The Laughlins

This weekend was Nate Murray's birthday. We went to Buca Di Beppo's for dinner last night and sat at the kitchen booth (you'll know what that means if you've ever been there...they walk everyone through the kitchen.) Afterwards, we went to the Murrays and hung out...played a little Settlers of Catan, but didn't finish. Today Mark had to work in the morning, but then we picked up Cinammin (Nate's younger sister) and went to Photo LA (www.photola.com). It was awesome!!! I am so inspired!! It was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we went to 3rd Street Promenade because we hadn't been there in a while and Cinnamin had never been there. We ate at California Pizza Kitchen (which Cinammin had never been to) and had BBQ Chicken Pizza. I took lots of pictures in Santa Monica, so I will post them soon. (I am writing from Nate's computer.) Oh...I almost forgot. My present from the Murrays came in, and it was American Music...a book of photos by Annie Liebowitz of various American bands and artists over the past 50 years. I really like her photography, and I definitely like the book. Here are tons of fun pictures from Santa Monica!

We are back at work again, but it's hard to come back after a break. I have started reading "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf and Mark is reading "The Secret of the Hittites." (He recently finished "Is There a Text in This Class?" by Stanley Fish.) Our friend Leah turned in her thesis for her MA in Biblical Counseling, so she is officially done with school for now. Geoff came back from St. Louis as well, so we've been hanging out with both of them. We saw "King Kong" with the Murrays last night. It was really long, and I decided that it would have been a much better movie if Carl (Jack Black) would have died. If you think about it, he indirectly killed (manslaughter) between 50-500 people and didn't really care about anyone but himself.

Here are some recent pictures of New Years, my old roommate Andrea and other random things...

Hello everyone! I hope that you all had a fun and safe New Year's Eve. Happy January 2006!! We spent last night playing taboo, eating fondue, and watching "The March of the Penguins" (which apparently, is pretty popular). Mark and I both have tomorrow off, and we are (hopefully) going to see our friends, Andrea and Jon. They are back for a very short time from Kiev, as Andrea just had her first baby!! I finally finished Crime and Punishment today! It's been a long (many month) process of reading a novel little by little, but I really enjoyed it. In the process, I also read "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" as well as "Letters to an America Lady," which are both C.S. Lewis works (of sorts), the latter being a collection of his letters to one woman in the U.S. I will have more pictures up soon!