full grown mutt, and he's got the cutest personality, but apparently not to the guys who are working on the furnace. He won't quit barking...But to us, he's cute. :)

That's him all grown up. :)


Next up in line is our little Chito. We got this little guy from my parents. They had originally bought/saved two black pug puppies, and were horribly allergic to them, so unfortunately they couldn't keep them. That was a sad day at the Stanford residence. After finding them both good homes, they were searching for the perfect, apple headed chihuahua they could find, and they came up with little Chito.

This is him when he was a tiny little baby puppy. Isn't he precious? He's so freaking cute it's not even funny. :)

So, a little while later, they found they were allergic to Chito, as well, and my mom was going to put him on KSL, and I was sitting there with her, and I told her that we would take him. Ever since then, he's been the cutest addition to our family. He's not much bigger all grown up than when he was a puppy. ;)

And here's Noah. He's been a wonderful addition to our crazy puppy-filled family. He's such a good little guy. He's five years old, and we adopted him from a family who couldn't keep him anymore. He's so gentle and sweet, and such a cuddly little guy.


How he came about: My mom had stumbled across a picture that looked just like our little Corgi dog and it so happened that it was a KSL add, and so we went to bed and then the next day we decided to add him to our family. :) We were the only ones who had called on little Noah, and he's been wonderful. :)

And here is our cute little puppy family! Aren't they sweet? We love them! :)

Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime...Love me, that's all I ask of you.

     Above is a picture taken from the bed and breakfast where my husband and I stayed for our honeymoon June before last- I can't believe we've been married over a year now, time really does fly by- and, as you can tell from the mask and rose the suite was Phantom of the Opera themed., and it was amazing! I'll be posting more pictures throughout this entry just to emphasize it's awesomeness. 

     The funny thing about this is that I found this suite before I had even met my husband!

     My family and I had stayed in Lava Hot Springs Idaho for my eighteenth birthday and we really enjoyed it, so my mom and I were going through websites, looking for places to stay if we wanted to take another trip out there, and we stumbled across this bed and breakfast called Lions Gate Manor. They advertised, and still do, The Phantom's Lair, as their premier suite, and with good reason. We looked at pictures and I fell in love with it and decided that that is where I wanted to go for my honeymoon, whenever it was I got married. Little did I know that it wouldn't be so long after that I did get married. 

     I met my husband at the beginning of January 09 at a Singles Ward activity we had in Bear Lake. We were staying at a lodge and snowmobiling and all sorts of other fun things you do in the winter. I do want to mention that I was part of the fellow-shipping committee for my ward before I go on. Now that I've mentioned that, I'll continue. We had gone out the second day for snowmobiling and stuff like that, and it was later in the day, we were having lunch and taking a break when I saw this young man just sitting down on a trailer by himself. Well, as part of the fellow-shipping committee, I couldn't have that, could I? So I went over and sat down and said hi. I found out his name was David Penrod, and that he was a recently returned missionary. Our conversation didn't last much longer than that, but it must have stuck out in both of our minds, because obviously, we're married now. : )

     I should have known things were going that way when, on Saturday as we were leaving it just so happened that I ended up in the same car with him, though I wasn't thinking about it at that point; I was just happy to be with my friends, and that we didn't get separated. I was impressed, though, because there was something that I had been pondering about for awhile and he was able to explain the principle to me and in a way that I could understand, so I was happy about that. It gave me great ease in my mind. 


      I won't go into all of the details right now, but I was leaving church early for some reason that I can't remember and I remember crossing paths with him in the parking lot and he asked me if I would be going to the Family Home Evening that night at the ward, to which I said yes. I then went home and proceeded to tell my mother about it and we went through every possible outfit I owned and she did my hair for me and we were both excited about it. So I went, and it was a fun activity. I visited with he and some of his in-active friends that he brought along, and, as I said before, I won't go into all of the details right now, because some of them I need his help remembering, not too long after that we started dating. And not long after we started dating we were engaged!

     This was my hair and outfit for the Family Home Evening activity. 

     He had never seen the Phantom of the Opera, though, so I was a little concerned, given the suite that I had picked out for our honeymoon, so I decided one night for our date night we would watch the movie so I could see if  he liked it. Now, I had told him nothing of the suite or anything like that, I didn't even tell him the reason we were watching Phantom, because I wanted to surprise him with it. So, we watched it, and he loved it, and he wouldn't have known anything about it except I had left up the invoice for it on my email one day and he happened to look. He said he wished he hadn't, but I didn't know that he knew until we got there, and he said he was still surprised. It was wonderful. And the monkey above is a music box that plays Masquerade, just like the one in the movie. : )

        My friend surprised me by putting up this sign for us the day before our wedding. She kidnapped me at home and blindfolded me and took me to see it. I later took my husband and we got pictures of it. I was very touched that she was so thoughtful. This is still one of my favorite pictures ever. : )

    For our honeymoon we had bought season passes to Lagoon and also got another place to stay out in Salt Lake City, and this is us as we were just leaving Lion's Gate. He was so nice to us, and he said we were the first honeymooners to visit The Phantom's Lair, so he gave us these shirts and we wore them all that day at Lagoon. Everybody would comment on our shirts and say that they loved the Phantom. It was quite the wonderful experience! I loved it there, and so did David Ace. So much so, in fact, that we decided to go back a year later for our anniversary, and this time we had a surprise in store for the owner, John Clark.

Entertainment Central!

