football season

i am a football widow.

pioneers and mobsters

SUNDAY

the missionaries asked us to be in a fireside about pioneers and joseph smith on sunday. actually they asked brandon to play his guitar, and then decided i could be in it too. brandon sang and played one song, and then in the middle we both went up with three cute little girls that were supposed to be our children (although apparently we have a multi-racial family). i read a quote and then the girls sang a song and brandon accompanied them on guitar. it was so cute and a bunch of old ladies cried. oh, and we had to dress up. :)

family portrait

me and my pioneer daughter allie

MONDAY

monday we saw jersey boys in LA. i had been wanting to see this play for a while; it won the tony for best musical in 2006 and of course was always sold out while i was living in new york. it's been on limited engagement here this summer and my parents got us tickets for our birthdays.

in case you don't know, jersey boys is the real life story of frankie valli and the four seasons. they sing "oh what a night" and "walk like a man," among many other FABULOUS songs that have now been stuck in my head for two days. they also apparently like to swear because i heard the f word about 100 times. that sucked. other than that we had fun.

LA skyline

before the show <3

slow day at work

places i have lived:
-p-town UT
-morningside heights NYC
-rancho cucamonga
-the hood, los angeles, california

places i want to visit:
-germany
-austria (mostly just to go on the sound of music tour)
-portland maine/boston mass
-india
-the hilton in the maldives that has an underwater restaurant and private bungalows accessible only by boat

things i love:
-cookies
-warm blankets in cool rooms
-laying on the couch laughing with my husband
-traveling
-dogs, old people and ruffle butts

things i hate:
-being bored at work and then feeling guilty because i'm working on this survey for my blog instead of finding something else to waste away the hours
-people picking at their faces/noses/feet/any part of the body
-slow/inattentive drivers (!!!)
-mormon girls in bikinis
-BARS
-the F word

books i am reading right now:
-the biography of gordon b. hinckley
-the alchemist
-new testament/bom/preach my gospel
-i feel bad about my neck (it's my mom's alright!)
-pride and prejudice

songs on repeat right now:
-wasted by carrie underwood
-to the left by beyonce
-chocolate by snow patrol
-oh what a night by four seasons
-UGH i am so lame my music-finding skills are totally on hiatus :(

movies i could watch forever:
-orange county
-pride and prejudice (the keira knightley one)
-any season of scrubs or arrested development on dvd
-sleepless in seattle

i'd rather be:
-at h&m
-skinnier
-in provo
-on vacation

i'm bad at:
-avoiding dessert
-being myself in large groups
-acting comfortable while people around me get drunk
-not checking facebook at work
-ironing
-chopping vegetables
-making (& sticking with) decisions

i'm good at:
-eating my whole lunch before 12 p.m. at work, not because i'm hungry but because i'm bored
-being reliable
-quick and rude comebacks
-anticipating people's next moves
-getting up early
-self-motivation
-remembering movie lines

thinking about:
-when the officers meeting will get out so i can go to the kitchen and kype leftover muffins
-my trip to utah next week
-the toyota tapestry program
-how i wish people would update their blogs so i could read them

missing:
-erica
-my grandparents
-cafe rio
-free time

tag (this means now it's your turn!):
-angela
-becky
-stephanie payzant stout
-halie

disneyland!

just in case you didn't know, golinharris is the BEST workplace ever! for our summer picnic we got to go to disneyland -- free tickets, free parking, free lunch complete with mickey mouse ice cream bars...a great day in beautiful southern CA: priceless.




it was a beautiful day and not too crowded. we got to go on every ride we wanted -- most of them twice. and of course we had to hit the twilight zone tower of terror...



of COURSE we went on soaring over california, my favorite ride of my lifetime. if you have never been, you must go on that ride and CA screaming, the awesome roller coaster in CA adventure. brilliant i tell you. (almost as brilliant as the high school musical stage show going on every hour. blahhh. though i have not yet viewed hsm2 but would like to ;)

after lunch brandon talked me into going on grizzly rapids, the water ride at CA adventure. i don't like water rides much so it took some coaxing but i went....and of course i ended up the wettest one on the stupid tube.





