song of the week

because ace of base NEVER goes out of style.

okay, maybe they do. but this song has been stuck in our heads ALL WEEK. and we've been playing it over and over again as a result. thank you, pandora, for re-introducing us to this gem.

and how classy is the video?

p.s. it's raining HARD outside--and thundering and lighting-ing--and i feel nice and cozy sitting here on my couch working for the next few hours. what a lovely day.

p.p.s. SO GLAD MARCH IS ALMOST OVER. now, as long as we can get through april, i will be carefree for three whole months!

i'm a nerd and i love it (and middle school stinks)

the fact that i am a nerd should be fairly obvious to everyone who has read this blog for any length of time. tommy and i don't own a tv, we don't have (or want) smartphones, we get most of our entertainment from the library, and we spend nearly every night doing homework.

but i like it that way. i am happy being a nerd. and i am proud of myself for being, finally, truly, reasonably comfortable in my own skin. i say reasonably because of course, i'm a twenty-first-century female with all of our inherent insecurities. (and really, the only reason i am comfortable writing about myself being a nerd is because i am deep-down-inside confident that i'm not REALLY a nerd. if i were, or if i really thought i were, i'd be too insecure to write about it. but that's besides the point.)

i was thinking the other day about how i used to feel about myself in high school--and worse, middle school. i remember painful, PAINFUL hours spent during PE being self-conscious about my legs being hairy because my mom thought i was too young to shave my legs. (remember that, mom? it was painful for my eleven-year-old self.) and then later, even more painful hours when i would forget to shave my legs once i was allowed to do it.

i remember being so embarrassed because my socks were showing. and because my shoelaces wouldn't stay tucked inside my shoes and would come out. and because my pants were a quarter-inch too short and looked like floods. and because my shoes weren't etnies and my shirts weren't from tilly's and my jeans weren't roxy. because i sat on the wrong side of the lunch area and didn't talk to boys. because i had braces later than everyone else. because after i had a huge fever my freshman year i got a fever blister on my face for a few weeks and it scarred (my face and my feelings). and because my hair was frizzier and curlier than everyone else's (i especially loved it when people would tell me, "i would kill myself if i had your hair." why, thank you! how kind.) because i was convinced my deodorant wasn't working or because my legs were too fat. because i wasn't wearing the right type of underwear and didn't pull my hair back in the right way.

how grateful i am to be PAST that stage! where i can sit and reminisce without bitterness (even about the hair comments) about those things that were so incredibly painful then. and wonder--why did i CARE so much? if my middle-school self could have seen what i would be like now, i'm sure i would have been astonished by what a nerd i am--and how much it doesn't bother me. i own basically 1.5 pairs of shoes, my hair is still frizzy and fluffy, and my legs are in an almost constant state of hairiness. and i could care less about it. i'm even blogging about it.

so there, sierra vista middle school. I HAVE GROWN PAST YOU.

i'm probably way less cool than i was back then--wait, no. i think way less about being cool than i did back then, but i love myself a whole lot more.

babies

in case i'm not the last person on earth to see this documentary, i just wanted to record publicly that tommy and i watched it last night and i. LOVED. IT.

oh, my gosh. i laughed and cooed and googooed the whole time. just--watch it. we borrowed it from the library, but it would have been worth it to PAY for it (that's how you know we liked it).

after you watch it, you'll want to adopt a mongolian baby like i do. AAAAHhhhhhhhhhhhh. maybe someday we will be able to achieve that dream . . . we'll have to wait until we have an income though.

a literary binge.

i have a bad habit of getting into the habit of checking books out from the library all at one time. i currently have 16 things checked out of the library and 8 more on hold. (mostly books on CD, but a few movies too.) whoops.

also, i drove past borders and, seeing all the "going out of business" signs, i couldn't help but stop by. and an hour later i came out with these:

whoops. again.

i have problems.

siblings

i have some of the funniest siblings in the world. no, really. i do.

first off, four of my five siblings have blogs. cole, the ten year old, just started his a few weeks ago. if you have never read the unedited thoughts of a ten year old published on the internet, you are missing out. the title of his first blog post was 'yeah, i've got a blog, "big deal".' unfortunately, unless you know cole, you can't read his thoughts, because his blog is private. i will share one of the best conversations i have ever had with him, though, which happened while we were playing scrabble over thanksgiving:

cole: dang! i wish i had a Y!

