i'm addicted!

I LOVE the kindle for iPhone app. Love. I LOVE to read and have had to curb my habit a bit by only reading about a book a month or so since husbands do not appreciate being completely ignored for several days in a row/wives that have only had 3 hours of sleep bc they read til it was almost morning/making and eating dinner alone/nothing ever getting done except reading. :) When I read a book, I READ a BOOK. Like, only ever read the book. So, I indulge myself every once in awhile when I know of a good book I can sink my teeth into. (the Twilight series really threw us for a loop! that one took extra days...)

Right now our book club is reading "The Help" by Katherine Stockett. I went to Barnes and Noble to find that it is only available in hardback and costs almost $30! In another life, that would not have phased me a bit as it is a BOOK. :) But, I've morphed into a penny pincher in some areas, and that $30 could certainly be spent on 8 starbucks lattes, a shirt, something for the house, or a yummy diner out. After the nice lady at Barnes and Noble showed me where the book was, I put it right back on the shelf and decided it was time for me to try out this kindle app. (After reading about 30 pages of Upton Sinclair's book, "The Jungle." Random, I know. But the quotes in our history books about the horrors of being an immigrant worker in those times flooded back to me when I saw the book - they had always been so interesting. So I decided I needed to take some time and see if I wanted to read the whole thing. I read enough. Too depressing. I hate (most) old timey things so the hour at Barnes and Noble reading about the horrors of old timey-ness really puzzled the husband. In the end, interesting, but too tiring and depressing.)

I looked it up and was pleased to find "The Help" for $8.55 on the FREE kindle app! I tried out a sample of the book on the app for free to make sure I could handle reading only on my iPhone. (We won't mention that I read the entire 5th Twilight saga unreleased book manuscript as a pdf file on my iPhone...). I LOVED IT! Its so easy to use and not weird at all to me to read on there - I do it all day long anyway. Also, its so great bc now I can read anytime during the day. Waiting in line, at a traffic light, waiting for the water to boil.. :) So now I can read a book without being a total recluse and it is wonderful! I fully recommend it, or at least trying it to see what you think.

The book is really great too - not done yet though, about halfway through. But I recommend it also.

Well, I guess I'm off to read on the couch while the hubby, brother and friend play xbox. It's still hanging out, right? :)

Catch up post

It always seems really daunting to update after I haven't in quite awhile. I feel like I need to have some awesome post, complete with pictures recreating the last months to you guys. But, if that's the case, then I will never do it. I think I will just allow myself to blab about whatever I wish instead, maybe with some catch up included. :)

This weekend was our Thanksgiving with Lorie and Roger and the fam (Clint's mom and stepdad). Jared was in town so we decided to stay the weekend at Lorie and Roger's. Clint and Jared had a golf day on Saturday and enjoyed the awesome weather while Lorie, Roger and I cooked, went to Sam's for the holiday sample feast, Lorie, Kara and I did our nails and toenails, and just had a leisurely day in general. It was quite wonderful! Then Sunday was the big thanksgiving feast with the whole family. If I get around to it during this post, I'll upload some pics from the weekend from my phone. We cooked up a storm and had a wonderful meal and time with family. Then Clint and I decided to stay over one more night and just go to work straight from their house Monday morning. Woo hoo! I have had some bad allergies and just didn't feel like driving/riding home and or getting anything done at the house.

Homemade croutons for our Thanksgiving salad - cheaper AND yummier than buying them! (Lauren N - thanks for teaching me how!)

I'm really liking my job(s) and having a great time at all the events that come with them. I'm so thankful to work for such great people! In the past few weeks we have been working on: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 release, Maserati GranTurismo Convertible unveiling, Coca Cola Dallas Elevators Kick Off Pep Rally, New Moon Advance screening ticket giveaway event, Star Trek release, New Moon screening, and many other little details. It has been bussssyyyyy!

The new Maserati GranTurismo Convertible! Prettyyyyyy

Rock T from 97.9 The Beat MCing our Dallas Elevators event!

Leigh Ann and I "posing with" the New Moon cast! We had a green screen station at our event that created these for everyone. Fun!

Clint and my Dad have been working hard on the release of DragonFire SDK, the first software development kit that allows you to write iPhone apps - in Windows!!! Until now, programmers had to have a mac, learn the mac programming language, and then create an app to send to the app store. With DragonFire SDK, they can create and test apps using Windows code they already know ON a PC! Clint has had lots of fun with it so far, including creating the website for DragonFire and the graphics for their first app, Unstacker, that is used as an example of the first iPhone app to be created in Windows. It's free - download it from the app store! If you want to check out DragonFire SDK, go to dragonfiresdk.com - send it to anyone you know who might want to create an app!

The awesome logo Clint created!

Angela, Lauren N. and I also threw Katy's baby shower since my last post. It was SOOOOOO wonderful to get to see Katy and celebrate baby Rose. I am SO very excited about his arrival and am just dying to get myself up to NY to see him somehow. It was a great time with friends, I enjoyed it so much! It was so wonderful to get to hang out with Katy, even just for a little bit. She is such a dear friend and I miss her so much these days! It was so great to be able to share in this amazing time of life with her.