we were with our friends allison and rod...rod and i were on either side of the open steps, so we got the wettest. :(





when we got home at midnight that night my shorts were still wet...i wasn't too happy.





we even got to watch fantasmic! and the fireworks. we had a great time...i could barely walk by the time we got home, but it was well worth it. :)

the rado

alright here's the deal.

august 3-10 i went to colorado. (brandon went august 3-7.)

we started out with a lovely family reunion for the good ol' coleman clan. brandon and i flew into the denver airport, drove to wellington (60 miles north...start keeping track of mileage now) and spent the night.

the next morning we drove 250 miles to steamboat where we stayed for three days. i also saw the hotel where they filmed "the shining." i also learned about the "timber line" and breathed very thin air.

we hung out by the pool, went for hikes, checked out main street and ate at an entirely forgettable restaurant.

then brandon and my immediate family went home. :(

i, instead, drove 250 more miles back to wellington/fort collins and spent the night with my aunt and uncle and small cousins. we watched pride and prejudice and had ice cream sundaes and basically it was quite enjoyable.

the next day my aunt drove me 60 miles back to denver so i could meet up with my best friend, brittany karford, who was getting married the next day.

we got our nails done and did general wedding prep and it was so much fun to be with her.

august 9, 2007 -- the big day.

britt looked fabulous, i got to go to the sealing (my first besides my own!) and i performed general bridesmaid duties. (by the way, 30 miles back and forth between the temple and reception site and home.)

the only thing that pretty much SUCKED (besides the fact that they ran out of asparagus before i got any at the reception) was that i was there alone. not knowing much of her family and trying to stay out of the two parties' union, AND being husband-less, made for a lot of awkward lonely moments.

overall it was fabulous though. the next day i hung out with her family and drove the 60 miles back to the airport to come home.

colorado is a beautiful place but much too spread out for my taste. <3

lately

i would like to apologize to all the avid readers of my blog (all one of you out there...you know who you are angela rose! :) for the sporadic posting i end up doing. i am often thinking about what my next post will be but it is hard to sit down and find the time to write!

here are a few updates.

we are apartment hunting but it is difficult because our desire level is about $500 higher than our budget will allow. but come on, is it really so much to ask to live in a cute neighborhood in LA? throw in a dishwasher and a/c and i might just collapse and die, my life complete.

speaking of which...you may or may not remember that i mentioned gang activity has ramped up lately (like anyone could possibly forget the excitement of a few weeks ago). brandon's home teaching companion at church is this inactive 14-year-old boy, and yesterday at church we found out that his 17-year-old brother was shot to death, presumably in a gang related incident. SAD. and scary. so yes, we are moving. please pray that we find a nice place to live. it's still up for debate how long we will stay in the adams ward though because it is nice to be needed, but i could use a change of pace all around.

in other news, i don't have much free time (obviously) but i have been hard at work at my other hobbies, old and new.

i just finished harry potter book 7...thought the ending was a little anticlimatic but maybe that's because i was fully burned out. still great though!

i'm also working on doing some geneaology -- i read an article in this month's Ensign about Family Search indexing, and it was like an answer to my prayers! i have been wanting to get involved in family history work (in addition to my own journal keeping and whatnot) but couldn't figure out how to make time for it. after learning about this, you just go to the Family Search web site, download the software and mostly do data entry at your own pace to help other people do their family history work. so fun and so gratifying! check it out for yourself! :)

and, i just had to share because i am proud. i love to bake and yesterday i made a beautiful carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. :)

that's about all that's new in the payzant-wells household! stay tuned...i swear i will catch up soon.

B -Y - Zoo!

So it's been a while since the last post, but let's start with my 25th birthday (July 28 for all of you who are now realizing you forget to send me b-day wishes -- shame on you!). I hadn't been to the zoo in a long time and I was really jonesin' for animals, so Lyndsey took me on a surprise field trip to the Los Angeles Zoo. It was really cool -- bear in mind the only other zoo I had been to was the Hogle Zoo in SLC, which is sub-par. It was very hot that day, so we didn't see too much action from the cats, elephants, etc. BUT the monkeys/chimps gave us plenty to go back for.