alyse: what do you want to spell?

cole: if i had a Y, i could do "ovary."

alyse: ...

cole: you know, "ovary." it's the part of the flower that makes the eggs.

alyse: right. a part of a flower.

but it was bethany's blog that had me crying (literally, crying) with laughter today. (sorry, it's private too.) she wrote some poems for my dad's 47th birthday, which was, appropriately enough, st. patrick's day (dad, your murphy is showing). bee is twelve and of all the kids in my family, she has the most similar sense of humor to my dad's. they laugh at all the same jokes, tell all the same jokes, and laugh at all of their own jokes harder than anyone else. so i bet my dad really appreciated these poems she gave him. here they are, copied and pasted straight from her blog to mine:

47!
Wow thats young.
Good thing you didn't step into a pile of dung.
This poem is from me to you
And with a little luck, you will get some stew.
Lock o' the Irish, if thats what they say.
And where do you work? Oh thats right, by the back bay.
Now what would i like to say again to your shoe?
Oh, thats right! Happy birthday to you.

Cinquain:
Father
Bishop, brown hair, fun
works very hard and coaches us
Funny, Smart, respectable, wise
Blake Murphy

Haiku:
Happy Birthday Dad!'
Fourty-seven is not old.
It is the middle.

don't worry dad. 47 is not old. it is the middle.

and while i'm writing about my siblings' blogs, i can't leave out the epic post dallin, my now-15-year-old brother, wrote about our wedding. dallin really pulled out all the stops in this dramatization of our wedding festivities. i appreciated knowing what he thought about all of the chaos.

Mom says that I need to talk more about the wedding. Hows this:

The wedding festivities began on May 8, 2009, when Tommy Jeffery Leininger decided that it was time to ask Laura Alyse Murphy to become his Eternal Companion. She said yes. All throughout the summer, the mothers were frantically searching for everything for the wedding. Clothes, flowers, ties, food, and many other things. The fathers did the same, but they had work so they could not do as much. The Aunts and Uncles helped out, and so did the cousins and friends. It all started becoming a reality that it was happening on August 21, when we had the Family Dinner. We had food from the Murphy favorite, Stone Fire Grill. Friends and family from all over came. As everyone filed out, the stress began to file in. Everyone was frantically running everywhere, well almost everyone. We drove to the temple at about 10:00. There were more cameras than at the Grammy's. Flash after flash, i felt like a star walking down the red carpet, and I wasn't even the main character. It all became good when at about 12:45, we saw them. The bride and the groom, smiling brighter than the noon sun, holding hands walking out of the temple. If a picture is worth a thousand words, there were too many words to describe this moment.

oh, man. i wish they all lived closer.

i have great aspirations

all i want in life is to make just enough money that i can go to costco and buy all the $12 containers of nuts and chocolate-covered raisins that my heart desires.

byu january 2008. we sure love us some costco hot dogs.

NCAA

i just filled out a bracket for the first time. what a momentous occasion. i bet my three minutes of time spent on filling out that bracket will beat many people's hours of deliberating and debating. sadly enough.

all i can say is, i only gave byu two rounds of winning. you KNOW they're not going to go any farther than that (if they even get that far).

(and don't worry, all you busbys out there, i think unlv will win at least one game.)

pet peeves

pet peeve #1: celebrities.

we were driving home the other night and britney spears' new song came on the radio. (i hate that i even know it is by britney spears. and it's been stuck in my head CONSTANTLY lately.)

and tommy said, "wouldn't it be nice if you could just vote some celebrities out of office? like, i'm sorry, britney, but you are no longer famous."

yes, that would be nice. you know what, lindsay lohan? 95% of americans think you are a ridiculous human being. you are no longer famous. bam. hello, kardashians--you are completely worthless celebrities and you must now pay a fine to the rest of the american population for dumbing them down on your tv show. bam.

(wouldn't it be satisfying?)


pet peeve #2: improper uses of quotation marks.

in the elevator at the sevys' apartment building, it says on the wall:

"ASK FOR ELEVATOR KEY TO STOP ELEVATOR" (or something to that effect).

also, this happens a lot on t-shirts and company cars.

