1234

on saturday i decided i was sick of my current music selection (something that occurs quite frequently) and decided to peruse iTunes' music selection. iTunes apparently knows me well enough, and is kind enough, to personally select songs they think i would like. how kind of them.

normally the songs they suggest are less than exciting, but i found one that i love. it's feist's "1234." i downloaded it and as is my usual style, put it on repeat all day today. but here's the best part. taylor came in my office today and told me she had seen the video over the weekend and loved it. naturally we looked it up and it's pretty great.

lover of dogs?

i have never considered myself an animal person. growing up my mom said she was "allergic" to animals, especially cats. i'm not quite sure if i believe that to be true (sorry mom). but either way, i grew up in a household that eschewed all things animal. i can remember thinking it was fun as a child to kill ants. how sad is that? (don't worry, my parents quickly put an end to that one. we may not particularly like animals, but we voncannons are not ant-killers). luckily my dad and stepmom currently have a yorkshire terrier so i suppose that is my only claim to being exposed to animals but it still counts.

so suffice it to say, i have never been much of a pet kinda girl.

until i met oscar.

oscar is my sister's eight-week-old cockapoo. he's darling. positively darling. i met him last sunday for the first time. his brown eyes looked up at me and he just seemed so small and helpless. how could i not love him? perhaps love is strong given that we just met and he is, well, an animal. but suffice it to say, i have a very strong affinity for my new canine friend.

it's that look that won me over.


please note my new haircut. more layers in the back.

apparently puppies are like newborns and sleep all the time.

western family picnic

i have been pretty mia lately and apologize to those of you who undoubtedly check my blog daily and have been slowly dying for lack of substinence (anybody? anybody?). i understand that really, pictures of ones room can only go so far... but alas, there is good reason that i have not been in the blogging sphere as my life as of late has consisted in planning the western family picnic for work.

in a nutshell, it's an annual event centered around diplomatic outreach and we invite ambassadors and their families to attend with the hopes of friendshipping with members of the church. the venue is the marriott ranch in hume, va which is a beautiful location for a picnic.

it's my first time planning it and i'm amazed at how many details went into it. designing the program, picking out gifts, securing a speaker, deciding on who gets invited, coordinating with byu dancers, the list never seemed to end. but luckily somehow it all came together and went beautifully. we had 400 guests and seeing as how my previous largest event i planned was for 75 people, this was a big jump. but i loved it. and learned a lot. and got really worn out. oh, it's so nice to be done.

perhaps bigger than anything was the testimony builder that it was for me. (work building testimony, what?) the last two weeks leading up to the picnic were by all outside standards stressful, but i didn't feel stressful once. (okay, i can be dramatic at times, i felt stressful a few times, but seldom). i REALLY felt so blessed and was reminded that the Lord does carry our burdens if we in turn do the best that we can.

yee-haw...welcome to the marriott ranch.


senator bennett among byu living legends and folk dancers


this is our "prayer" meeting before hand. i like to pretend that as i was speaking bishop marriott was smiling at me. i'm assuming he was smiling at someone else, but i can still pretend.


the gift bag. my theme was red and white checkered with brown accents.


me and taylor