First, there were these monkeys that have large sacks under their chins that fill up with air when they breathe in and out -- so it was pretty much like having a permanent bagpipe attached to their voice box (let's see if Willy can play them pipes!). They made a LOT of noise all the time and you can hear them throughout the zoo. At first we thought it was a recording throughout the park for dramatic effects, but they are real animals. We also visited a large chimp exhibit, where one chimp came right up to the window and began pounding on it and playing with me. He really had a lot of personality.

We also saw the hippos, which for some odd reason I love to watch -- maybe it's the stumpy legs and big bodies.

After the LA Zoo, we went to one of our favorite japanese restaraunts -- Buko -- located in Glendale. We got the chicken and veggie tempura, which was off the hook! We then proceeded to the Hollywood Bowl, where two of our friends had free tickets for us for a Gladys Knight concert! Now, I know Gladys is a member of the church, but I had no clue about her music or popular songs -- so this was a new experience for me. But she was a good entertainer and Wayne Brady opened for her, and there was a big fireworks show at the end, so all in all, it was a great way to celebrate my quarter-of-a-century life in this world.

good times in the hood

SO...it appears that we have much catching up to do!

i apologize for the lack of posts...we have just been busy! brandon's birthday was on july 28th (a post about this will be coming, if i can get him to write about it) and we had a lot of fun that weekend. work has been busy (i have two events coming up, one this week and one in september for the launch of a new yamaha/star motorcycles chopper) and we were trying to get ready for our trip to colorado...and then we went to colorado...and now we are home. and gearing up for our next adventure. :)

so many funny things have been happening to us lately that i had to share.

today was one of those vintage adams ward days. our ward in LA is definitely interesting...we are in the inner-city ward with a ton of diversity and colorful characters, but we like it. today not only did our friend rosa (a little old black lady who was activities director before me until she walked into ward council after the christmas party and resigned) start talking about how we should forgive prostitutes if they join the church (okay, she didn't say prostitute, but she did say we shouldn't be offended if we see a girl on the corner in church the next week) but we also had the ward chorister banging on the podium during a talk about family home evening.

today we got out of sacrament meeting a whopping 15 minutes late for the second week in a row. the first time that happened i started crying i was so mad. everyone thought i was feeling the spirit, but nope, i was pissed.

we have also been driving investigators to church to help the missionaries. for a while we were taking a 14-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother as kind of a favor to their mom; they are all investigating the church but i got the feeling the kids didn't really care. between them telling us how they saw "knocked up," the girl bringing her friend to church wearing matching spaghetti strap tank tops and dickies (don't worry, she's never worn a skirt to church...the dickies were a step up from the usual jeans), and them asking "ain't got no rap??" when we had mo tab on in the car, i wasn't too sad that we didn't take them today.

today we brought a nice guy named paul to church. brandon has been going on splits with the missionaries to teach him; he's 20 and trying to turn his life around. i didn't mind him at all but he did start telling us about all the increases in gang activity in our neighborhood and blamed our recent shooting on that...good times.

then yesterday we went to the bank downtown and the street was closed off for movie filming. (we had seen bourne ultimatum earlier in the day in century city and saw a street closed off there too for a separate filming...and then we almost died when brandon slammed on his breaks to avoid hitting a car that decided to stop at a red light at the last minute...i think he was trying to be like jason bourne but i'm just glad we're not dead.) anyway it was pretty cool; here are some pictures. we didn't know what movie it was but some of the crew was saying it's a will smith/charlize theron movie so keep your eyes out and maybe you'll see it in theaters soon :)

it was this guy's job to paint the lines on the fake street...pretty funny.

remembering james e. faust

it's been a while since we've posted (summer is busy!) but i wanted to make sure i gave a farewell shout out to president james e. faust, who passed away last week at the age of 87.

elder faust has always been one of my favorite apostles of the LDS church and he will definitely be missed. one of his last talks was at a church educational system fireside about a month ago that brandon and i listened to online for FHE, where he spoke about the need to work hard at the gospel and in marriage but that the lord will reward us for our efforts. i really loved that talk and felt like he was speaking just to me, about not taking too much counsel from your fears and how to develop your self esteem. he also said that worth has little do with age and everything to do with service...and i think his willingness to serve is one of the things that made him such an amazing man. we will miss him!!