"McMillan family reunion 1985"
"The longest race in America!"
"Your best bet for cleaning your windows"

but WHY are those statements enclosed within quotation marks? did somebody SAY it? who said it? why does it matter if somebody said it? WHY DID YOU WRITE THE SENTENCE AS A QUOTE when it clearly is not?

ugh. this is one of my serious editing pet peeves.

post-edit: my friend allison sent me this website, and it is a PERFECT illustration of what i mean when i talk about improper quotation marks.

spring break

hallelujah, we got a week off! so naturally we sped our way up to d.c. to visit the sevys again. although we spent most of our time rocking the babies, we had time to do some fun things like visiting a few smithsonians and arlington cemetery, taking a jog along the mall, and walking through georgetown. here is some proof:

at the museum of american history, me with dorothy's red shoes and a funny wwii propaganda poster.

outside the museum of natural history with lindsay, mayah, and asher.

our date walking around georgetown, after we had some delicious indian food and ben and jerry's.

our run up and down the mall--something i've wanted to do for a long time! it was awesome.

there stands thomas leininger, strong as a stone wall! (at the battlefield of bull run/manassas with the statue of stonewall jackson.)

arlington cemetery and the tomb of the unknown soldier.

and, as promised, a few more pictures of the cutest babies in the world.

and last night, we got to see the foxes, who happened to be visiting from idaho falls. devin, tommy and jimi all lived together in the dorms about a billion years ago and were roommates right after their missions. luckily for us, devin and cathy live about eight minutes away as devin goes to duke med school and jimi's parents live in high point, so we all got to have a reunion last night. it was great to see them AND i think i now win the prize for blogging about it first.

kylie and braxton: bffs.

yep, so it's been a great spring break! the panic of school is starting to set in again since we haven't thought about it since last week... whoops. we're getting right on that.

little women

when i found out at 9:30 this morning that my only class of the day was canceled, i closed my computer and promptly did nothing productive the rest of the day except for read little women. it was a lovely day.

(it's even better that the book i'm reading has "to denice, from kaylene and rob, christmas 1985" written in pencil on the front page. apparently my mom took the book from grandma and grandpa's house and then i took it from our house. sorry, denice!)

remember how last semester i read the whole anne of green gables series in a week? this kind of felt like that--revisiting old friends and loving them so dearly even now after years since last having read them. i LOVE this book, probably mostly for the sentimental reasons i just mentioned. and i am now just itching to go watch the movie.

(i will say--the movie always makes me feel so weird about the whole amy-laurie-jo love fiasco. i feel like it's so weird that amy and laurie end up together... but i don't feel that way in the book. much better done.)

i've been reading other types of books lately--good books, books i've been wanting to read for ages, but books i haven't been totally absorbed by. (like the scarlet letter. i mean, has ANYONE ever been enthralled by the scarlet letter? i just felt like i had to get it over with because i felt guilty for just reading the sparknotes when i was supposed to read it in high school.) but reading little women felt just like reading used to, like it should--i wasn't waiting to see when i would get to the next chapter and painfully turning each page as it went. i was in the story. kind of like the millions of times i read harry potter.

i miss reading like that. and i can't wait to find more of it.

what would you do with $40,668?

i mean, i would probably buy justin bieber's hair.

no, really, i cannot think of A SINGLE THING i would rather spend $40,668 on.

but wait--it wasn't even ALL of his hair. it was just a piece of it. what are you going to do with that? you can't even make it into a collar or a watch-band or anything.

i would have held out for the whole head of hair.

ok go

so i know that ok go and their music videos are probably familiar to everyone by now. but a few days ago, tommy sat me down to show me this video his mom had told him about (she's pretty trendy to know about these things) . . .



and about halfway through i realized it was OK GO!

and i realized why the video was so cool.

and it threw me back to my summer in ithaca in 2005 when i discovered ok go the first time. i spent almost a month there doing this cornell-summer-high school thing and staying with annie and wes. (it was the best, by the way, annie, if you're reading this.) coincidentally enough, alec was there that summer too, and he introduced me to this music video (he was always the one to give me music ideas throughout high school). i spent pretty much the whole four weeks watching this video over and over again and listening to brand new's the quiet things that no one ever knows. and when i keep saying "this" video i do mean THIS video:



i mean, seriously? how cool is the slow-motion fight moment? and how many takes do you think it took to do that all in one shot with no mistakes?

i really thought a lot about that when i was seventeen and loving this video. i loved it so much i bought two of ok go's cds and then i realized i only liked their videos, and not really their music. but i can still watch that dance video over and over again and still walk away impressed.

anyways, just thought i'd lighten up your first day of march for ya.