      My wonderful husband bought me a Wii for Christmas, so naturally it's up in our living room, and we played Beatles Rock Band on it last night. I can't believe how rusty I am! But it was wayy fun! Apparently he had been looking around on KSL the other day to find one. We ended up getting a black one to match all of our other electronic accessories, and I couldn't be happier.  My life is almost complete as far as games go: all I need is Lego Batman. : )

     I've never been a hardcore gamer; I'm still not. The only games I've really ever played through and won  on my own are The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 and Kingdom Hearts 1, 2- I'm working on Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories- and other than that I've mostly played music games like Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Rock Band 1, 2 and Beatles Rock Band. I'm not big into the Resident Evil games or the Halo games or anything like that. I like silly fun games, which is why Lego Batman is still up close to the top of the games I want, following, of course, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. But that'll have to wait, because I don't want to get a PSP right now. : )

    But I do have to say that I'm thankful for my brother Jordan for getting me into gaming in the first place. See, he saw me reading the summary for the Kingdom Hearts games for the umpteenth time - and I thought I was being discreet. :) - and went out and bought me the first game. Well, these games just happen to be for the PlayStation 2 console, and I had nothing of the sort, so the game sat in my room for a week, I think, until I couldn't take it anymore and went out and bought a PS2. Luckily for me they weren't as popular as when they had first come out, so I ended up paying 130 dollars for a brand new one; it came with a controller, and I bought a memory card as well, because I knew there was going to be a LOT of Kingdom Hearts gaming that we would be doing.

     I loved the game! It was visually amazing!! More so than any other I had ever seen. It was a fantastic game, and I loved how they incorporated the Disney characters (Donald and Goofy are part of your party and they help you fight) and as well the Final Fantasy characters. That was my first foray into the land of gaming, and I loved it!

     Suddenly my brother and I connected on a whole different level. We've always been close, Jordan and I, but I gotta say that it was one of the greatest times I've had playing Kingdom Hearts with Jord. He loves all of the Assassin's Creed games, as well as the Halo ones, but we had soo much fun! And that's really what I LOVE about gaming!

     I thought that whenever I got married I would have to give up the Kingdom Hearts and the Zelda and all of this stuff and be serious.... Yeah, I'm so happy that I don't have to worry about that! I found out when I was dating my husband that he loves Kingdom Hearts as much as I do! And we've since played it many times through together. The first time I played Chain of Memories we played it together; we played Final Fantasy VII together, and that was amazing! AND, we went to an Anime convention with my best friend Kierra as well. See, this is us: 

    Our good friends made us our costumes, we're the ones in the silver and the pink (also known as Sora and Kairi.), and they did it in a really short amount of time. They love Kingdom Hearts, too, and so it was really awesome that they were able to do that for us! I appreciate it soo much! See, my husband even ordered himself a "keyblade", what the main character uses to slay the enemies who are known as the "Heartless". 

    So, the girl in the white dress, that's my best friend Kierra, she's the one who wanted us to go. Her character's name is Namine. And we just happened to run into another Kingdom Hearts person floating around, his name is Roxas. Kinda hard to explain, but Namine and Roxas are sort of connected to Sora and Kairi, which makes this picture so darn awesome! 


     And, of course, I have to post this picture below, because it's just awesome! 

     My husband is the biggest ham you will ever meet, but this is "Sora", doing a finishing combo move on a "Heartless." : ) Waay fun! 


     It was funny, actually, just remembered this story and thought I would post it. I was helping Kierra with her costumes and while I was gone there was this girl taking a picture with David Ace. A lot of girls took their picture with David Ace. Anyway, so I got there in time for the girl to say to him, "By the way, my friend said I could keep you." David Ace laughed and put his arm around me and said, "Sorry, I'm taken, this is my wife." It was quite funny. : )


    This blog stuff is awesome! I love it! And especially now that I know how to use it! I'll probably be posting a lot, because I love it soo much!

Finally starting to figure this whole blog thing out....

 I decided a couple of nights ago that I wanted to make a blog; it sounds like a lot of fun, and it sounds like a good way to keep everybody updated. I thought to myself, 'Okay, I can figure this out.' 

 And here we are, two days later and I've finally figured out how to post a comment. I think I'm doing fairly well for myself. :)

 Part of that delay, I guess was because I was also trying to figure out how to put my pictures from my camera on the computer at the same time, and for somebody who is really only familiar with word processors because I love to type and come up with crazy stories for friends, that was quite the obstacle. And there were some good pictures there that I would love to share on Facebook, so naturally it was quite frustrating to me when I couldn't figure it out.  But I did figure it out and now I have photos! I'm starting to figure out this whole computer thing. I think I understand my PS3 now, too. Yay!

  Now I contemplate what to blog about as I sit and drink a nice refreshing glass of my good friend Dr. Pepper.

  Life is perfect for me when I'm enjoying time with Dr. Pepper and my husband in front of Netflix. We did the whole trial thing and fell in love with it, so we decided to keep it. We've streamed some good ones over our PS3 and we have had two sent to us, though I think the mail people skip over us because Iron Man 2 was sitting in our old, waaaayyy outdated mailbox (my father-in-law's a mailman and he said that the kind of mailbox that we have is a pain in the winter because it's one that's on our house and there's a lid you have to life, kinda hard to explain, I'll post a picture, but he said that it's hard to manage in gloves. So the weather's cooling down, so perhaps that's why... Need to get a new mailbox. ^^) for a couple days straight. But never fear, of course, because we live just down the street from the post office, who have mailboxes. ^^

This is my mailbox. ^^

And now I go get ready for work. So, farewell for now! ^^