Clint, myself, Lauren and Ricardo ran the 5k they talked us into! It was fun, tiring and a success! It got Clint and I thinking about options as far as training for something, but so far I can't really think about running more than 3 miles. Not sure what we will do but we need to do something! It was a good time, thank you guys for telling us about it! Good luck on your 8 mile turkey trot! -- They weren't able to talk us into that one!

Before the run...we look much happier than we did afterwards!

Book club has begun. One day after work I went in to Barnes and Noble to just look through the book and maybe read a bit, since I was planning to buy it on Amazon for about half of what B&N offer it for. I ended up reading about half of the book sitting at B&N! If you know me, you know I am notorious for this, I just can't put books down! But now I'm thinking...maybe I don't need to buy it after all! A couple more trips to the bookstore will do it! :) ...To book clubbers - I teared up at least 3 times in just the prologue and the first few pages...get ready!! :)

This happened awhile ago, but I don't think I ever posted about it: Jillian's first OFFICIAL EP came out on iTunes!!! This album is really pro quality, it was produced by a wonderful friend of Jillian's named Chris August. It has a nice sampling of several of her songs, showing the different kinds of music she writes, plays and sings. Her myspace has a link to it on iTunes, as well as her upcoming show dates, where you can buy a physical copy and get the cutely designed cover. myspace.com/jillianedwardsmusic. You can also hear many of the songs there. More news to come on her budding career. Good things are happening! :)

Buy it on iTunes here!

I should really split these things up into different posts huh? That way it wouldn't seem like there was so long in between posts! Oh wellllll. I'm long winded.

On more thing...Clint and I have become Dave Ramsey followers! November was our first month on our new budget and it has gone very well! We HAVE occasionally slipped and called him "Damn Ramsey" (Freudian!!), but it's more love than hate in the love/hate relationship. I promise it is, Dave!! I know when we get to call in and yell "We're debt free!!" in 8098340698 years, we will be loving you more than ever. Anyway, it's nice to have a good budget in place and to know we are ready for Christmas, at least. Hooray for talk radio!

We also got to go see the So You Think You Can Dance Tour! It was awesome! This was a birthday present from Lorie & Roger and Angela & Charles. Thanks guys!!

So much fun!

blogging!

So, we thought we'd start video blogging now that we have a camera...but that isn't so much happening and honestly I don't feel like people like it as much. Or maybe it is just bc we haven't been posting consistently lately. Let me know if you have a preference.

Lately we've been playing a lot of Guitar Hero World Tour. I'm the drummer and Clint's the guitar hero. It's quite intense. The other night we had been playing for about an hour and I realized I had been sweating for awhile!! So I guess it's a little healthier of a habit then sitting on the couch watching tv, at least. AND I'm beginning to think I'm an actual drummer...so I might have to try to learn for real. Then I could say I play like...4 instruments (not to say I play any of them well enough to actually claim them, but it would sound cool at least). Right now Clint is practicing up on the drums. I think he is trying to make sure there is still nothing that I am better than him at in the video gaming world. Maybe THE coolest thing about it all is that we got to make our own rockers that look like us. Well, they are crazy rockstar versions of us, at least. We'd love to come have anyone play with us! It's a lot of fun and we crack up at each other a lot. Wow I talked a lot about Guitar Hero!!!

In other news, I got a free magazine subscription (Marie Claire - not my fav but it'll do for free!) from our coke rewards points! We've since stopped buying diet coke so I don't die early from some kind of aspartame poisoning, but my days of being a total diet cokaholic paid off. Pretty cool!

I'm not sure if I have told the blogging world about our breadmaker we got for Christmas from my parents, but we love it! We have made white bread, cinnamon swirl bread (twice! it's Clint's favorite favorite), and we just tried rosemary bread - like Macaroni Grill's - the best ever! It came out pretty close! It's so nice to be able to make something SO homemade without making too much of a mess. And it's SO yummy!

At work we launched the new website - tangle.com - after much hard work and anticipation. My profile is tangle.com/laurenbrock. Be my friend :)

I'm working lately on having a positive attitude in different situations. I've found that it actually does work if you just look at the positive and stay joyful, life is in general, better. I usually try this in the morning when I'm usually grouchy and really not wanting to be awake. Just smiling and knowing this day is one God planned for me makes me joyful and helps me realize all that I have to be thankful for. And that really helps me not be so grumbly. Just a random little idea I've been working through. :) Contentment.

Read the whole Twilight series in a couple weeks. Loved it. SO good. I'm a big fan. I need some more books to read. Also read The Shack. Anyone heard of it? I thought it was great...did I hear that it was controversial? Any thoughts? Any book recommendations?

We've been eating chili like manly men. We had a huge thing of ground beef that was on sale, had to defrost it all, made an insane amount of really good chili, and are trying to finish it in time. It's pretty funny. And yummy.

Valentine's Day is Saturday and I have Monday off!!! Wonderfulness! I can't wait. Our first one married. :) Happy Valentine's Day everyone! <3

Awwwww!

I want this book for my birthday!!!


(and a dog to go with it...or mom and dad, it would suffice if you just got one I could play with whenever I wanted ;))

Read about it here:

http://www.marleyandme.com/book.html

It sounds soooo good! I read a bit of it at Barnes and Noble yesterday and couldn't put it down!

I love dogs. Mom you need to read this book so you will get one. :)