Melting songs

There are some songs on my playlist, where the moment they come on, my arms drop to my side and I get this rush of emotion that I cannot quite explain.  It's like the whole world melts around me and I am completely entranced by the song. Does anybody else have those?  If you do, I would love to hear what they are.  These are five of my most mind-melting songs:

Birthdays

Clearly we missed a couple of birthdays on here.  Jeff, Stephani, feel the love.

Recommendation - Zombies!

Are you looking for a happy movie that will make you feel good about the world? Look no further than Warm Bodies. … Really? “Feel good about the world” in a zombie movie? Yes, it’s true. Read on, friends!

Premise: R is a zombie whose monotonous life consists of wandering around an airport with fellow zombies, and occasionally going hunting for food (i.e. living humans). But when he encounters Julie, a human survivor, he notices that he is starting to change, experiencing phenomena that are usually reserved only for humans, not the undead. Is there still hope for this lifeless human-devourer to return to his former self? As Mike would say: “Ba na NA!”

(A quick interjection in the interest of full disclosure. There is some mild language in Warm Bodies. Mild in the sense that the words are not used in a vulgar way or as substance words – nouns, verbs, etc. – but as expletives, much in the same way as you or I would exclaim, “Shoot!”, “Darn!” or “Holy Hannah!” in fear, surprise, or frustration. The difference being, of course, that the characters in this film choose different sounds to express these emotions. But if you are uncomfortable with that, then maybe disregard this recommendation.)

Why I Liked It: Despite the fact that Warm Bodies probably falls into the teen supernatural romance genre, I enjoyed it for its deeper themes (and this is where the “feel good about the world” stuff comes in). It is unapologetically earnest in a culture that eschews earnestness in favor of snark and cynicism, but has just enough humor that it’s not sappy (this is also a good description of Modern Family, which I enjoy for the same reason). It touches on themes of the spectrum of human experience, and at its heart, it’s about the redemptive and transformational power of love. And isn’t that really what life itself is all about?

Happy birthday Juliana!

Juliana, we are so grateful to have you in our family! You are so kind and genuine. We really do enjoy your personality (quite Frankly, its hard to get someone to tease Jeff when he's the one who teases everyone). We hope you have a lovely day today! You are so loved in our family!

Yellowstone

We had fun last weekend in Yellowstone with Steph and Alisha's Families. Thought we would post just a couple of pictures to let everyone in on the fun! 

 

Wii U

Hayley and I rent electronics.  Not through a retailer mind, you. We purchase a product decide whether we like it or not, and, if we don't, sell it on eBay and try something else.  We have done this with cell phones, tablets, cameras, and, more recently, gaming consoles.

A couple of years ago, we sold our Wii on eBay to by some other electronic we likely sold a couple of weeks later to purchase some other electronic (it's a vicious cycle).  So, this Christmas, we decided it would be fun to buy another gaming console.  We researched a lot of different types: Playstation, Playstation Vida, Nintendo 3DS, Xbox.  We finally came to the conclusion that the Wii U would be the best, mostly because we liked the potential in the gaming titles (Mario, Zelda, etc.).

So we dropped the cash.  And now I get to tell you what I think. For those of you unwilling to invest too much time in this post, I have created this handy graphic:

At first, we were excited.  We bought the new Super Mario 2D Co-op game and had a lot of fun together.  The boards were challenging enough that we didn't beat it in one night. Plus, it had a healthy amount of mini-games where we could challenge each other (there are actually dozens of little challenges that extend the life of the game).

However, you can only play Mario so much, so we needed to venture out.  We got a free subscription to GameFly for a month and decided to try out a number of different games.  Unfortunately, they all sucked (with the exception of Just Dance 4, which I loved and which Hayley loved because she found it hillarious to watch me dancing to Carly Rae Jepson; I don't get why that is funny, but oh well). "Maybe," we thought, "All the good games were coming out soon." So I faithfully waited until Nintendo's presentation at E3 to discover what games were coming out.

What I found was that more games were coming out (Super Mario World, Zelda, Mario Kart), but that each of them looked either like simple add-ons to previous games with nothing ground breaking or like worse versions of the games.  I was dissappointed.  I was also disappointed that the CEO of Nintendo kept telling me that Nintendo wanted to "make the games perfect" and so had to continue delaying the release of games.  Don't patronize me, just tell me you couldn't keep the original time schedule.

As far as positives, the graphics are better (though I couldn't tell until I went back to play the original Wii).  You can still use all your old Wii games (though you have to reboot your machine to do so and it takes more than a minute to do so).  The game pad provides some added options to gameplay (though not so much to make it worth the money).  It was nice to be able to play a game on the game pad while Hayley watched something on TV (but don't go too far from the console or you will lose the connection).  The game pad made it so we could play with our children as well, them tapping away on the screen while we played with the Wiimotes.

Needless to say, we are selling it.  Who knows what we will rent next!?!?!?!?

Happy Birthday, Greg!

Happy Birthday to our dear brother Greg, who's made it three decades! Let's all celebrate!