Kelly Times Two

These three beautiful young women, Lauren, Jessica, and Lauren, recently graduated from high school. As their former Laurel advisor, I took them out to lunch to celebrate at Kobe Japanese steak house last week. I am proud of each of them for being amazing, smart young women with high standards and making good choices. Lauren and Lauren will be roommates in the fall when they start school at Southern Virginia University. Jessica will attend the University of Utah. They all know that the next big milestones in their lives that I hope to be celebrating with them is their college graduations, their temple marriages, or their missions, should they decide to go on one. Congratulations to the three of you.

Loved it. This 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow playing the meddling Emma Woodhouse, based on Jane Austen's classic novel, has her surrounded by suitors Mr. Knightley and Frank Churchill, played by Jeremy Northam and Ewan McGregor. Emma spends her time trying to be a matchmaker, while never noticing her own true love. These British accents are kind of hard to follow in the beginning, but soon after the story starts to make sense, it gets easier to understand and enjoy. I've seen this before, but not for a long time, and it was well worth repeating. I give it a 5 out of 5 on my own "Kelly's Movie Review" scale.

We typically don't allow Christopher to see PG-13 movies, and when we occasionally do, it's after we have prescreened it to make sure we'll even want him to. If I had let him go to the theater to see this with his sister, I would have been so mad, knowing what I know now. This movie, Transformers , was marketed as a kids' movie, basically, and it was awful. The rating claims it's because of brief sexual content, an understatement, not to mention terrible in many other ways. There's no way I would recommend this to any child, let alone my teen-aged daughter, who watched it with us. And even though they were transformer types of "toys," the violence in this movie was never ending, as was the disrespect to parents, and so forth. It is generous to give this movie a 2 out of 5.

Mom and I watched 27 Dresses in our game room theater in May, and we both thought it was pretty good. Katherine Heigl was the lead actress--I don't recall seeing her in any other movie yet, and she did a decent job. It was a predictable chick flick, somewhat unbelievable, with the assumption that all bridesmaids' dresses are hideous and every bride thinks she's choosing a dress that her court will happily wear again and again, even though they never do. Come to think of it, I would never wear my bridesmaids' dresses again, so it does make a good point. The movie is worth seeing with another girlfriend, but I wouldn't recommend torturing your husband through it. I still give it a 4 out of 5, just because it's about weddings and they make me happy.

When my mom was in town three weeks ago, we took her and the kids to see Nim's Island with Jodie Foster and Abigail Bresline and loved it. It was a thrilling, enjoyable family movie and I recommend it with a personal rating of 5 out of 5. It did not disappoint me in the least. Check out the trailer, then go see it if you haven't already for an adventurous, exciting story with a happy ending, which as you may know, is my favorite.

Tonight I thought I would be a supportive friend and visit my girlfriend, RuthAnn, at her new job as a waitress at California Pizza Kitchen. The kids and I went there for dinner tonight and we also took a friend of Lindsey's along. The food was good, the service was excellent, of course, and I was happily prepared to give my buddy a generous tip and thank her before we left the restaurant. Jokingly before she brought the bill, I told her that Corey, Lindsey's friend from school, would wash dishes in the restaurant's kitchen to pay for our meal. The joke was on me when RuthAnn delivered our check and I reached for my wallet and remembered that it was on my desk at home. I had been making reservations for our summer vacation plans and grabbed it from my purse as I was booking accommodations for July. How embarrassing. RuthAnn and I laughed about it, then she went through her apron pocket and scraped together $51 in cash to cover the ticket. She asked me what I would have done...

The pathways and decking areas were poured today. They still need to resurface it with the Sundeck and apply the Indian Wheat color that I selected. I really disliked these plain concrete steps from our side garage door, so they're getting a makeover. They'll be semi-circular steps, then covered in flagstone to hide the seams. I also added more decking from the pool area to connect with the garage side door, seen below. Here's the view from our bedroom deck area. Here comes the hose filled with concrete.