Thank You, Sweden...

Thanks to Jordan, I now realize that IKEA wasn't the only great thing to come out of Sweden.

Below are just a few of my favorite Swedish dance bands of the 70's:

Dansganget Family = A flamboyant Spanish pirate and his four illegitimate children.

United by their love of music...and hair.

Rick Springfield and a young Daniel Day Lewis took the Swedish Men's Gymnastics team, leotards and all, and formed an unstoppable musical force.

When they were rejected from the High School audiovisual club, they knew their only path to social acceptance was to form this band. The green vests were absolutely crucial.

Translation: Three Boys and a Girl. 

This was the first time they had ever emerged into natural sunlight.

Myth: Adam from Mythbusters moonlighted as a Swedish band member.

Myth confirmed!

The two in the back were recruited from the Stockholm 2nd Ward Beehive class--or else they just stole the clothes of two 14 year old Swedish girls.

(P.S. Why wouldn't you wear washed denim overalls to your band's photo shoot?)

These guys met under a bridge where they were working as trolls.

What was my grandma circa 1973 doing in Sweden?

Bob Candys?! More like Eye Candies!

Joe's Jacket and a Dutch Closet

For Christmas, I got a jacket that looks similar to this one:

Annie: Hey Roo, do you like my new jacket?

Roo: [nods]

Annie: Really?

Roo: Yeah...These days it's cool to look like one of the Jonas Brothers.

Annie spends the next two days trying to decide which one of the Jonas Brothers she would be the least offended to be compared to...hmmmm.

Another Christmas Miracle:

This is what our closet used to look like--shoes strewn about like a mile-wide landfill. (Minus the tractor.)

And for Christmas, Roo bought us this really neat shoe rack from IKEA:

I call this our shoe garden, because it reminds me of this:So I guess you could say that for Christmas I got Holland in my closet.

Our Jolly Holiday

This is the house Roo's parents rented for all 8 brothers and sisters & families to gather for the week's festivities. 

Here is Roo overcome with the spirit of the festivities.

Here is Reed/Dad/Boy Tutu looking like the picturesque patriarch in front of the christmas tree. 

Here the corgis and stuffed monkeys are lowing at the nativity.

 

Troy and Nancee entertaining the little ones. We spent most of our time keeping the dogs from eating the sippy cups, foraging for food in the sofas, and pooping on the floors--we were only marginally successful...

This is our humble little tree in our apartment. 

(We keep our tree small because the quantity of presents look larger in proportion to the miniature tree. This really keeps the Christmas spirit vibrant in our home.) 

Since the budget has been tight this year, Roo found this stray cat to cook up for our Christmas dinner...just kidding...it wasn't a stray cat.

An Analogy...

This week Roo is in California helping his brother move. He is 684.19 miles away.

This picture symbolizes how I feel when Roo is here with me:

And this picture symbolizes how I feel when Roo is 684.19 miles away:

Chase Face...

A while ago we had a conversation that went about like this:
Roo: Maybe we could get another dog.
Annie: No! No, absolutely not! Not in a million billion years. If I get any more wretched dog hair in this house my head will explode! It’s already too crowd
ed in here! It’s impossible. Totally impossible. No! (she throws a nearby plate on the ground to emphasize her point and bolster her argument.)
Roo: (nods) Yeah. So…I guess there is this little corgi dog who was abused and they left him outside for long periods of time and his little ears don’t stand
up because he was abused. I guess he’s really cute and desperate and lonely. And I heard the people who have him now can’t keep him and they might have to send him to the animal shelter where he’ll probably die because no one will want a corgi with allergies and floppy ears.
Annie: (in between sobbing) We’ll take him! Please just let us take him! I don’t care about floppy ears! I love floppy ears…(it went on like this for some time.)
Roo: Good. Cause I told them we would tonight.
So we ended up with Chase—the floppy eared corgi with food allergies and a tiny head. Though our little apartment is more like a zoo than anything else, we love all of our pets!
While Lando can be characterized as stubborn, mischievous,
and demanding, Chase is submissive, sweet, and obedient.
And if you were wondering—No, Chase is not a Star Wars character. His evil original abusive owners named him that. But he is not a puppy anymore, so we didn’t want to upset his unstable world any more by changing his name on him. We’ve just had to come up with a few creative nicknames such as:

CHASE WINDU

(Coined by Jordan)

CHASE OF BASE

and my personal favorite:

CHASE VENTURA: PET

(For those of you who have your concerns, let me reassure you by saying: we plan on having the next addition to our family be of the human variety.)

I Know Truth When I See It...

I first saw this gem on Lizzie's blog and I've rarely laughed harder. And I cannot figure out why...

Picture Tag...

Picture 25

This is the 25th picture in my 25th picture folder. (I was supposed to start with 2nd's but that one was boring...) These are my siblings and cousins on our wedding day...waiting around while we got our pictures taken.

Picture 6

This is the 6th picture in the 6th folder. It is me and Roo with a pregnant man in front of Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. 2003.

Picture 8

This is the 8th picture in the 8th folder. When we lived in the desert in California, we would go on day trips. On this day we drove around the mountain and out of the desert to get here--the Walk of Giants. It was beautiful!

Picture 10

This is the 10th pic of the 10th folder. Here we are in Florence where we got engaged about an hour after this was taken. When I see this picture I think, "I wish I could go back to that day and not feel like a scared little girl...and fix my hair."