The Greatest Showman Soundtrack

I've been slightly obsessed with the soundtrack from The Greatest Showman recently. I bought the cd last week and haven't stopped listening since. :)

I especially love this song!

And this one!

And this one!

Turn up the volume and enjoy!

Electricity!

I am so thankful for electricity! On Friday, there was a big wind storm here in Virginia. We lost power at my place on Friday at 8 AM and didn't get it back until that night at 9:30 PM. Not having electricity for a while made me realize how much I use it and love it! I couldn't cook anything, the heater didn't work, I couldn't watch a movie, I couldn't get on the internet, I couldn't charge my phone.

There were a lot of things I couldn't do, but I did finish a book that I hadn't been able to read in a while. I did spend some quality time with some family members in the area. I did write a card to my parents. I did go to Mod Pizza for dinner with Coldstone ice cream for dessert. :) I did get to use my flashlights and emergency candles.

My candle-lit living room. It was actually quite bright, but not quite enough to read a book without a flashlight.

I am glad for what I did on Friday without electricity but I am so thankful to have my power back!

Cookies!

I love cookies, baking them and eating them. :) I feel like I've had lots of cookies in my life recently and I love it!

Someone posted about these cookies on Facebook and I decided to try them. They're Brown Butter Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies. They were soft and delicious! A little more time consuming to make than I'm used to for cookies, but still really good. :)

I brought them into work the next day and they were gobbled up quickly.

I've heard about cookie exchanges before but I've never been to one or hosted one. I've actually been thinking about hosting one for a couple of years now, but it's never worked out... until this year.

I think it was a success! I had each person bring 4 dozen cookies, 1 dozen to sample that day and 3 dozen to divvy out evenly between each person. We had 9 different kinds of cookies. Jam filled Cream Cheese Cookies, Sugar Cookies, Chocolate Toffee Cookies, Mexican Wedding Cookies, Classic Spritz Cookies, Spicy Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies, Peppermint Shortbread Cookies, Chocolate Peanut Butter Bites, and Gingersnaps.

I made the Chocolate Toffee Cookies.

I might have bought this Cookie Monster shirt just for the cookie exchange, but I feel like it might be appropriate, in general, for me to own this shirt. :) 

I wish I had gotten a picture of all of us who were at the cookie exchange, but, alas, I did not. 

I went to visit my parents in Utah for a week at the beginning of this month. They had warned me before coming that they wanted me to do a lot of baking while I was there. I was happy to oblige. :) 

I made Hot Chocolate Cookies, M&M Pudding Cookies, Toffee Crunch Cookies, and Fudge (not pictured). My parents had a list of people they wanted to give cookies to so we divided them up according to how many people in the families and then they delivered them to friends and neighbors. 

Cookies are awesome! :)

Fall Happenings!

At the beginning of September I went to the beach at Flag Ponds Nature Park in Maryland! I went with Lara and Glen and family as well as Heather and Tim. I really like this beach! It wasn't very crowded and the waves were calm and we could go pretty far out and still touch the bottom.

Soaking up the sun!

I kept on hearing about this place that had bagel doughnuts which I had never heard of before but decided I needed to try. :) But it was hard to get to because there were only two locations open at the time, one in D.C. and one in Leesburg. I finally made it to the one in Leesburg!

So basically it's fluffy fried dough that they inject with cream cheese filling and put savory seasonings on top or a sweet filling with sweet glaze on top. I tried both. I liked the dough for both, it melts in your mouth. But I liked the sweet one better. I felt like the savory one was too salty.

One of my friends who has moved to California came into town for a visit and she invited a small group of us to join her for dinner at Euro Bistro, a German restaurant. She served her mission in Germany and Euro Bistro has pretty good food! I enjoyed this meal. I don't remember what it's called but it was delicious!

At the end of September, my friend, Kara, invited me to visit the town of Staunton, VA for a Harry Potter festival. It was pretty awesome! They had decorated the whole town up with Harry Potter stuff and many people were in Harry Potter related costumes!

And we're ready to head to Hogwarts!

Platform 9-3/4!

Butterbeer!

Goblets of Fire made at the glass factory in Staunton!

Hagrid!

Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall!

At the beginning of October, Lara and I flew to Utah to visit Mom, Dad, Heather, and Nana! Dad had a stroke in the middle of August and so Lara and I decided we needed to visit them and spend some quality time with them. I love this selfie of us.

We did get to do some fun stuff while we were there. Lara, Heather and I went to the BYU Homecoming Spectacular with Kristen Chenoweth. Before hand we ate Galilee Grill. Yum!

The show was awesome and very entertaining!

Then we walked around campus after the show.

A beautiful sunset on the way to SLC!

Here is Hope

A few years ago, we sang a condensed version of the Lamb of God oratorio written by Rob Gardner for an Easter program at church. I had never heard it before and quickly fell in love with the music! I bought the cd to help me practice the songs at home and listened to it a lot even after we finished the Easter program.

Probably about two years ago I lost the cd and I haven't heard the music since. Tonight something reminded me of it and so I looked it up on YouTube and I remember why I loved it so much! I wanted to share two of the songs from there.

Turn it up, press play and enjoy!

Here is Hope

Hosanna

I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do! It is a beautiful oratorio about the last week of the Savior's life and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing!

South Carolina (before the Total Eclipse)!

I already wrote about the day of the total eclipse and now I'll write about the rest of the weekend.

We got to our hotel in South Carolina late on Saturday night. We woke up the next morning and went to 1-hour of church in Gaffney, SC (the town we were staying in.) Then we visited the Battle of Kings Mountain Battlefield.

We ate lunch on a bench outside the visitor's center and then went in and watched a video about the battle.

The Battle of Kings Mountain was fought during the Revolutionary War and is on the border of South Carolina and North Carolina. The battle was the first major victory for the patriots and a turning point in the war.

There was a paved trail around the battlefield with markers along the way telling us things that happened at that spot. It was very interesting!

(And can I just say that I was really happy for the shady parts of the trail because it was super hot and humid that day?!)

President Hoover stood at this spot and addressed thousands of people in commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the battle.

This statue is in memory of the patriotic Americans who participated in the Battle of Kings Mountain (according to the sign in the picture below.)

Somewhere near this spot is where the battle was won!

This memorial was in commemoration of Colonel Patrick Ferguson. Although he was a British officer, he served with honor and distinction and was killed during the battle.

After the battlefield, we went to Kings Mountain State Park, which was right next to the battlefield.

The state park had a nice historic area we could walk around. They called it a living history area. Historians believe there might have been a farm here so they set up what life might have been like on the farm in the early 1800s.

A cotton mill.

The area was beautiful!

I really liked this living history area! I thought there would be people dressed in period costume but there weren't and that's okay.

After Kings Mountain State Park, it was time to head back to the town we were staying in and find a place to eat dinner. Before we ate, though, we had to stop at the Peachoid.

This was in the town we were staying in and both Heather and I thought it was pretty dang awesome! It was just so random and awesome!

Apparently the Peachoid won the Steel Tank of the Year in 1981. (Who knew they had such contests?! I know I didn't until I saw this sign.)

After the awesomeness of the Peachoid, we went back to our hotel and looked up places to eat nearby. We found this place within walking distance of our hotel and ate there!

I got chicken fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and fried okra. I was trying to go as Southern as possible. ;)

Overall we had an awesome day in South Carolina and I learned a lot! And the next day was the total eclipse which I already wrote about in another blogpost.